The spirit of cookery

The leaves of Yerha or Paraquay tea are always obtained in a powdered state. The powder is placed in a vessel made frequently of a coco-nut or pumpkin, and infused with boiling water ; the made tea is then sipped through a tube to which a sieve is attached, which is dipped into the vessel. It is sweetened, but not poured out into cups. To appreciate the true flavour of cliocolatl, as the Mexicans term it, obtain cacao-beans ; roast them yourself until the shells break easily, peel the reddish-brown marrow, and pound and triturate it in a hot iron mortar. Boil the paste with milk and sugar, agitate, and after slight repose pour off the top liquid containing the finest particles. The sediment you can triturate again, and treat as the first part was treated. The chocolate is then ready for use, but to develop its full flavour you should let it get cold, remove any fat collected on the surface, and after twelve hours’ standing heat it again in a water-bath. Chocolate is obtainable in many forms, in plates and as powder, with and without sugar. The powders, called cocoa, are generally reputed to be deprived of most of the natural fat. In exchange they are frequently adulterated with starch. Chocolate should be served in cups, and be of sufficient consistency to be eaten with a small spoon, rather than drunk. In this way it was used by the Mexicans ; they also ate it with golden spoons. We have tested the combinations, and find chocolate in a red cup and saucer, to be eaten with a golden spoon, sesthetical perfection ; both taste and sight are much pleased with the combination. MEALS OF THE ANCIENTS CHAPTER LVIII. NOTES ON THE COOKERY AND MEALS OF FORMER GENERATIONS. In very ancient times people sat down to dinner at tables as they do in the present day. Thus, the Egyptians did, according to Apollodorus in ‘ Athenseus,’ sit down at table to eat. At Eome they sat down until the end of the second Punic war (202 b.c.). The lying doion on couches for the purpose of eating a dinner was an invention of the Greeks. It was properly termed an uncomfortable luxury, and was probably confined to the upper classes, for it required much service. At a feast which Ortagenes, the Theban, gave to fifty of his friends, and to which he invited the Persian general Mardonius and his suite, numbering also fifty persons, a few days before the battle of Platjeae (479 B.c.), the company, assembled in a large hall, reclined on fifty couches, each of which was occupied by a Greek and a Persian. We are not aware of the exact time at which society was released from the practice of lying down in order to take a meal. The release was delayed mainly by the fact that the conversation amongst the cultivated guests became highly attractive, general, and oratorical, and on account of the csi)rit displayed in it was called Attic salt. Thus, it came to be believed that posture had some mysterious connection with the conversational result of the dinner, and therefore was abandoned only reluctantly. According to Varro, the Eomans preferred to dine in company numbering not less than the number of the Graces, namely three, and not more tlian the number of the Muses, namely nine. Amongst the Greeks the number seven was that to which they desired to raise or limit their company. 62H