PART ONE
From Biblical Taboos to Sinclair’s Stockyards
PEOPLE HAVE been thinking and writing about eating as long as people have been eating and talking—in other words, almost forever. Worldwide, and deep into history, social scientists and evolutionary biologists have found that sustained food sharing distinguishes humans from animals. Yes, from ants and bees to wolves and bats, many creatures divide the spoils of foraging or hunting; but the multiple and complex patterns of food sharing among humans are unique. We share within and among families, between generations, between tribes and cultures, and, in various ways, across time. And as we share, we think and talk, set down rules, preach appropriate practices, invite guests to dine, celebrate delicacies, decry poison and pollution, remember the pleasures of special tables, brood on culinary wrongdoing, tell—over and over again—tales of food: food we loved and hated, food that made us well and food that made us sick, food that gave grace and food that was sour, bitter, even poisonous.
Writing about food, in fact, must have begun when people started to write and wanted to advise each other about deliciousness or danger, or simply record their experiences. Our selection here from the Old Testament of the western Bible, also known by Jews as the Torah, is one of the sources of the dietary laws observed by many Orthodox Jews, forbidding the consumption of pork and shellfish while stipulating the separation of meat products from dairy foods (“Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”). Comparable food rules and taboos are, of course, observed in many other cultures: devout Hindus don’t eat beef, for instance, considering the cow a sacred animal, and many are both teetotalers and vegetarians; Muslims don’t eat pork nor do they drink alcohol; many Buddhists eschew spices; Catholics traditionally renounce meat on Fridays and during Lent.
The very existence of such restrictions should remind us that eating itself is a fraught and sometimes perilous act. As such, it invites the kinds of philosophical meditation we see in our excerpt from Plutarch’s classical vegetarian tract, attacking the savage bloodshed associated with butchery and “flesh-eating.” And thoughts of eating invite, too, the moralizings we encounter in our selections from such writers as Joel Barlow, Louisa May Alcott, and Frederick Douglass. Barlow praises the homely “hasty pudding”—a sort of cornmeal mush—that he associates with American purity, which he sees as the opposite of European corruption. Alcott, for her part, attacks the parsimonious gastronomy practiced by the transcendentalist philosophers (the worst culprit her father, Bronson!) who founded Fruitlands, an early New England vegan commune. And in a piece that has connections with both Barlow’s writing and Alcott’s, Douglass, remembering his origins as a slave in the American South, describes the “ash cake,” a cornbread akin to, but not as comforting as, “hasty pudding,” that formed the diet of enchained African-Americans, while inveighing against the laden, decadent tables of the plantation owners.
Because eating is also a supremely pleasurable act, however, it also evokes celebratory invitations and reflections. Here we include appetizing gastronomic verses that the Roman poet Horace and his Renaissance acolyte Ben Jonson addressed to prospective dinner guests, outlining the delights of the table, whether “smallish portions of vegetarian food” (Horace) or “partrich, pheasant, wood-cock” and other “fowle” (Jonson). And in a similar vein, though retrospectively, Dumas extolls the French onion, Thoreau the watermelon, Melville the whale, and Proust—perhaps the most famous of all food memoirists—the modest madeleine, dipped in tea, out of which his entire Remembrance of Things Past blossomed.
A more nuanced but equally celebratory view of food is offered in Chekhov’s “Oysters,” whose protagonist, starving in tsarist Russia, is introduced to the delights of raw shellfish—and has his life saved by that gourmet food. At the same time, because the pleasures of eating can be so compelling, a number of writers satirize the excess that culinary luxury can inspire. Petronius’s “Trimalchio’s Feast,” from his classic Satyricon, is perhaps the most notable representation of almost obscenely out-of-control eating in Western literary history; the Roman author dramatizes a dinner party thrown by a nouveau riche citizen that features, among other delectables, a whole roast “wild boar of immense size, wearing a liberty cap upon its head,” along with attendant dishes. But the French Renaissance writer Rabelais’s account of Pantagruel (the son of Gargantua) and his adventures among the “Gastrolaters”—grotesque fabulous foodies—comes in a close second.
How and why did cooking gain such resonance for us, and what is the nature of culinary “taste” anyway? Byron’s Don Juan features a cannibal episode that turns on the Romantic poet’s sardonic note that “man is a carnivorous production, / And must have meals, at least one meal a day,” while Charles Lamb’s fanciful “Dissertation upon Roast Pig” comically traces the transformative nature of cooking to an episode in a fancifully imagined ancient China, where a swineherd’s son burned down a house in which a litter of piglets had been sequestered. But Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the French father of transcendental gastronomy whose arguments are here represented in a translation by the great American food writer M.F.K. Fisher, seriously meditates on the nature and meaning of taste, the physiological phenomenon experienced in tongue and gullet that lets us enjoy and, says Brillat-Savarin, inspires us to think about our times at the table. Like the other selections included in this opening section of Eating Words, his writing introduces us to what will be major themes throughout this volume: pleasure and pain, delight and disgust, memory and morality. That the last of these, morality, is crucial to our understanding of the culture of eating and cooking is, finally, emphasized in our excerpt from Upton Sinclair’s superb turn-of-the-century novel/polemic The Jungle, which powerfully represents the butchery associated with the “flesh-eating” so loathed by Plutarch in ancient Rome. If Plutarch is the literary ancestor of Sinclair, Sinclair is the spiritual father of such contemporary writers as Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, whom we’ll encounter later in this book.
The Old Testament (c. 538–332 BCE)
PROBABLY COMPLETED, ALONG with the rest of the Pentateuch or Hebrew Torah, between 538 and 332 BCE, the book of Leviticus sets down stipulations by which the ancient Israelite priests (the Levites) were to organize both daily life and sacred rituals. In Leviticus 11, which we reprint here, many of the dietary rules of Orthodox Judaism are formulated. Others appear in Deuteronomy 14. All together, these principles govern the practices that have come to be called kosher or kashrut, meaning “fit” for consumption. For instance, you may not eat milk with meat; you may not eat pork or shellfish; you may not eat animals from whom the blood hasn’t been drained. (Says Deuteronomy, you must not “seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”; says Leviticus, “Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.”) Similar food taboos and precepts can be found in many other cultures. Devout Muslims eat only what is halal. Hindus, considering the cow sacred, do not eat beef, and many are strict vegetarians.
1.And the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them,
2.Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
3.Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.
4.Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
5.And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
6.And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
7.And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.
8.Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.
9.These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10.And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11.They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12.Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
13.And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,
14.And the vulture, and the kite after his kind;
15.Every raven after his kind;
16.And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,
17.And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,
18.And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,
19.And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
20.All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.
21.Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
22.Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
23.But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.
24.And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the carcase of them shall be unclean until the even.
25.And whosoever beareth ought of the carcase of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even.
26.The carcases of every beast which divideth the hoof, and is not clovenfooted, nor cheweth the cud, are unclean unto you: every one that toucheth them shall be unclean.
27.And whatsoever goeth upon his paws, among all manner of beasts that go on all four, those are unclean unto you: whoso toucheth their carcase shall be unclean until the even.
28.And he that beareth the carcase of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: they are unclean unto you.
29.These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind,
30.And the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.
31.These are unclean to you among all that creep: whosoever doth touch them, when they be dead, shall be unclean until the even.
32.And upon whatsoever any of them, when they are dead, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be, wherein any work is done, it must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed.
33.And every earthen vessel, whereinto any of them falleth, whatsoever is in it shall be unclean; and ye shall break it.
34.Of all meat which may be eaten, that on which such water cometh shall be unclean: and all drink that may be drunk in every such vessel shall be unclean.
35.And every thing whereupon any part of their carcase falleth shall be unclean; whether it be oven, or ranges for pots, they shall be broken down: for they are unclean and shall be unclean unto you.
36.Nevertheless a fountain or pit, wherein there is plenty of water, shall be clean: but that which toucheth their carcase shall be unclean.
37.And if any part of their carcase fall upon any sowing seed which is to be sown, it shall be clean.
38.But if any water be put upon the seed, and any part of their carcase fall thereon, it shall be unclean unto you.
39.And if any beast, of which ye may eat, die; he that toucheth the carcase thereof shall be unclean until the even.
40.And he that eateth of the carcase of it shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: he also that beareth the carcase of it shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even.
41.And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth shall be an abomination; it shall not be eaten.
42.Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat; for they are an abomination.
43.Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye should be defiled thereby.
44.For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
45.For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
46.This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth:
47.To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.
URBANE AND WITTY, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace in English, was among the most prominent poets of Augustan Rome. The cherished son of a “freedman”—a former slave who expended a great deal on his heir’s education—he studied in Athens, served as an officer in the army, and then worked as a paid scribe before attaining favor with the emperor and taking possession of the elegant villa at the Sabine farm that he memorialized in some of his best-known verses. His odes, epodes, and satires helped forge his reputation, but his epistles were perhaps his most innovative works: the first ostensibly personal letters to have been composed entirely in verse. In the one we represent here, as in several others, he invites a friend to dinner, suavely proposing a meal marked by the moderation (“smallish helpings of vegetarian food”) for which he was also known.
from Epistle 5, To Torquatus:
A Cheerful Invitation to Dinner
If you can bear to recline on one of Archias’ couches,
and can face smallish helpings of vegetarian food,
I shall look forward, Torquatus, to seeing you here at sunset.
The wine you will drink was bottled in Taurus’ second consulate
between Minturnae in the marsh and Petrinum near Sinuessa.
If you’ve something better, have it brought, or obey orders.
The hearth is already polished, and you’ll find the furniture tidy.
Forget for a while your chancy prospects and the race for profits
and the Moschus case. Tomorrow is Caesar’s birthday, and so
we have an excuse for sleeping in. No retribution
if we stretch our pleasant talk into the summer night.
What’s the point of money if you haven’t the chance to enjoy it?
Someone who scrimps and saves more than he needs, in concern
for his heir, is next door to an idiot; I’ll begin
drinking and scattering flowers. Who cares if I’m called
irresponsible?
Think of the wonders uncorked by wine! It opens secrets,
gives heart to our hopes, pushes the cowardly into battle,
lifts the load from anxious minds, and evokes talents.
Thanks to the bottle’s prompting no one is lost for words,
no one who’s cramped by poverty fails to find release.
I’m under orders, willing and able, to ensure the following:
there’ll be no dirty napkins to make you grimace in disgust,
nor any grubby covers; no tankard or plate
that you can’t see your face in; no one to noise abroad what is said
to friends in confidence. Getting the right blend of guests
is so important. I shall have Septicius and Butra along
to meet you, and Sabinus if he’s not prevented by a previous
engagement
and prettier company. There’s also room for several shadows.
(But at overcrowded parties one must beware of the goat.)
Let me know how many you’d like; then drop what you’re doing
and trick the client in the hall by slipping out the back.
