The European cookbook for American homes (from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France)

Italy is the bounteous mother of all continental cooking and her range of viands is greater than that of any other country. She has held her classic place at the head of the table with dignity and charm ever since Lucullan days when solons supped on nightingales' tongues and emperors rewarded chefs with whole cities for the invention of a single dish. Those were the days when the soft roe of sea lampreys brought their weight in silver and the illustrious red mullet fetched fifty dollars a pound in Rome. Roman gastronomes dubbed this fine pink-fleshed fish "woodcock of the sea" and thought nothing of paying two or three hundred dollars for a fat specimen of the rare "sea-bird." It was prepared at the table, boiled alive in a big glass bowl for the guests' delight and as its pink flesh turned white in cooking and it rolled agonized eyes up to fish heaven in a final prayer Poets were wont to immortalize it in toothsome cantos. Every 3art of the mullet was deemed so delectable that only its gills vvere removed and not eaten. Its liver and trail, indeed, were :he choicest parts, reserved for emperors and served up in style, dressed with sea-urchin and chicken liver sauce. Today mullet .s more often fried in batter than boiled alive on the table, but :his sea woodcock has lost none of its ancient popularity. I Alfredo's in Rome is the place to eat it pinkly perfect. Turbot used to vie with mullet for the favor of gormandizng Romans, but it went rapidly out of fashion when the custom ;ame into vogue of throwing unwanted slaves into private turbot jonds, to be eaten alive by the ravenous fish even as Christians were, in lions' dens. The Romans used to import their greatest chefs from Sicily md the fame of Sicilian cooks rose to a rhapsodic fervor which :aused Cratinus to write There lives, I fancy, here within this cave Some perfume-seller, or Sicilian cook. Broccoli, with which we became acquainted only in this century, was popular in Caesar's Gaul. Parsley was recommended by Pliny as good for the liver. The Romans were great salad eaters, of which we have evidence today in the name Romaine given to that distinctive variety of lettuce. Great gobblers of greens they were, so the phrase "Eat your spinach!" must have been familiar in Latin long before Christ was born. The French cuisine grew directly out of the Italian, and very late at that. Savarin himself admitted that modern French restaurant cooking got its inspiration from its Southern neighbor and that before the year eighteen hundred Paris couldn't hold a holy candle to Rome as a gastronomic solar plexus. And beefeating London with its Turk's Head and Ye Olde Cocke taverns gave the palm as well to the original Roman ristorante. The Italian cuisine is based on tasty pastes, chiefly macaroni, spaghetti and ravioli, pepped up with garlic, peppers, anchovies, olive oil, tomato paste, funghi (mushrooms), grated Parmesan cheese and capers. More than any other cuisine it depends on accompanying wines and fruits. And what fruits! Enormous Palermo oranges with flaming cheeks. Mandarins and blood oranges, sunkist lemons picked ripe and hence sweet enough to eat out of hand. Peaches and pomegranates beyond compare. A luscious melange summed up in the Neapolitan tutti-frutti (all fruits), which we have taken over as the apt name for fruitflavored chewing gum.