COOKS AND COOKERY

Evening Star, Issue 17697, 25 June 1921, Page 10

COOKS AND COOKERY

ANCIENT AND MODERN VIEWS. Tastes differ, and about nothing so much as cooking. Naturally the art is limited by tho physical possibilities or each country and its _ products; but the Englishman’s liking for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding may be as incomprehensible to a Chinaman as tne Chinaman’s delight in blrdsnost soup, boiled sea -slugs, and a hundred-year-old buried egg is W tho Britisher. To sotno extent iHs a decadent art ministering to man’s progressiva inclination to have his palate tickled. Thus, the Romans coming later profited by Crook experiments in gastronomy, and tho name of Lucullus, for example., has become a synonym for luxury in feasting.

“ Plain cooking,” however, can never become obsolete. "We may livo without friends, wc mftv livo without books, sane Given Meredith, “ but civilised cannot do without cooks.” The_ Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology is rich in material which illuminates tho private life of tho Romans, and Miss Cornelia G. Harcuni of that institution contributes to tho ‘American Journal’of Archicology ’ an extremely interesting illustrated article upon the Roman cooking utensils to bo seen there, with suggestive references to Latin writers. The majority of these utensils were found in Egypt. A kitchen equipment, almost complete, was found in the ruins of a house near Thebes; it contains twenty-seven pieces of bronze in excellent preservation, with a beautiful green patina, and is included in the Walter Massey collection. Ino date is probably tho early period after the Roman occupation of Egypt. _ These utensils are all designed for stowing or boiling, and one recalls the statement of Celsus that food is more digestible when boiled than whon friend or broiled. No kitchen, ancient or modern, would be complete without a frying-pan, and numerous samples are illustrated, found in Egypt and elsewhere. There is also an interesting example of a grid-iron which was discovered on Hannibal’s battlefield at Lake Trasumemis, and which may have been used by tho soldiers there. Among other utensils is the wido-mouthod terracotta bowl for porridge, vegetables, meat and fowl. Probably Romulus’s dinner of boiled turnips, which ho is represented as enjoying even in the heavens, was cooked in such a pot. The type _ has remained permanent, and is tho direct ancestor of the vessel in which the famous lentil porridge is mado by tho peasants in Italy to-day. To complete the picture one must add tho cook, who, according to Plautus, was usually armed with a knife and was witty and thievish. The collection includes several specimens of knives, and also apparently a meat-minoor. But tho status of the cook has risen. In the Veronese house of Capulct the test for a good' cook was that 'be could lick his own fingers. “ We have some .good families in England of the name of Cook or Coko,” wrote Dr Pogga. “ Depend upon it, they all originally sprang from real professional cooks, and they need not bo ashamed of their extraction any more than Porters and Butlers.” Burton declared that “cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.” Now wo have spacious buildings devoted to domestic science, which has become a depart--ment of the university.—Toronto ‘Globe.’