AN INTIMATE MEMBER of the Emperor Nero’s court, a Roman consul, and a noted arbiter of taste and elegance, Petronius was a satirist whose comic novel The Satyricon includes a famous scene of decadent Roman banqueting. Trimalchio, a wealthy hedonist and a portrait of the nouveau riche in its most extravagant mode, displays lavish vulgarity in trying to impress his guests. F. Scott Fitzgerald originally intended to call The Great Gatsby “Trimalchio,” a reference to the ostentatious side of the novel’s main character. The title The Satyricon refers to the satyr, who, as a figure in Dionysus’s retinue, yearns for wine, theater, and phallic sexuality, and is a pursuer of pleasure in all forms. The narrator is an impoverished student who has been invited to dinner by Trimalchio, and many have speculated that the protagonist of the work was a caricature of Nero himself.
from The Satyricon: Trimalchio’s Feast
WE FELT DEEPLY obligated by [our host’s] great condescension, and the same slave for whom we had interceded, rushed up to us as we entered the dining-room, and to our astonishment, kissed us thick and fast, voicing his thanks for our kindness. “You’ll know in a minute whom you did a favor for,” he confided, “the master’s wine is the thanks of a grateful butler!” At length we reclined, and slave boys from Alexandria poured water cooled with snow upon our hands, while others following, attended to our feet and removed the hangnails with wonderful dexterity, nor were they silent even during this disagreeable operation, but they all kept singing at their work. I was desirous of finding out whether the whole household could sing, so I ordered a drink; a boy near at hand instantly repeated my order in a singsong voice fully as shrill, and whichever one you accosted did the same. You would not imagine that this was the dining-room of a private gentleman, but rather that it was an exhibition of pantomimes. A very inviting relish was brought on, for by now all the couches were occupied save only that of Trimalchio, for whom, after a new custom, the chief place was reserved.
On the tray stood a donkey made of Corinthian bronze, bearing panniers containing olives, white in one and black in the other. Two platters flanked the figure, on the margins of which were engraved Trimalchio’s name and the weight of the silver in each. Dormice sprinkled with poppy-seed and honey were served on little bridges soldered fast to the platter, and hot sausages on a silver gridiron, underneath which were damson plums and pomegranate seeds.
WE were in the midst of these delicacies when, to the sound of music, Trimalchio himself was carried in and bolstered up in a nest of small cushions, which forced a snicker from the less wary. A shaven poll protruded from a scarlet mantle, and around his neck, already muffled with heavy clothing, he had tucked a napkin having a broad purple stripe and a fringe that hung down all around. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a massive gilt ring, and on the first joint of the next finger, a smaller one which seemed to me to be of pure gold, but as a matter of fact it had iron stars soldered on all around it. And then, for fear all of his finery would not be displayed, he bared his right arm, adorned with a golden arm-band and an ivory circlet clasped with a plate of shining metal.
PICKING his teeth with a silver quill, “Friends,” said he, “it was not convenient for me to come into the dining-room just yet, but for fear my absence should cause you any inconvenience, I gave over my own pleasure: permit me, however, to finish my game.” A slave followed with a terebinth table and crystal dice, and I noted one piece of luxury that was superlative; for instead of black and white pieces, he used gold and silver coins. He kept up a continual flow of various coarse expressions. We were still dallying with the relishes when a tray was brought in, on which was a basket containing a wooden hen with her wings rounded and spread out as if she were brooding. Two slaves instantly approached, and to the accompaniment of music, commenced to feel around in the straw. They pulled out some pea-hen’s eggs, which they distributed among the diners. Turning his head, Trimalchio saw what was going on. “Friends,” he remarked. “I ordered pea-hen’s eggs set under the hen, but I’m afraid they’re addled, by Hercules I am, let’s try them anyhow, and see if they’re still fit to suck.” We picked up our spoons, each of which weighed not less than half a pound, and punctured the shells, which were made of flour and dough, and as a matter of fact, I very nearly threw mine away for it seemed to me that a chick had formed already, but upon hearing an old experienced guest vow, “There must be something good here,” I broke open the shell with my hand and discovered a fine fat fig-pecker, imbedded in a yolk seasoned with pepper.
HAVING finished his game, Trimalchio was served with a helping of everything and was announcing in a loud voice his willingness to join anyone in a second cup of honied wine, when, to a flourish of music, the relishes were suddenly whisked away by a singing chorus, but a small dish happened to fall to the floor, in the scurry, and a slave picked it up. Seeing this, Trimalchio ordered that the boy be punished by a box on the ear, and made him throw it down again; a janitor followed with his broom and swept the silver dish away among the litter. Next followed two long-haired Ethiopians, carrying small leather bottles, such as are commonly seen in the hands of those who sprinkle sand in the arena, and poured wine upon our hands, for no one offered us water. When complimented upon these elegant extras, the host cried out, “Mars loves a fair fight: and so I ordered each one a separate table: that way these stinking slaves won’t make us so hot with their crowding.” Some glass bottles carefully sealed with gypsum were brought in at that instant; a label bearing this inscription was fastened to the neck of each one:
OPIMIAN FALERNIAN
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD.
While we were studying the labels, Trimalchio clapped his hands and cried, “Ah me! To think that wine lives longer than poor little man. Let’s fill ’em up! There’s life in wine and this is the real Opimian, you can take my word for that. I offered no such vintage yesterday, though my guests were far more respectable.” We were tippling away and extolling all these elegant devices, when a slave brought in a silver skeleton, so contrived that the joints and movable vertebra could be turned in any direction. He threw it down upon the table a time or two, and its mobile articulation caused it to assume grotesque attitudes, whereupon Trimalchio chimed in:
“Poor man is nothing in the scheme of things
And Orcus grips us and to Hades flings
Our bones! This skeleton before us here
Is as important as we ever were!
Let’s live then while we may and life is dear.”
THE applause was followed by a course which, by its oddity, drew every eye, but it did not come up to our expectations. There was a circular tray around which were displayed the signs of the zodiac, and upon each sign the caterer had placed the food best in keeping with it. Ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, kidneys and lamb’s fry on Gemini, a crown on Cancer, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, an African fig on Leo, on Libra a balance, one pan of which held a tart and the other a cake, a small seafish on Scorpio, a bull’s eye on Sagittarius, a sea lobster on Capricornus, a goose on Aquarius and two mullets on Pisces. In the middle lay a piece of cut sod upon which rested a honeycomb with the grass arranged around it. An Egyptian slave passed bread around from a silver oven and in a most discordant voice twisted out a song in the manner of the mime in the musical farce called Laserpitium. Seeing that we were rather depressed at the prospect of busying ourselves with such vile fare, Trimalchio urged us to fall to: “Let us fall to, gentlemen, I beg of you, this is only the sauce!”
WHILE he was speaking, four dancers ran in to the time of the music, and removed the upper part of the tray. Beneath, on what seemed to be another tray, we caught sight of stuffed capons and sows’ bellies, and in the middle, a hare equipped with wings to resemble Pegasus. At the corners of the tray we also noted four figures of Marsyas and from their bladders spouted a highly spiced sauce upon fish which were swimming about as if in a tide-race. All of us echoed the applause which was started by the servants, and fell to upon these exquisite delicacies, with a laugh. “Carver,” cried Trimalchio, no less delighted with the artifice practiced upon us, and the carver appeared immediately. Timing his strokes to the beat of the music he cut up the meat in such a fashion as to lead you to think that a gladiator was fighting from a chariot to the accompaniment of a water-organ. Every now and then Trimalchio would repeat “Carver, Carver,” in a low voice, until I finally came to the conclusion that some joke was meant in repeating a word so frequently, so I did not scruple to question him who reclined above me. As he had often experienced byplay of this sort he explained, “You see that fellow who is carving the meat, don’t you? Well, his name is Carver. Whenever Trimalchio says Carver, carve her, by the same word, he both calls and commands!”
At length some slaves came in who spread upon the couches some coverlets upon which were embroidered nets and hunters stalking their game with boar-spears, and all the paraphernalia of the chase. We knew not what to look for next, until a hideous uproar commenced, just outside the dining-room door, and some Spartan hounds commenced to run around the table all of a sudden. A tray followed them, upon which was served a wild boar of immense size, wearing a liberty cap upon its head, and from its tusks hung two little baskets of woven palm fibre, one of which contained Syrian dates, the other, Theban. Around it hung little suckling pigs made from pastry, signifying that this was a brood-sow with her pigs at suck. It turned out that these were souvenirs intended to be taken home. When it came to carving the boar, our old friend Carver, who had carved the capons, did not appear, but in his place a great bearded giant, with bands around his legs, and wearing a short hunting cape in which a design was woven. Drawing his hunting-knife, he plunged it fiercely into the boar’s side, and some thrushes flew out of the gash. Fowlers, ready with their rods, caught them in a moment, as they fluttered around the room and Trimalchio ordered one to each guest, remarking, “Notice what fine acorns this forest-bred boar fed on,” and as he spoke, some slaves removed the little baskets from the tusks and divided the Syrian and Theban dates equally among the diners.
GETTING a moment to myself, in the meantime, I began to speculate as to why the boar had come with a liberty cap upon his head. After exhausting my invention with a thousand foolish guesses, I made bold to put the riddle which teased me to my old informant. “Why, sure,” he replied, “even your slave could explain that; there’s no riddle, everything’s as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday’s dinner and was dismissed by the guests, so today he comes back as a freedman!” I damned my stupidity and refrained from asking any more questions for fear I might leave the impression that I had never dined among decent people before. While we were speaking, a handsome boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, passed grapes around, in a little basket, and impersonated Bacchus-happy, Bacchus-drunk, and Bacchus-dreaming, reciting, in the meantime, his master’s verses, in a shrill voice. Trimalchio turned to him and said, “Dionisus, be thou Liber,” whereupon the boy immediately snatched the cap from the boar’s head, and put it upon his own. At that Trimalchio added, “You can’t deny that my father’s middle name was Liber!” We applauded Trimalchio’s conceit heartily, and kissed the boy as he went around. Trimalchio retired to the close-stool, after this course, and we, having freedom of action with the tyrant away, began to draw the other guests out. After calling for a bowl of wine, Dama spoke up, “A day’s nothing at all: it’s night before you can turn around, so you can’t do better than to go right to the dining-room from your bed. It’s been so cold that I can hardly get warm in a bath, but a hot drink’s as good as an overcoat: I’ve had some long pegs, and between you and me, I’m a bit groggy; the booze has gone to my head.”
THE GREAT ROMAN writer is best known for his highly influential Parallel Lives, a series of biographical essays of famous Greek and Roman figures, arranged in pairs, including warriors, lawgivers, politicians, writers, and philosophers. Shakespeare based several of his plays on these biographies. Though Plutarch is usually regarded as Roman, and was patronized by the Emperor Hadrian, he was born and spent most of his life in Greece, even serving as a priest at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Our text is taken from his Moralia, a collection of short pieces on contemporary customs and mores, including meditations on such serious matters as friendship, virtue, and worship. But he could also engage with seemingly lighter though no less important topics. In our selection he asks how we can in good conscience eat living creatures when “real” animals kill to survive while we kill only to dine on a mere “appetizer.” Plutarch was an early advocate for vegetarianism, and he bases his position not only on sympathy for hunted beasts, even for farm-raised creatures (he asserts they may be mothers or fathers) but also on the natural deficiencies of human anatomy that is not designed, as is that of great predators, for the tearing, rending, and digesting of flesh.
CAN YOU REALLY ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? . . .
But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.
It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. . . .
What a terrible thing it is to look on when the tables of the rich are spread, men who employ cooks and spicers to groom the dead! And it is even more terrible to look on when they are taken away, for more is left than has been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are already set before them and will not have them cut into or sliced. Though they bid spare the dead, they did not spare the living.
We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on Nature. For that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body. A man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh. It is from this very fact, the evenness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouths, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources. . . .
For what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses its life? Do we hold a life cheap? I do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be the life of your mother or father or some friend or child, as Empedocles declared. Yet it does, at least, possess some perception, hearing, seeing, imagination, intelligence, which last every creature receives from Nature to enable it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade what is not. Do but consider which are the philosophers who serve the better to humanize us: those who bid us eat our children and friends and fathers and wives after their death, or Pythagoras and Empedocles who try to accustom us to act justly toward other creatures also? You ridicule a man who abstains from eating mutton. But are we, they will say, to refrain from laughter when we see you slicing off portions from a dead father or mother and sending them to absent friends and inviting those who are at hand, heaping their plates with flesh.
