BANQUETS AND BANQUETING.

Northland Age, Volume VIII, Issue 11, 3 November 1911, Page 2

BANQUETS AND BANQUETING.

SOME PLEASANT GOSSIP. The number of quaint devices that have been resorted to, at a pinch, in order to satisfy man’s natural desire for a "square meal,” would furnish material for a curious volume. The method adopted among the Hungarian gipsies of preparing foxes for their Tzi’gan banquets is singularly eccentric. They first place the carcase of the animal in running water for a couple of days ; it is then removed and cooked under hot coals In a hole in the ground. At these banquets cats are considered a princely dish. But one of the most remarkable culinary feats on record was achieved by Vlaming, the Dutch navigator, when he improvised a fish banquet on an uninhabited isle. It happened while he was on a visit to St. Paul’s Island,, in the Indian Ocean. He caught his fish in a vast basin on the island—the crater of an extinct volcano—and then threw them while still on the hook, out of the cold water into the hot springs hard by, and quickly boiled them to perfection. This manner of cooking fish brings to one’s recollection those famous banquets given in the halcyon days of the Roman Empire, when mullet were cooked alive at table. The reason alleged by the cooks for this brr rolls custom was characteristic < f that age ; the gradual change . i colour during the culinary process—so they said—entertained the guests ! But this very questionable divertisement does not belong exclusively, by any means, to the Roman period. In restaurants in Warsaw, even in the present day, there are fish ponds out of which trout are caught by the white-capped chefs, and killed and cooked before your very eyes. In the notable fish banquets in the eleventh century the cooks were famed for their skill in the preparation of whale flesh. It was either roasted on a spit or else boiled with peas. Nor were these Soyers of the period less skilful in manipulating a dish, said to. consist of an entire porpoise—a dish which the epicurean pronounced exceedingly dainty, especially when eaten. with mustard. According to Hazlitt, Cardinal Wolsey gave a banquet at which forty porpoises were served.

Yet such delicacies as these, in the | way of “loin of whale” or "shoulder of porpoise," were put into the shade by the savoury dishes of pickled horse, that were seldom absent from the feast in the time of good Queen Bess. But what strikes one with still greater amazement is the Gargantuan scale on which the banquets were got up in the good old days. The one that Antony gave, for Instance, on one occasion in honour of Cleopatra must have been on a scale magnificent beyond words. One can well believe that among the thousand and one dishes at that feast, one famous dish of the Romans was not overlooked. It was a dish which was quaintly prepared. "Take a wheelbarrow of (rose leaves and pound in a mortar”—says the first cookery book ever published in Europe, in reference to this dish—“add to it brains of two pigs and two thrushes, boil and mix with the chopped-up yolk of egg, oil, vinegar, pepper, and wine ; stew them steadily and slowly till the perfume is developed.” Be this as it may, this banquet of Antony’s was carried with such marked success that the chef was presented with a city In recognition of his culinary achievement. And then, again, what elaborate banquets those given by the Emperor Geta must have been at the end of the second century ! They were very 'suggestive, moreover, , of the genuine gourmand, for it was a habit of this hospitable ruler to give instructions to his chef to prepare each day for the feast as many dishes as there are letters in the alphabet.

At all these banquets, and during all these centuries, Peacock was a favourite plat. It was usually brought on at the commencement of the repast. The inside was stuffed with the flesh of other birds, and it was then sewn together again. The custom was to set it on the table perched on a branch, as if alive.— “Globe."