RABELAIS WAS A French Renaissance humanist who viewed the world as a great carnival of pleasurable subversion. Our selection comes from his best-known work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, about father and son giants who have wild adventures, many involving prodigious feats of eating and drinking. Some readers have regarded the text’s licentious scenes as satires of excess, while others have viewed them as critiques of puritanical repression, self-deprivation, and authoritarian regulation. In the later parts of the work Rabelais celebrates a swaggering freedom in the open-minded Abbey of Thélème, ruled by the motto “Do What You Will.” Here the “Gastrolaters (or Belly-Worshippers)” function as surrogates for Gargantua and Pantagruel themselves, consuming dish after dish after dish—and bloated but never satiated.
from Gargantua and Pantagruel:
On the Gastrolaters
HOW, AT THE COURT OF THE MASTER OF
INGENUITY, PANTAGRUEL DETESTED THE
ENGASTRIMYTHES AND THE GASTROLATERS.
AT the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.
The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles. In the holy decrees, 26, qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who speak from the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. These were soothsayers, enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give answers from the mouth, but from the belly.
Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped. This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming pleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to answer. If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent answers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to come, then the devil was graveled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can trot. Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer letting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and uncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.
As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and gangs. Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to business, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing nothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch. Others were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done you good to have seen them.
There’s a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature appears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the configuration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours, streaks, and inimitable shapes. I protest the variety we perceived in the dresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less. They all owned Gaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices as to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and honoured him above all things.
You would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said (Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly. Pantagruel compared them to the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus: I only sacrifice to myself—not to the gods—and to this belly of mine, the greatest of all the gods.
OF THE RIDICULOUS STATUE MANDUCE;
AND HOW AND WHAT THE GASTROLATERS
SACRIFICE TO THEIR VENTRIPOTENT GOD
WHILE we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these lounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a musical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in rank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office, degree, and seniority.
In this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young, lusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden statue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one as Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it. At Lyons during the Carnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call’d this Manduce.
It was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little children; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all the rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier, which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against another; as they do at Metz with St. Clement’s dragon.
Coming near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes, wallets, pots, and kettles. Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and singing I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening their baskets and pots, they offered their god:
| White hippocras, with | Monastical brewis. | Zinziberine |
| dry toasts. | Gravy soup. | Beatille pies |
| White bread. | Hotch-pots. | Brewis |
| Brown bread. | Soft bread. | Marrow-bones, toast, |
| Carbonadoes, six sorts. | Household bread. | and cabbage |
| Brawn. | Capirotadoes. | Hashes |
| Sweetbreads. | Cold loins of veal, with | |
| Fricassees, nine sorts. | spice. |
Eternal drink intermixed. Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret and champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled and offered in large silver cups. Then they offered:
| Chitterlings, garnished | Hog’s haslets. | Brawn heads. |
| with mustard. | Scotch collops. | Powdered venison, |
| Sausages. | Puddings. | with turnips. |
| Neats’ tongues. | Cervelats. | Pickled olives. |
| Hung beef. | Bologna sausages. | |
| Chines and peas. | Hams. |
All this associated with sempiternal liquor. Then they housed within his muzzle:
Vinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy; also toasts to scour the grinders.
WHAT THE GASTROLATERS SACRIFICED TO
THEIR GOD ON INTERLARDED FISH-DAYS.
PANTAGRUEL did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce. He then asked the skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on interlarded fish-days. For his first course, said the skipper, they gave him:
| Caviare. | Red herrings. |
| Botargoes. | Pillchards. |
| Fresh butter. | Anchovies. |
| Pease soup. | Fry of tunny. |
| Spinach. | Cauliflowers. |
| Fresh herrings, full roed. | Beans. |
| Salads, a hundred varieties, of cresses, sodden hop-tops, bishop’s-cods, celery, chives, rampions, jew’s-ears (a sort of mushrooms that sprout out of old elders), sparagus, wood-bind, and a world of others. |
Salt salmon. Pickled grigs. Oysters in the shell. |
Then he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this, therefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting. Which being done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:
| Gurnards. | Bret-fish. | Sharplings. |
| Salmon trouts. | Flounders. | Tunnies. |
| Barbels, great and | Sea-nettles. | Silver eels. |
| small. | Mullets. | Chevins. |
| Roaches. | Gudgeons. | Crayfish. |
| Cockerels. | Dabs and sandings. | Pallours. |
| Minnows. | Haddocks. | Shrimps. |
| Skate-fish. | Carps. | Congers. |
| Lamprels. | Pikes. | Porpoises. |
| Jegs. | Bottitoes. | Bases. |
| Pickerels. | Rochets. | Shads. |
| Golden carps. | Sea-bears. | Murenes, a sort of |
| Burbates. | Thornbacks. | lampreys. |
| Salmons. | Sleeves. | Graylings. |
| Salmon-peels. | Sturgeons. | Smys. |
| Dolphins. | Sheath-fish. | Turbots. |
| Barn trouts. | Mackerels. | Trout, not above a foot |
| Miller’s-thumbs. | Maids. | long. |
| Precks. | Plaice. | Salmons. |
| Meagers. | Soles. | Eel-pouts. |
| Sea-breams. | Mussels. | Tortoises. |
| Halibuts. | Lobsters. | Serpents, i.e. wood- |
| Dog’s tongue, or kind | Great prawns. | eels. |
| fool. | Dace. | Dories. |
| Fried oysters. | Bleaks. | Moor-game. |
| Cockles. | Tenches. | Perches. |
| Prawns. | Ombres. | Loaches. |
| Smelts. | Fresh cods. | Crab-fish. |
| Rock-fish. | Dried melwels. | Snails and whelks. |
| Gracious lords. | Darefish. | Frogs. |
| Sword-fish. | Fausens, and grigs. |
If, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not immediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him off in a trice. Special care is taken to antidote his godship with vine-tree syrup. Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack, minglemangled, mismashed, &c.
| Eggs fried, beaten, buttered, poached, hardened, boiled, broiled, stewed, sliced, roasted in the embers, tossed in the chim- ney, &c. |
Stock-fish. Green-fish. Sea-batts. Cod’s sounds. Sea-pikes. |
Which to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied. For the latter part of their sacrifices they offer:
| Rice milk, and hasty | Stewed prunes, and | Raisins. |
| pudding. | baked bullace. | Dates. |
| Buttered wheat, and | Pistachios, or fistic | Chestnut and |
| flummery. | nuts. | walnuts. |
| Water-gruel, and | Figs. | Filberts. |
| milk-porridge. | Almond butter. | Parsnips. |
| Frumenty and bonny | Skirret root. | Artichokes. |
| clamber. | White-pot. |
Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.
It was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs was not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices, better yet than Heliogabalus’s idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in Babylon, under King Belshazzar. Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he was no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature. And as King Antigonus, first of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially princes) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt him for his son, said to him: My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my groom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very civilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to see, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they could pick out of his sir-reverence.
A NEAR CONTEMPORARY of Shakespeare, Jonson was the most esteemed comic playwright of his day, famous for Volpone and The Alchemist. He was also a composer of court masques, and a prolific poet, influenced by classical forms. He frequently translated from the Latin and the ancient Greek, favoring such genres as the epigram and satire. As with “Inviting a Friend to Supper,” Jonson wrote poems to specific individuals, often his friends. Here he displays an elegance both of verse form and of gracious social manners. Jonson regularly met at the Mermaid Tavern with a circle of writers who called themselves “the Tribe of Ben.”
To night, grave sir, both my poore house, and I
Doe equally desire your companie:
Not that we thinke us worthy such a ghest,
But that your worth will dignifie our feast,
With those that come; whose grace may make that seeme
Something, which, else, could hope for no esteeme.
It is the faire acceptance, Sir, creates
The entertaynment perfect: not the cates.
Yet shall you have, to rectifie your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better sallade
Ushring the mutton; with a short-leg’d hen,
If we can get her, full of egs, and then,
Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney
Is not to be despair’d of, for our money;
And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are darkes,
The skie not falling, thinke we may have larkes.
Ile tell you more, and lye, so you will come:
Of partrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some
May yet be there; and godwit, if we can:
Knat, raile, and ruffe too. How so ere, my man
Shall reade a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
Livie, or of some better booke to us,
Of which wee’ll speake our minds, amidst our meate;
And Ile professe no verses to repeate:
To this, if ought appeare, which I not know of,
That will the pastrie, not my paper, show of.
Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will bee;
But that, which most doth take my Muse, and mee,
Is a pure cup of rich Canary-wine,
Which is the Mermaids, now, but shall be mine:
Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted,
Their lives, as doe their lines, till now had lasted.
Tabacco, Nectar, or the Thespian spring,
Are all but Luthers beere, to this I sing.
Of this we will sup free, but moderately,
And we will have no Pooly’, or Parrot by;
Nor shall our cups make any guiltie men:
But, at our parting, we will be, as when
We innocently met. No simple word,
That shall be utter’d at our mirthfull boord,
Shall make us sad next morning: or affright
The libertie, that wee’ll enjoy to night.
ONE OF THE most savage ironists of all English authors, Swift undermines the pretensions and easy idealisms human beings display in asserting their supposed dignity and grandeur. He suggests that underlying our noble intentions are behaviors base, vile, and cruel. Appointed dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Swift became an Irish patriot and champion of Irish freedom from English exploitation. His major work is of course Gulliver’s Travels, among other things an attack on self-deluding rationality. A Modest Proposal, which matter-of-factly advocates dining on infants to solve the famine problem in Ireland, gains its power via a surface of mind-numbing plausibility presented by a speaker whose detailed policy recommendations seem madly rational until we think about their insane implications. The “projector,” who proposes the solution, speaks with ostensible tenderness even as he puts forth a plan to breed children for food.
IT IS A melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment: at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner, as, instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the cloathing of many thousands.
There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expence than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.
The number of souls in Ireland being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children (although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom); but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. . . .
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.
I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 pounds.
I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolifick dyet, there are more children born in Roman Catholick countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season, therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work until she produces another child.
Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.
A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supply’d by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service: And these to be disposed of by their parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our school-boys, by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission, be a loss to the publick, because they soon would become breeders themselves: And besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty, which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended. . . .
I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.
For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an idolatrous Episcopal curate.
Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress, and help to pay their landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.
Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby encreased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among our selves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.
Fourthly, The constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.
Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection; and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating; and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.
Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of mothers towards their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the publick, to their annual profit instead of expence. We should soon see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.
Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel’d beef: the propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well grown, fat yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor’s feast, or any other publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity.
Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand.
I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. . . .
I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the publick good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.
A POET, BUSINESSMAN, and diplomat, Barlow was known in his youth as one of the “Hartford wits”—a group of young poets writing in Connecticut—and later renowned for his ambitious epic The Vision of Columbus. Although he espoused some conservative political views, he was also an ardent revolutionary, eagerly supporting both the American and French revolutions, and introducing deist ideas into some of his writings. Today he is mainly remembered for his sardonic yet passionately American The Hasty Pudding, which castigates the “vicious rules of art” he associated with Old World foods while celebrating the honest virtues of the Yankee’s “abundant feast, / With simples furnished, and with plainness dressed.” The “hasty pudding” that is the centerpiece of his poem consists of cornmeal simmered in water for about fifteen minutes. But what seems to be a culinary argument becomes, in any case, a political manifesto, decrying what Barlow considered the fakery and pretentiousness of a regime against which he and his compatriots had rebelled.
from The Hasty Pudding:
On the American Kitchen Muse
CANTO II
To mix the food by vicious rules of art,
To kill the stomach and to sink the heart,
To make mankind to social virtue sour,
Cram o’er each dish, and be what they devour;
For this the kitchen muse first framed her book,
Commanding sweat to stream from every cook;
Children no more their antic gambols tried,
And friend to physic wondered why they died.
Not so the Yankee—his abundant feast,
With simples furnished, and with plainness dressed,
A numerous offspring gathers round the board,
And cheers alike the servant and the lord;
Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous taste,
And health attends them from the short repast.
While the full pail rewards the milkmaid’s toil,
The mother sees the morning cauldron boil;
To stir the pudding next demands their care,
To spread the table and the bowls prepare;
To feed the children, as their portions cool,
And comb their heads, and send them off to school.
Yet may the simplest dish some rules impart,
For nature scorns not all the aids of art.
Ev’n Hasty Pudding, purest of all food,
May still be bad, indifferent, or good,
As sage experience the short process guides,
Or want of skill, or want of care presides:
Whoe’er would form it on the surest plan,
To rear the child and long sustain the man;
To shield the morals while it mends the size,
And all the powers of every food supplies,
Attend the lessons that the muse shall bring.
Suspend your spoons, and listen while I sing.
But since, O man! thy life and health demand
Not food alone, but labor from thy hand,
First in the field, beneath the sun’s strong rays,
Ask of thy mother earth the needful maize;
She loves the race that courts her yielding soil,
And gives her bounties to the sons of toil.
When now the ox, obedient to thy call,
Repays the loan that filled the winter stall,
Pursue his traces o’er the furrowed plain,
And plant in measured hills the golden grain.
But when the tender germ begins to shoot,
And the green spire declares the sprouting root,
Then guard your nursling from each greedy foe,
The insidious worm, the all-devouring crow.
A little ashes, sprinkled round the spire,
Soon steeped in rain, will bid the worm retire;
The feathered robber with his hungry maw
Swift flies the field before your man of straw,
A frightful image, such as schoolboys bring
When met to burn the Pope or hang the King.
Thrice in the season, through each verdant row
Wield the strong plowshare and the faithful hoe;
The faithful hoe, a double task that takes,
To till the summer corn, and roast the winter cakes.
Slow springs the blade, while checked by chilling rains,
Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains;
But when his fiercest fires emblaze the land,
Then start the juices, then the roots expand;
Then, like a column of Corinthian mold,
The stalk struts upward, and the leaves unfold;
The busy branches all the ridges fill,
Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill.
Here cease to vex them, all your cares are done;
Leave the last labors to the parent sun;
Beneath his genial smiles the well-dressed field,
When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall yield.
Now the strong foliage bears the standards high,
And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky;
The suckling ears their silky fringes bend,
And pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend;
The loaded stalk, while still the burden grows,
O’erhangs the space that runs between the rows;
High as a hop-field waves the silent grove,
A safe retreat for little thefts of love,
When the pledged roasting-ears invite the maid,
To meet her swain beneath the new-formed shade;
His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hill,
And the green spoils her ready basket fill;
Small compensation for the two-fold bliss,
The promised wedding and the present kiss.
Slight depredations these; but now the moon
Calls from his hollow tree the sly raccoon;
And while by night he bears his prize away,
The bolder squirrel labors through the day.
Both thieves alike, but provident of time,
A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime.
Then let them steal the little stores they can,
And fill their granaries from the toils of man;
We’ve one advantage where they take no part,
With all their wiles they ne’er have found the art
To boil the Hasty Pudding; here we shine
Superior far to tenants of the pine;
This envied boon to man shall still belong,
Unshared by them in substance or in song.
At last the closing season browns the plain,
And ripe October gathers in the grain;
Deep loaded carts the spacious corn-house fill,
The sack distended marches to the mill;
The laboring mill beneath the burden groans,
And showers the future pudding from the stones;
Till the glad housewife greets the powdered gold,
And the new crop exterminates the old.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
(1755–1826)
OFTEN REGARDED AS the first serious work of gastronomic criticism, Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste is a formidable yet charming meditation upon appetite, gourmandism, hunger, thirst, obesity, fasting, cooking, and restaurateurs, to name only a few of its topics. Famous for his many aphorisms, such as “The table is the only place where a man is never bored for the first hour,” and “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star,” Brillat-Savarin wrote this large volume from the perspectives of both Enlightenment learning and the French Revolution’s Rights of Man. Such rights include entitlement to the sensual pleasure of food and the erudition necessary for the gourmet to understand the psychological and physiological nature of his hedonism. So in our selection—translated and annotated by the great contemporary gastronomer M.F.K. Fisher—Brillat-Savarin insists that knowledge is the key to gastronomical enjoyment.
from The Physiology of Taste: On Taste
ANALYSIS OF THE SENSATION OF TASTING
I FEEL, having thus set forth the principles of my theory, that it is certain that taste causes sensations of three different kinds: direct, complete, and reflective.
The direct sensation is the first one felt, produced from the immediate operations of the organs of the mouth, while the body under consideration is still on the fore part of the tongue.
The complete sensation is the one made up of this first perception plus the impression which arises when the food leaves its original position, passes to the back of the mouth, and attacks the whole organ with its taste and its aroma.
Finally, the reflective sensation is the opinion which one’s spirit forms from the impressions which have been transmitted to it by the mouth.
Let us put this theory into action, by seeing what happens to a man who is eating or drinking.
He who eats a peach, for instance, is first of all agreeably struck by the perfume which it exhales; he puts a piece of it into his mouth, and enjoys a sensation of tart freshness which invites him to continue; but it is not until the instant of swallowing, when the mouthful passes under his nasal channel, that the full aroma is revealed to him; and this completes the sensation which a peach can cause. Finally, it is not until it has been swallowed that the man, considering what he has just experienced, will say to himself, “Now there is something really delicious!”
In the same way, in drinking: while the wine is in the mouth, one is agreeably but not completely appreciative of it; it is not until the moment when he has finished swallowing it that a man can truly taste, consider, and discover the bouquet peculiar to each variety; and there must still be a little lapse of time before a real connoisseur can say, “It is good, or passable, or bad. By Jove, here is a Chambertin! Confound it, this is only a Suresnes!”
It can thus be seen that it is in following certain well-studied principles that the true amateurs SIP their wine (ils le sirotent), for, as they hesitate after each taste of it, they enjoy the same full pleasure that they might have had if they had drunk the whole glass in one gulp.
The same thing happens, but much more obviously, when the sense of taste must be disagreeably assaulted.
Take, for example, an invalid whose doctor prescribes an enormous glass of that old-fashioned black medicine which was drunk during the reign of Louis XIV.
His sense of smell, faithful guide, warns him of the revolting taste of the horrible fluid; his eyes pop out as if he recognizes real danger; disgust is plainly written on his face; already his stomach heaves. But he is begged to drink, and he stiffens with resolve; he gargles first with a little brandy, holds his nose, and swallows . . .
While the foul brew fills his mouth and coats it, the sensation is confused and tolerable; but, with the last swallow, the aftertastes develop, the nauseating odors become clear, and the patient’s every feature expresses a horror which only the fear of death itself could make him endure.
If, on the other hand, it is a matter of some such insipid drink as a glass of water, there is neither taste nor aftertaste; one feels nothing, cares nothing; one has drunk, and that is all there is to it.
ORDER OF THE VARIOUS IMPRESSIONS OF TASTE
TASTE is not as richly endowed as hearing, which can listen to and compare several sounds at the same time: taste is simple in its action, which is to say that it cannot receive impressions from two flavors at once.
But taste can be double, and even multiple, in succession, so that in a single mouthful a second and sometimes a third sensation can be realized; they fade gradually, and are called aftertaste, perfume, or aroma. It is the same way as, when a basic note is sounded, an attentive ear distinguishes in it one or more series of other consonant tones, whose number has not yet been correctly estimated.
Men who eat quickly and without thought do not perceive the taste impressions of this second level, which are the exclusive perquisite of a small number of the chosen few; and it is by means of these impressions that gastronomers can classify, in the order of their excellence, the various substances submitted to their approval.
These fleeting nuances vibrate for a long time in the organ of taste: students of them assume without even realizing it a proper stance for the pronouncement of their verdicts, always with necks stretched and noses twisted up and to the left, as it were to larboard.
PLEASURES CAUSED BY TASTE
LET us now look philosophically for a moment at the joy or sadness which can result from the sense of taste.
First of all we are confronted with the application of that truism unfortunately too well known, that man is much more sensitive to pain than to pleasure.
Obviously our reactions to extremely bitter, acid, or sour substances cause us to suffer deeply painful or grievous sensations. It is even held that hydrocyanic acid kills so quickly only because it causes such intense agony that our vital forces cannot long endure it.
On the other hand, agreeable sensations extend over only a small scale, and if there is a fairly appreciable difference between an insipid flavor and one that stimulates the taste, the space between something called good and something reputed to be excellent is not very great. This is made clearer by the following comparisons: first or positive, a dry hard piece of boiled meat; second or comparative, a slice of veal; third or superlative, a pheasant cooked to perfection.
However, taste as Nature has endowed us with it is still that one of our senses which gives us the greatest joy:
(1)Because the pleasure of eating is the only one which, indulged in moderately, is not followed by regret;
(2)Because it is common to all periods in history, all ages of man, and all social conditions;
(3)Because it recurs of necessity at least once every day, and can be repeated without inconvenience two or three times in that space of hours;
(4)Because it can mingle with all the other pleasures, and even console us for their absence;
(5)Because its sensations are at once more lasting than others and more subject to our will;
(6)Because, finally, in eating we experience a certain special and indefinable well-being, which arises from our instinctive realization that by the very act we perform we are repairing our bodily losses and prolonging our lives.
This will be more thoroughly developed in the chapter which we shall devote especially to the pleasures of the table, considered from the point to which our modern civilization has brought them.
THE SUPREMACY OF MAN
WE have been reared with the agreeable belief that, of all the creatures who walk, swim, climb, or fly, man is the one whose sense of taste is the most perfect.
This belief threatens to be overthrown.
Dr. Gall states, backed by I do not know what investigations, that there are animals whose tasting apparatus is more developed and even more perfect than ours.
This doctrine is shocking to hear, and smacks of heresy.
Man, king of all nature by divine right, and for whose benefit the earth has been covered and peopled, must perforce be armed with an organ which can put him in contact with all that is toothsome among his subjects.
The tongue of an animal is comparable in its sensitivity to his intelligence: among fish it is but a movable bone; among birds in general it is a membranous cartilage; in the four-legged world it is often sheathed with scales or roughnesses, and moreover has no power of circular movement.
Man’s tongue, on the other hand, by the delicacy of its surfaces and of the various membranes which surround it, proves clearly enough the sublimity of the operations for which it is destined.
What is more, I have discovered at least three movements in it which are unknown to animals, and which I describe as movements of SPICATION, ROTATION, AND VERRITION (from the Latin verro, I sweep). The first takes place when the tip of the tongue protrudes between the lips which squeeze it; the second, when it rolls around in the space between the cheeks and the palate; the third, when it catches, by curving itself now up and now down, the particles of food which have stuck in the semicircular moat between the lips and the gums.
Animals are limited in their tastes; some live only upon plants, and others eat nothing but meat; still others nourish themselves solely upon seeds; none of them knows combinations of flavors.
Man, on the other hand, is omnivorous; everything edible is prey to his vast hunger, and this brings out, as its immediate result, tasting powers proportionate to the general use which he must make of them. That is to say, man’s apparatus of the sense of taste has been brought to a state of rare perfection; and, to convince ourselves thoroughly, let us watch it work.
As soon as an edible body has been put into the mouth, it is seized upon, gases, moisture, and all, without possibility of retreat.
Lips stop whatever might try to escape; the teeth bite and break it; saliva drenches it; the tongue mashes and churns it; a breathlike sucking pushes it toward the gullet; the tongue lifts up to make it slide and slip; the sense of smell appreciates it as it passes the nasal channel, and it is pulled down into the stomach to be submitted to sundry baser transformations without, in this whole metamorphosis, a single atom or drop or particle having been missed by the powers of appreciation of the taste sense.
It is, then, because of this perfection that the real enjoyment of eating is a special prerogative of man.
This pleasure is even contagious; and we transmit it quickly enough to the animals which we have tamed and which in one way or another make up a part of our society, like elephants, dogs, cats, and even parrots.
If some animals have a larger tongue than others, a more developed roof to their mouths, an ampler throat, it is because this tongue, acting as a muscle, must move bulky food; this palate must press and this throat must swallow larger portions than average; but all analogy is opposed to the inference that their sense of taste is proportionately greater than that of other animals.
Moreover, since taste must not be weighed except by the nature of the sensation which it arouses in the center of life, an impression received by an animal cannot be compared with one felt by a man: the latter sensation, at once clearer and more precise, presupposes of necessity a superior quality in the organ which transmits it.
Finally, what is left to be desired of a faculty sensitive to such a degree of perfection that the gourmands of Rome could tell by the flavor whether fish was caught between the city bridges or lower down the river?
And do we not have, in our own days, those gastronomers who pretend to have discovered the special flavor of the leg upon which a sleeping pheasant rests his weight?
And are we not surrounded by gourmets who can tell the latitude under which a wine has ripened just as surely as a pupil of Biot or Arago knows how to predict an eclipse?
What follows from there? Simply that what is Caesar’s must be rendered unto him, that man must be proclaimed the great gourmand of Nature, and that it must not seem too astonishing that the good doctor Gall does as Homer did, and drowses now and then. . . .
A MAJOR ESSAYIST of the English Romantic period, Lamb is most famous for writing, with his sister Mary, the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare. He composed his work under the pseudonym of “Elia,” a name he adopted as the persona of an aging bachelor. Interested in almost everything, as a critic he writes somewhat associationally, just short of rambling. “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” from which our selection is taken, is part fantastic anthropology, part history, and part gastronomy. In beginning his “dissertation” with references to an ancient Chinese manuscript and the culinary habits of the Abyssinians, Lamb seems to write with tongue in cheek, even as he shows here, in saucing his pig with “brains, and a dash of mild sage,” a kind of cheeky tongue.
from A Dissertation upon Roast Pig
MANKIND, SAYS A Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Chofang, literally the Cooks’ Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?—not from the burnt cottage—he had smelt that smell before—indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world’s life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted—crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue’s shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued.
“You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog’s tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, I say?”
“O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.”
The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.
Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, “Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste—O Lord!”—with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.
Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son’s, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretense, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and never left off till they had dispatched all that remained of the litter.
Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti’s cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given,—to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present—without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty.
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision: and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship’s town-house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way among mankind—
Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in ROAST PIG.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate—princeps obsoniorum.
I speak not of your grown porkers—things between pig and pork—those hobbydehoys—but a young and tender suckling—under a moon old—guiltless as yet of the sty—with no original speck of the amor immunditoe, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble—the mild forerunner or proeludium of a grunt.
He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled—but what a sacrifice to the exterior tegument!
There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well called—the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance—with the adhesive oleaginous—O call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot—in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence of the child-pig’s yet pure food—the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna—or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance.
Behold him, while he is “doing”—it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string!—Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes—radiant jellies—shooting stars—
See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth!—wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal—wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation—from these sins he is happily snatched away—
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care—
his memory is odoriferous—no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon—no coal-heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages—he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure—and for such a tomb might be content to die.
He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She is indeed almost too transcendent—a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a tender-conscienced person would do well to pause—too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her—like lovers’ kisses, she biteth—she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish—but she stoppeth at the palate—she meddleth not with the appetite—and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop.
Pig—let me speak his praise—is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices.
Unlike to mankind’s mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unraveled without hazard, he is—good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours’ fare. . . .
His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shallots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are—but consider, he is a weakling—a flower.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
A HANDSOME, BROODING young aristocrat with a deformed foot, George Gordon, Lord Byron, awoke to find himself famous in 1812, with the publication of his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a verse narrative recounting the adventurous travels of a handsome, brooding young aristocrat. Soon Byron became a kind of Regency rock star—perhaps the first modern “celebrity.” Women threw themselves at him by the score, but he also had a proclivity for affairs with nubile boys. Though he was athletic (he swam the Hellespont in his twenties), he also had a tendency to overweight, periodically putting himself on radical diets and even purging. His brilliant satirical poem Don Juan reworks in witty ottava rima the story of another handsome hero, the lady-killing Don Juan, who here appears as an innocent victim of female lustfulness. Our selection dramatizes an episode of cannibalism in an open boat—called “the custom of the sea”—when Juan and his tutor Pedrillo survive a shipwreck only to find themselves and the crew starving.
from Don Juan: The Death of Pedrillo
’T is thus with people in an open boat,
More than can be believed, or even thought,
And hardship still has been the sailor’s lot,
She had a curious crew as well as cargo,
Like the first old Greek privateer, the Argo.
But man is a carnivorous production,
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
Although his anatomical construction
Your labouring people think beyond all question,
Beef, veal, and mutton, better for digestion.
And thus it was with this our hapless crew;
And though at first their strength it might renew,
Lull’d them like turtles sleeping on the blue
And fell all ravenously on their provision,
Instead of hoarding it with due precision.
The consequence was easily foreseen—
In spite of all remonstrances, and then
They hoped the wind would rise, these foolish men!
But as they had but one oar, and that brittle,
It would have been more wise to save their victual.
The fourth day came, but not a breath of air,
The fifth day, and their boat lay floating there,
With their one oar (I wish they had had a pair)
So Juan’s spaniel, spite of his entreating,
Was kill’d and portion’d out for present eating.
On the sixth day they fed upon his hide,
The creature was his father’s dog that died,
With some remorse received (though first denied)
Which he divided with Pedrillo, who
Devour’d it, longing for the other too.
The seventh day, and no wind—the burning sun
They lay like carcasses; and hope was none,
They glared upon each other—all was done,
The longings of the cannibal arise
(Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes.
At length one whisper’d his companion, who
And then into a hoarser murmur grew,
And when his comrade’s thought each sufferer knew,
And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood,
And who should die to be his fellow’s food.
But ere they came to this, they that day shared
And then they look’d around them and despair’d,
At length the lots were torn up, and prepared,
Having no paper, for the want of better,
They took by force from Juan Julia’s letter.
The lots were made, and mark’d, and mix’d, and handed,
Lull’d even the savage hunger which demanded,
None in particular had sought or plann’d it,
By which none were permitted to be neuter—
And the lot fell on Juan’s luckless tutor.
He but requested to be bled to death:
Pedrillo, and so gently ebb’d his breath,
He died as born, a Catholic in faith,
And first a little crucifix he kiss’d,
And then held out his jugular and wrist.
The surgeon, as there was no other fee,
But being thirstiest at the moment, he
Part was divided, part thrown in the sea,
Regaled two sharks, who follow’d o’er the billow—
The sailors ate the rest of poor Pedrillo.
The sailors ate him, all save three or four,
To these was added Juan, who, before
Feel now his appetite increased much more;
Even in extremity of their disaster,
Dine with them on his pastor and his master.
’T was better that he did not; for, in fact,
For they, who were most ravenous in the act,
And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d,
Tearing, and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,
And, with hyaena-laughter, died despairing.
Their numbers were much thinn’d by this infliction,
And some of them had lost their recollection,
But others ponder’d on a new dissection,
Who had already perish’d, suffering madly,
For having used their appetites so sadly.
And next they thought upon the master’s mate,
Besides being much averse from such a fate,
He had been rather indisposed of late;
Was a small present made to him at Cadiz,
By general subscription of the ladies.
Of poor Pedrillo something still remain’d,
And others still their appetites constrain’d,
All except Juan, who throughout abstain’d,
At length they caught two boobies and a noddy,
And then they left off eating the dead body.
And if Pedrillo’s fate should shocking be,
To eat the head of his arch-enemy
His tale: if foes be food in hell, at sea
When shipwreck’s short allowance grows too scanty,
Without being much more horrible than Dante.
ONE OF THE greatest of the British Romantic poets who flourished in the early nineteenth century, John Keats died of consumption when he was just twenty-six. But before his demise—in Rome, where he had gone to escape the damp and cold of an English winter—he had produced a magnificent body of work, including such poems as his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” written during what has been called the annus mirabilis of 1819, when he was already a very sick man. His works are sensuous, even voluptuous, sometimes featuring yearning representations of food and wine, as in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” where an impassioned lover feasts his beloved with “lucent syrops” and “spiced dainties,” or as in “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (“The Beautiful Lady without Mercy”), our selection here, where a femme fatale lures a wandering knight with aphrodisiac “roots of relish sweet, / And honey wild, and manna-dew,” reminding readers that supper can perhaps be more seductive than nourishing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
The sedge has withered from the lake,
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
The squirrel’s granary is full,
I see a lily on thy brow,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
I made a garland for her head,
She looked at me as she did love,
I set her on my pacing steed,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And sure in language strange she said—
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
And there she lullèd me asleep,
The latest dream I ever dreamt
I saw pale kings and princes too,
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
And I awoke and found me here,
And this is why I sojourn here,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, KNOWN as père because his son of the same name also became a well-known writer, was one of the most prolific novelists in French literary history. Famed as the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, among other swashbuckling romances, he was also a playwright, travel writer, and noted gourmet. His Grand dictionnaire de la cuisine (Great Dictionary of Cuisine), published posthumously, reflects both his passion for cooking and his talents as a storyteller. Encyclopedic in its culinary learning and voluminous in its offerings of recipes, the book is sprinkled with charming anecdotes, like the one featured in our selection here. “My taste for cookery, like that for poetry,” he once claimed, “came to me from the heavens.”
from The Great Dictionary of Cuisine:
The Onion
IN ORDER TO talk knowledgably about a subject, you have to have it right in front of your eyes, so it’s a good thing I was led to the town of Roscoff at the very moment when I was starting to write about the word “onion.”
In fact even more than ancient Egypt the Cape Armorique recalls that during the battle of the gods against Jupiter, the conquered ones, pursued to the very edge of the continent and seeing they could flee no further, in order to escape the wrath of Jupiter turned themselves into onions. This bulb—so praised in antiquity that even the poets sang of it and the Egyptians revered it—is nowhere else in France found in such profusion.
In some years Roscoff sends up to thirty or forty vessels weighted down with onions bound for England.
It was a man from this region who first thought of speculating in the onion trade; but in order to make the French onion known in England, and to demonstrate its superiority to the British bulb, it was necessary to carry out a resoundingly daring scheme. One day this Roscovite went to find a Monsieur Corbière, author of several novels of the sea, a longtime naval officer, and a native of Roscoff, to inquire of him how to say in English: “L’oignon anglais n’est pas bon.”
The person whose translation was sought replied: “The English onion is not good.”
“Be kind enough to write that on a piece of paper, monsieur,” requested the Roscovite. Monsieur Corbière took out a pen and wrote the requisite sentence. The Roscovite thanked him.
Three days later he was seen leaving for London, in a sloop bursting with onions.
Arriving in the English capital, he went straight for the busiest market, unfurled a sign on which was written in large letters the following maxim: “The English onion is not good.” And then, under his sign, he placed a little cart full of French onions.
The English are well known for not tolerating whatsoever that kind of a slander. One of them approached and addressed himself to the foreign vendor; the latter, who had not a word of English, contented himself with the reply: “The English onion is not good.”
This response infuriated the Englishman; he drew near the Roscovite and put up both fists. The Roscovite had no idea what the Englishman was trying to say, but certainly perceived he was being threatened. He seized the Englishman by the elbow and spinning him like a top, whirled him around three times. After the third twirl, the Englishman fell down; he got up furiously, and came towards his adversary, who was at the ready.
The Roscovite was almost six feet tall, and powerful as the god Teutatès. He grabbed the Englishman by the arms, lifted him up and threw him down right on his belly.
It was against all the rules of wrestling: it’s necessary that one of the antagonist’s shoulders touch the ground in order for him to be declared the loser. The Roscovite thus knew he was in the wrong. “It’s true, it’s true,” he said, motioning with his head that he had erred; and he once again stood his ground, just as the Englishman had.
The Englishman came back at him, and this time the onion merchant grabbed him by his shirt collar and by the skin of his stomach, laying him gently on the ground so that not one but both his shoulders squarely touched the earth. He repeated this movement several times, increasing the violence each time, until the Englishman shouted: “Enough, enough!”
Then the cries, the cheers, and the bravos rang out. When it comes to a display of force the English are the most appreciative people in the world. They wanted to hoist the onion merchant in triumph.
“No, don’t, no don’t,” he screamed, on the defensive. “While you carry me in triumph you are going to pilfer my onions.”
There was some truth in what the poor devil said. That very day they bought all his onions, and the night was completely dedicated to carrying him around in triumph.
From that moment on, French onions gained the right to be sold in England.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
THE CONCORD-BORN TRANSCENDENTALIST is more famous for his writings about life at Walden Pond, his perambulations and excursions in New England, and his arguments justifying civil disobedience and the abolition of slavery, than for food writing. A close associate and friend of Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Hawthorne among many others, Thoreau celebrated an anti-urban nostalgia that shapes pleasure in the produce of the soil. Here, even as he shows a naturalist’s interest in the watermelon and its seasonality, he gives a spiritual significance to the common melon, endowing it with values that express the mysteries of our lives, the “redness and ripeness within.”
WATERMELONS. THE FIRST are ripe from August seventh to twenty-
eighth (though the last is late), and they continue to ripen till they freeze; are in their prime in September.
John Josselyn, an old resident in New England, speaks of the watermelon as one of the plants “proper to the country.” He says that it is “of a sad grass-green color, or more rightly sap green; with some yellowness admixed when ripe.”
September is come with its profusion of large fruits. Melons and apples seem at once to feed my brain.
How differently we fare now from what we did in winter! We give the butcher no encouragement now, but invite him to take a walk in our garden.
I have no respect for those who cannot raise melons or who avoid them as unwholesome. They should be spending their third winter with Parry in the arctic regions. They seem to have taken in their provisions at the commencement of the cruise, I know now how many years ago, and they deserve to have a monument erected to them of the empty cans which held their preserved meats.
Our diet, like that of the birds, must answer to the season. This is the season of west-looking, watery fruits. In the dog-days we come near to sustaining our lives on watermelon juice alone, like those who have fevers. I know of no more agreeable and nutritious food at this season than bread and butter and melons, and you need not be afraid of eating too much of the latter.
When I am going a-berrying in my boat or other carriage. I frequently carry watermelons for drink. It is the most agreeable and refreshing wine in a convenient cask, and most easily kept cool. Carry these green bottles of wine. When you get to the field you put them in the shade or in water till you want them.
When at home, if you would cool a watermelon which has been lying in the sun, do not put it in water, which keeps the heat in, but cut it open and place it on a cellar bottom or in a draught of air in the shade.
There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe. If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first, and so know the history of each one and which was formed first, you may presume that those will ripen soonest. Or else you may incline to those which lie nearest to the center of the hill or root, as the oldest.
Next, the dull, dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any Some look green and livid, and have a very fog of bloom on them, like a mildew. These are as green as a leek through and through, and you’ll find yourself in a pickle if you open one. Others have a dead dark-greenness, the circulations coming less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed, and these you may safely bet on.
If the vine is quite lively, the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign. Lest we should not discern it before, this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness within. Of two, otherwise similar, take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles, that is, which is hollowest. The old or ripe ones ring bass; the young, tenor or falsetto. Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within, but this is not to be allowed. Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated, suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose. It is very childish.
One man told me that he couldn’t raise melons because his children would cut them all up. I think that he convicted himself out of his own mouth. It was evident that he could not raise children in the way they should go and was not fit to be the ruler of a country, according to Confucius’s standard. I once, looking by a special providence through the blinds, saw one of his boys astride of my earliest watermelon, which grew near a broken paling, and brandishing a case-knife over it, but I instantly blowed him off with my voice before serious damage was done—and I made such an ado about it as convinced him that he was not in his father’s dominions, at any rate. This melon, though it lost some of its bloom then, grew to be a remarkably large and sweet one, though it bore, to the last, a triangular scar of the tap which the thief had designed on it.
The farmer is obliged to hide his melon patch far away in the midst of his corn or potatoes. I sometimes stumble on it in my rambles. I see one today where the watermelons are intermixed with carrots in a carrot bed and so concealed by the general resemblance of the leaves at a little distance.
It is an old saying that you cannot carry two melons under one arm. Indeed, it is difficult to carry one far, it is so slippery. I remember hearing of a lady who had been to visit her friends in Lincoln, and when she was ready to return on foot, they made her the rather onerous present of a watermelon. With this under her arm she tript it glibly through the Walden Woods, which had a rather bad reputation for goblins and so on in those days. While the wood grew thicker and thicker, and the imaginary dangers greater, the melon did not grow any lighter, though frequently shifted from arm to arm: and at length, it may have been through the agency of one of those mischievous goblins, it slipt from under her arm, and in a moment lay in a dozen pieces in the middle of the Walden road. Quick as thought the trembling traveller gathered up the most luscious and lightest fragments with her handkerchief, and flew rather than ran with them to the peaceful streets of Concord.
If you have any watermelons left when the frosts come, you may put them into your cellar and keep them till Thanksgiving time. I have seen a large patch in the woods frozen quite hard, and when cracked open they had a very handsome crystalline
Watermelons, said to be unknown to the Greeks and Romans. It is said to be one of those fruits of Egypt which the Jewish people regretted in the desert under the name of abbattichim.
The English botanists may be said to know nothing about watermelons. The nearest that Gerarde gets to our watermelon is in his chapter on “Citrull Cucumbers,” where he says. “The meat or pulp of Cucumner Citrill which is next unto the bark is eaten.”
In Spence’s Anecdotes it is said that Galileo used to compare Ariosto’s Orlando to a melon field. “You may meet with a very good thing here and there in it, but the whole is of very little value.” Montaigne says, quoting Aurelius Victor, “The emperor Dioclesian, having resigned his crown and retired to ‘private life,’ was some time after solicited to resume his charge, but he announced, ‘You would not offer to persuade me to this, had you seen the fine condition of the trees I have planted in my orchard, and the fair melons I have sowed in my garden.’” Gosse, in his Letters from Alabama, says of the watermelon, “I am not aware that it is known in England: I have never seen it exposed in the London markets,” but it is abundant all over the United States; and in the South:
The very negroes have their own melon “patches,” as well as their peach orchards, and it is no small object of their ambition to raise earlier or finer specimens than their masters. . . . [It] may be considered as the best realization of the French princess’s idea of “ice with the chill taken off.” . . . A cart-load is brought home from the field nearly every evening, to supply the demand of the family for the next day: for during this torrid weather, very little business but the eating of watermelons is transacted. If a guest call, the first offering of friendship is a glass of cold water as soon as seated; then there is an immediate shout for watermelons, and each taking his own, several are destroyed before the knife is laid down. The ladies cut the hard part, near the rind, into stars, and other pretty shapes, which they candy as a conserve for winter.
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
ONE OF THE first and greatest anti-slavery orators and writers in the nineteenth-century United States, the man who called himself Frederick Douglass (when he was freed) knew neither when he was born nor his original name. His mother, he understood, was a black slave; his father, he supposed, was a white master. In three separate autobiographies, he told the tale of the life he led as a slave, growing up first in his grandmother’s cabin and then on various plantations, where he was brutalized by white overseers. After his escape to the North, he became the most sought-after African-American orator and memoirist in the country. He supported women’s rights and indeed, as he put it, “would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” Our excerpt here, on the comparison between the slave diet and the “luxurious” table of the master, is drawn from his last autobiography, and demonstrates how precise and fierce his memories of slavery’s abjection continued to be throughout his lifetime, despite all his successes.
from My Bondage and My Freedom:
Ash Cake and the Rich Man’s Table
AS A GENERAL rule, slaves do not come to the quarters for either breakfast or dinner, but take their “ash cake” with them, and eat it in the field. This was so on the home plantation; probably, because the distance from the quarter to the field, was sometimes two, and even three miles.
The dinner of the slaves consisted of a huge piece of ash cake, and a small piece of pork, or two salt herrings. Not having ovens, nor any suitable cooking utensils, the slaves mixed their meal with a little water, to such thickness that a spoon would stand erect in it; and, after the wood had burned away to coals and ashes, they would place the dough between oak leaves and lay it carefully in the ashes, completely covering it; hence, the bread is called ash cake. The surface of this peculiar bread is covered with ashes, to the depth of a sixteenth part of an inch, and the ashes, certainly, do not make it very grateful to the teeth, nor render it very palatable. The bran, or coarse part of the meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the bread.
This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves. They eat it with avidity, and are more concerned about the quantity than about the quality. They are far too scantily provided for, and are worked too steadily, to be much concerned for the quality of their food. The few minutes allowed them at dinner time, after partaking of their coarse repast, are variously spent. Some lie down on the “turning row,” and go to sleep; others draw together, and talk; and others are at work with needle and thread, mending their tattered garments. Sometimes you may hear a wild, hoarse laugh arise from a circle, and often a song. Soon, however, the overseer comes dashing through the field. “Tumble up! Tumble up, and to work, work,” is the cry; and, now, from twelve o’clock (mid-day) till dark, the human cattle are in motion, wielding their clumsy hoes; hurried on by no hope of reward, no sense of gratitude, no love of children, no prospect of bettering their condition; nothing, save the dread and terror of the slave-driver’s lash. So goes one day, and so comes and goes another.
THE close-fisted stinginess that fed the poor slave on coarse corn-meal and tainted meat; that clothed him in crashy tow-linen, and hurried him on to toil through the field, in all weathers, with wind and rain beating through his tattered garments; that scarcely gave even the young slave-mother time to nurse her hungry infant in the fence corner; wholly vanishes on approaching the sacred precincts of the great house, the home of the Lloyds. There the scriptural phrase finds an exact illustration; the highly favored inmates of this mansion are literally arrayed “in purple and fine linen,” and fare sumptuously every day! The table groans under the heavy and blood-bought luxuries gathered with pains-taking care, at home and abroad. Fields, forests, rivers and seas, are made tributary here. Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum. Fish, flesh and fowl, are here in profusion. Chickens, of all breeds; ducks, of all kinds, wild and tame, the common, and the huge Muscovite; Guinea fowls, turkeys, geese, and pea fowls, are in their several pens, fat and fatting for the destined vortex. The graceful swan, the mongrels, the black-necked wild goose; partridges, quails, pheasants and pigeons; choice water fowl, with all their strange varieties, are caught in this huge family net. Beef, veal, mutton and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, roll bounteously to this grand consumer. The teeming riches of the Chesapeake bay, its rock, perch, drums, crocus, trout, oysters, crabs, and terrapin, are drawn hither to adorn the glittering table of the great house. The dairy, too, probably the finest on the Eastern Shore of Maryland—supplied by cattle of the best English stock, imported for the purpose, pours its rich donations of fragrant cheese, golden butter, and delicious cream, to heighten the attraction of the gorgeous, unending round of feasting. Nor are the fruits of the earth forgotten or neglected. The fertile garden, many acres in size, constituting a separate establishment, distinct from the common farm—with its scientific gardener, imported from Scotland, (a Mr. McDermott) with four men under his direction, was not behind, either in the abundance or in the delicacy of its contributions to the same full board. The tender asparagus, the succulent celery, and the delicate cauliflower; egg plants, beets, lettuce, parsnips, peas, and French beans, early and late; radishes, cantelopes, melons of all kinds; the fruits and flowers of all climes and of all descriptions, from the hardy apple of the north, to the lemon and orange of the south, culminated at this point. Baltimore gathered figs, raisins, almonds and juicy grapes from Spain. Wines and brandies from France; teas of various flavor, from China; and rich, aromatic coffee from Java, all conspired to swell the tide of high life, where pride and indolence rolled and lounged in magnificence and satiety.
Behind the tall-backed and elaborately wrought chairs, stand the servants, men and maidens—fifteen in number—discriminately selected, not only with a view to their industry and faithfulness, but with special regard to their personal appearance, their graceful agility and captivating address. Some of these are armed with fans, and are fanning reviving breezes toward the over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies; others watch with eager eye, and with fawn-like step anticipate and supply, wants before they are sufficiently formed to be announced by word or sign.
These servants constituted a sort of black aristocracy on Col. Lloyd’s plantation. They resembled the field hands in nothing, except in color, and in this they held the advantage of a velvet-like glossiness, rich and beautiful. The hair, too, showed the same advantage. The delicate colored maid rustled in the scarcely worn silk of her young mistress, while the servant men were equally well attired from the overflowing wardrobe of their young masters; so that, in dress, as well as in form and feature, in manner and speech, in tastes and habits, the distance between these favored few, and the sorrow and hunger-smitten multitudes of the quarter in the field, was immense; and this is seldom passed over.
Let us now glance at the stables and carriage house, and we shall find the same evidences of pride and luxurious extravagance. Here are three splendid coaches, soft within and lustrous without. Here, too, are gigs, phætons, barouches, sulkeys and sleighs. Here are saddles and harnesses—beautifully wrought and silver mounted—kept with every care. In the stable you will find, kept only for pleasure, full thirty-five horses, or the most approved blood for speed and beauty. There are two men here constantly employed in taking care of these horses. One of these men must be always in the stable, to answer every call from the great house. Over the way from the stable, is a house built expressly for the hounds—a pack of twenty-five or thirty—whose fare would have made glad the heart of a dozen slaves. Horses and hounds are not the only consumers of the slave’s toil. There was practiced, at the Lloyds’, a hospitality which would have astonished and charmed any health-seeking northern divine or merchant, who might have chanced to share it. Viewed from his own table, and not from the field, the colonel was a model of generous hospitality. His house was, literally, a hotel, for weeks during the summer months. At these times, especially, the air was freighted with the rich fumes of baking, boiling, roasting and broiling. The odors I shared with the winds; but the meats were under a more stringent monopoly—except that, occasionally, I got a cake from Mas’ Daniel. In Mas’ Daniel I had a friend at court, from whom I learned many things which my eager curiosity was excited to know. I always knew when company was expected, and who they were, although I was an outsider, being the property, not of Col. Lloyd, but of a servant of the wealthy colonel. On these occasions, all that pride, taste and money could do, to dazzle and charm, was done.
Who could say that the servants of Col. Lloyd were not well clad and cared for, after witnessing one of his magnificent entertainments? Who could say that they did not seem to glory in being the slaves of such a master? Who, but a fanatic, could get up any sympathy for persons whose every movement was agile, easy and graceful, and who evinced a consciousness of high superiority? And who would ever venture to suspect that Col. Lloyd was subject to the troubles of ordinary mortals? Master and slave seem alike in their glory here? Can it all be seeming? Alas! it may only be a sham at last! This immense wealth; this gilded splendor: this profusion of luxury; this exemption from toil; this life of ease; this sea of plenty; aye, what of it all? Are the pearly gates of happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors? far from it! The poor slave, on his hard, pine plank, but scantily covered with his thin blanket, sleeps more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclines upon his feather bed and downy pillow. Food, to the indolent lounger, is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath all their dishes are invisible spirits of evil, ready to feed the self-deluded gourmandizers with aches, pains, fierce temper, uncontrolled passions, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago and gout; and of these the Lloyds got their full share.
AFTER AN ADVENTUROUS young manhood spent sailing the high seas and exploring Pacific islands, the New York-born Melville turned his hand to writing. His early novels—Typee, Omoo, Mardi, and White Jacket—achieved some popularity because of their exotic settings and apparently straightforward travel narratives. But though this author’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick, or The Whale, has become one of the great classics of American literature, it was initially received with confusion by critics, one of whom commented that the style of the work is “disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English.” Melville himself knew this would be “a strange sort of book” noting that “blubber is blubber you know; tho’ you might get oil out of it . . . and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy.” A fierce allegory about obsession, mystery, and whaling, the book is certainly not a conventional travelogue, but rather a mélange of suspense and philosophizing. “The Whale as a Dish,” with its musings on the cannibalistic qualities of meat-eating, typifies the writer’s daring literary cookery.
from Moby-Dick: The Whale as a Dish
THAT MORTAL MAN should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with barbecued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle balls or veal balls. The old monks of Dumfermline were very fond of them. They had a great porpoise grant from the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel—that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called “fritters;” which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives’ dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.
But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the buffalo’s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves’ head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf’s head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf’s head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu Brute!” expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meatmarket of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
BEST-KNOWN AS THE author of the endearing and enduringly popular children’s classics that began with Little Women and continued through Little Men, Jo’s Boys, and other novels, Alcott was also an abolitionist, a feminist, and (under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard) a writer of Gothic romances. The family she so lovingly memorialized in Little Women was her own, and her parents were both acolytes of the New England movement known as “transcendentalism,” which propounded both self-reliance and self-abnegation, along with idealistic mysticism. When she was still a child, her father, Bronson, joined with a few friends to found Fruitlands, a vegetarian commune governed by the spiritual principles he espoused. Well-intentioned but ignorant of agriculture, the would-be farmers nearly starved, and their dietary rules were especially hard on Louisa’s mother, Abby May, the beloved “Marmee” of Little Women. “Transcendental Wild Oats” is a sardonic send-up of the sad Fruitlands story.
THE FURNITURE ARRIVED . . . , and was soon bestowed; for the principal property of the community consisted in books. To this rare library was devoted the best room in the house, and the few busts and pictures that still survived many flittings were added to beautify the sanctuary, for here the family was to meet for amusement, instruction, and worship.
Any housewife can imagine the emotions of Sister Hope, when she took possession of a large, dilapidated kitchen, containing an old stove and the peculiar stores out of which food was to be evolved for her little family of eleven. Cakes of maple sugar, dried peas and beans, barley and hominy, meal of all sorts, potatoes, and dried fruit. No milk, butter, cheese, tea, or meat appeared. Even salt was considered a useless luxury and spice entirely forbidden by these lovers of Spartan simplicity. A ten years’ experience of vegetarian vagaries had been good training for this new freak, and her sense of the ludicrous supported her through many trying scenes.
Unleavened bread, porridge, and water for breakfast; bread, vegetables, and water for dinner; bread, fruit, and water for supper was the bill of fare ordained by the elders. No teapot profaned that sacred stove, no gory steak cried aloud for vengeance from her chaste gridiron; and only a brave woman’s taste, time, and temper were sacrificed on that domestic altar. . . .
Such farming probably was never seen before since Adam delved. The band of brothers began by spading garden and field; but a few days of it lessened their ardor amazingly. Blistered hands and aching backs suggested the expediency of permitting the use of cattle till the workers were better fitted for noble toil by a summer of the new life.
Brother Moses brought a yoke of oxen from his farm,—at least, the philosophers thought so till it was discovered that one of the animals was a cow; and Moses confessed that he “must be let down easy, for he couldn’t live on garden sarse entirely.”
Great was Dictator Lion’s indignation at this lapse from virtue. But time pressed, the work must be done; so the meek cow was permitted to wear the yoke and the recreant brother continued to enjoy forbidden draughts in the barn, which dark proceeding caused the children to regard him as one set apart for destruction.
The sowing was equally peculiar, for, owing to some mistake, the three brethren, who devoted themselves to this graceful task, found when about half through the job that each had been sowing a different sort of grain in the same field; a mistake which caused much perplexity, as it could not be remedied; but, after a long consultation and a good deal of laughter, it was decided to say nothing and see what would come of it.
The garden was planted with a generous supply of useful roots and herbs; but, as manure was not allowed to profane the virgin soil, few of these vegetable treasures ever came up. Purslane reigned supreme, and the disappointed planters ate it philosophically, deciding that Nature knew what was best for them, and would generously supply their needs, if they could only learn to digest her “sallets” and wild roots.
The orchard was laid out, a little grafting done, new trees and vines set, regardless of the unfit season and entire ignorance of the husbandmen, who honestly believed that in the autumn they would reap a bounteous harvest.
Slowly things got into order, and rapidly rumors of the new experiment went abroad, causing many strange spirits to flock thither, for in those days communities were the fashion and transcendentalism raged wildly. Some came to look on and laugh, some to be supported in poetic idleness, a few to believe sincerely and work heartily. Each member was allowed to mount his favorite hobby and ride it to his heart’s content. Very queer were some of the riders, and very rampant some of the hobbies. . . .
Transcendental wild oats were sown broadcast that year, and the fame thereof has not yet ceased in the land; for, futile as this crop seemed to outsiders, it bore an invisible harvest, worth much to those who planted in earnest. As none of the members of this particular community have ever recounted their experiences before, a few of them may not be amiss, since the interest in these attempts has never died out and Fruitlands was the most ideal of all these castles in Spain. . . .
They preached vegetarianism everywhere and resisted all temptations of the flesh, contentedly eating apples and bread at well-spread tables, and much afflicting hospitable hostesses by denouncing their food and taking away their appetites, discussing the “horrors of shambles,” the “incorporation of the brute in man,” and “on elegant abstinence the sign of a pure soul.” But, when the perplexed or offended ladies asked what they should eat, they got in reply a bill of fare consisting of “bowls of sunrise for breakfast,” “solar seeds of the sphere,” “dishes from Plutarch’s chaste table,” and other viands equally hard to find in any modern market.
Reform conventions of all sorts were haunted by these brethren, who said many wise things and did many foolish ones. Unfortunately, these wanderings interfered with their harvest at home; but the rule was to do what the spirit moved, so they left their crops to Providence and went a-reaping in wider and, let us hope, more fruitful fields than their own.
Luckily, the earthly providence who watched over Abel Lamb was at hand to glean the scanty crop yielded by the “uncorrupted land,” which, “consecrated to human freedom,” had received “the sober culture of devout men.”
About the time the grain was ready to house, some call of the Oversoul wafted all the men away. An easterly storm was coming up and the yellow stacks were sure to be ruined. Then Sister Hope gathered her forces. Three little girls, one boy (Timon’s son), and herself, harnessed to clothes-baskets and Russia-linen sheets, were the only teams she could command; but with these poor appliances the indomitable woman got in the grain and saved food for her young, with the instinct and energy of a mother-bird with a brood of hungry nestlings to feed.
CHEKHOV, AUTHOR OF The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, is Russia’s foremost dramatist and a notable writer of short stories. He was also a physician, who declared, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress.” His plays frequently had their premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre, which became famous as an avant-garde venue. In this tale, the eight-year-old protagonist consumes oysters for the first time, but is so hungry he tries to crunch on the shells. He becomes sick, but it is not so clear whether because he has fantasized the bivalve as a hideous animal with claws and sharp teeth, or because slurping down the “slippy, damp” creatures has simply not agreed with him. Is the piece a gentle satire on the boy’s capacity to fictionalize, or on the way his imagination allows him to experiment with unforeseen pleasures? As in Chekhov’s plays, there is no definitive conclusion to this question.
I NEED NO great effort of memory to recall, in every detail, the rainy autumn evening when I stood with my father in one of the more frequented streets of Moscow, and felt that I was gradually being overcome by a strange illness. I had no pain at all, but my legs were giving way under me, the words stuck in my throat, my head slipped weakly on one side. . . . It seemed as though, in a moment, I must fall down and lose consciousness.
If I had been taken into a hospital at that minute, the doctors would have had to write over my bed: Fames, a disease which is not in the manuals of medicine.
Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a shabby summer overcoat and a serge cap, from which a bit of white wadding was sticking out. On his feet he had big heavy galoshes. Afraid, vain man, that people would see that his feet were bare under his galoshes, he had drawn the tops of some old boots up round the calves of his legs.
This poor, foolish, queer creature, whom I loved the more warmly the more ragged and dirty his smart summer overcoat became, had come to Moscow, five months before, to look for a job as copying-clerk. For those five months he had been trudging about Moscow looking for work, and it was only on that day that he had brought himself to go into the street to beg for alms.
Before us was a big house of three storeys, adorned with a blue signboard with the word “Restaurant” on it. My head was drooping feebly backwards and on one side, and I could not help looking upwards at the lighted windows of the restaurant. Human figures were flitting about at the windows. I could see the right side of the orchestrion, two oleographs, hanging lamps. . . . Staring into one window, I saw a patch of white. The patch was motionless, and its rectangular outlines stood out sharply against the dark, brown background. I looked intently and made out of the patch a white placard on the wall. Something was written on it, but what it was, I could not see. . . .
For half an hour I kept my eyes on the placard. Its white attracted my eyes, and, as it were, hypnotized my brain. I tried to read it, but my efforts were in vain.
At last the strange disease got the upper hand.
The rumble of the carriages began to seem like thunder, in the stench of the street I distinguished a thousand smells. The restaurant lights and the lamps dazzled my eyes like lightning. My five senses were overstrained and sensitive beyond the normal. I began to see what I had not seen before.
“Oysters . . .” I made out on the placard.
A strange word! I had lived in the world eight years and three months, but had never come across that word. What did it mean? Surely it was not the name of the restaurant-keeper? But signboards with names on them always hang outside, not on the walls indoors!
“Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I asked in a husky voice, making an effort to turn my face towards my father.
My father did not hear. He was keeping a watch on the movements of the crowd, and following every passer-by with his eyes. . . . From his eyes I saw that he wanted to say something to the passers-by, but the fatal word hung like a heavy weight on his trembling lips and could not be flung off. He even took a step after one passer-by and touched him on the sleeve, but when he turned round, he said, “I beg your pardon,” was overcome with confusion, and staggered back.
“Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I repeated.
“It is an animal . . . that lives in the sea.”
I instantly pictured to myself this unknown marine animal. . . . I thought it must be something midway between a fish and a crab. As it was from the sea they made of it, of course, a very nice hot fish soup with savoury pepper and laurel leaves, or broth with vinegar and fricassee of fish and cabbage, or crayfish sauce, or served it cold with horse-radish. . . . I vividly imagined it being brought from the market, quickly cleaned, quickly put in the pot, quickly, quickly, for everyone was hungry . . . awfully hungry! From the kitchen rose the smell of hot fish and crayfish soup.
I felt that this smell was tickling my palate and nostrils, that it was gradually taking possession of my whole body. . . . The restaurant, my father, the white placard, my sleeves were all smelling of it, smelling so strongly that I began to chew. I moved my jaws and swallowed as though I really had a piece of this marine animal in my mouth. . . .
My legs gave way from the blissful sensation I was feeling, and I clutched at my father’s arm to keep myself from falling, and leant against his wet summer overcoat. My father was trembling and shivering. He was cold. . . .
“Papa, are oysters a Lenten dish?” I asked.
“They are eaten alive . . .” said my father. “They are in shells like tortoises, but . . . in two halves.”
The delicious smell instantly left off affecting me, and the illusion vanished. . . . Now I understood it all!
“How nasty,” I whispered, “how nasty!”
So that’s what “oysters” meant! I imagined to myself a creature like a frog. A frog sitting in a shell, peeping out from it with big, glittering eyes, and a slimy skin, being brought from the market. . . . The children would all hide while the cook, frowning with an air of disgust, would take the creature by its claw, put it on a plate, and carry it into the dining-room. The grown-ups would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its eyes, its teeth, its legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips. . . .
I frowned, but . . . but why did my teeth move as though I were munching? The creature was loathsome, disgusting, terrible, but I ate it, ate it greedily, afraid of distinguishing its taste or smell. As soon as I had eaten one, I saw the glittering eyes of a second, a third . . . I ate them too. . . . At last I ate the table-napkin, the plate, my father’s galoshes, the white placard . . . I ate everything that caught my eye, because I felt that nothing but eating would take away my illness. The oysters had a terrible look in their eyes and were loathsome. I shuddered at the thought of them, but I wanted to eat! To eat!
“Oysters! Give me some oysters!” was the cry that broke from me and I stretched out my hand.
“Help us, gentlemen!” I heard at that moment my father say, in a hollow and shaking voice. “I am ashamed to ask but—my God!—I can bear no more!”
“Oysters!” I cried, pulling my father by the skirts of his coat.
“Do you mean to say you eat oysters? A little chap like you!” I heard laughter close to me.
Two gentlemen in top hats were standing before us, looking into my face and laughing.
“Do you really eat oysters, youngster? That’s interesting! How do you eat them?”
I remember that a strong hand dragged me into the lighted restaurant. A minute later there was a crowd round me, watching me with curiosity and amusement. I sat at a table and ate something slimy, salt with a flavour of dampness and mouldiness. I ate greedily without chewing, without looking and trying to discover what I was eating. I fancied that if I opened my eyes I should see glittering eyes, claws, and sharp teeth.
All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a scrunching.
“Ha, ha! He is eating the shells,” laughed the crowd. “Little silly, do you suppose you can eat that?”
After that I remember a terrible thirst. I was lying in my bed, and could not sleep for heartburn and the strange taste in my parched mouth. My father was walking up and down, gesticulating with his hands.
“I believe I have caught cold,” he was muttering. “I’ve a feeling in my head as though someone were sitting on it. . . . Perhaps it is because I have not . . . er . . . eaten anything today. . . . I really am a queer, stupid creature. . . . I saw those gentlemen pay ten roubles for the oysters. Why didn’t I go up to them and ask them . . . to lend me something? They would have given something.”
Towards morning, I fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell, moving its eyes. At midday I was awakened by thirst, and looked for my father: he was still walking up and down and gesticulating.
OFTEN CONSIDERED, ALONG with James Joyce, the foremost novelist of the twentieth century, Proust structures his masterpiece, the seven-volume Remembrance of Things Past, around his protagonist’s memories. Having decided by the end of the entire sequence to become the writer that in fact we have listened to all along as he tells the story of his boyhood and young manhood, the narrator called Marcel not only remembers his life but also theorizes the very nature of memory. Our selection is the most celebrated discussion of how the sensory experience of food (here the fluted small butter cake known as a madeleine) and drink (the lime-blossom tea) evokes memories and begins the mechanism prompting Marcel to recall and examine his entire early life, for some 3000 pages.
from Remembrance of Things Past:
On the Madeleine
MANY YEARS HAD elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony; which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.
And I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I find again the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind’s eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.
Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of the cake soaked in tea; cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in my past life.
Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the natural laziness which deters us from every difficult enterprise, every work of importance, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and of my hopes for to-morrow, which let themselves be pondered over without effort or distress of mind.
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday morning at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.
A GREAT CRUSADER for civil rights and a continually losing candidate for political office, Sinclair ran on the Democratic ticket but considered himself at heart a Socialist. His most famous work, from which our excerpt is taken, is The Jungle, an excoriating attack on the meatpacking industry in Chicago. The novel is based on his firsthand investigation of the abattoirs, and is as much about the brutal methods of slaughter as it is about the exploitation of the packinghouse workers. It was enormously successful and persuasive, resulting in government regulation of the meat industry. In this selection Sinclair concentrates on the actual methods of hog and cattle killing in all their visceral horror. His description of the methods of animal slaughter influenced Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation as well as many vegetarians, several of whose writings appear in the section of this book titled “Food Politics.”
from The Jungle: A Visit to the Slaughterhouse
THERE IS OVER a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled—so many cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black, white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce, long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them—it would have taken all day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys, blocked at intervals by gates; and . . . the number of these gates was twenty-five thousand. . . . Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted, and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other, and to those who were driving the cattle. They were drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and commission merchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses. . . .
There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep—which meant some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year. One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. . . .
“They don’t waste anything here,” said the guide, and then he laughed and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated friends should take to be his own: “They use everything about the hog except the squeal.” In front of Brown’s General Office building there grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor that you will find there.
After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street, to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so—by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown’s Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown’s Dressed Beef, Brown’s Excelsior Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham’s Breakfast Bacon, Durham’s Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!
Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitors waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through the place. They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing plants, for it is a good advertisement. . . . They climbed a long series of stairways outside of the building, to the top of its five or six stories. Here was the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there was a place for them to rest to cool off, and then through another passageway they went into a room from which there is no returning for hogs.
It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At the head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and bare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stopped while men were cleaning up. In a minute or two, however, it began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft.
At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing—for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy—and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold—that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors—the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.
Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water.
It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory. . . . .
The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit down the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out—and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrape each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him. At the end of this hog’s progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs. . . .
Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of beef—where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the center.
Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned one of the “knockers,” armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the “knocker” passed on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out to the “killing bed.” Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon the killing beds had to get out of the way.
The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run—at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses, making these cuts upon each. First there came the “butcher,” to bleed them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see it—only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this by watching the men at work.
The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost, however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the “headsman,” whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes. Then came the “floorsman,” to make the first cut in the skin; and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning. After they were through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finished beef was run into the chilling room, to hang its appointed time.
The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows, labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors—and some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was a building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things; there was a building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was another where heads and feet were made into glue, and another where bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in Durham’s. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a “wool pullery” for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease, and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industries were gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding of the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you counted with it the other big plants—and they were now really all one—it was . . . the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the food for no less than thirty million people!