Our viands

d and a platter in the other, whilst three guests — seated at a table covered with a heavy cloth, upon which are various dishes, and cakes of bread marked with a cross — cut from the spit presented to them such meat as they please, apparently letting it fall into the platter held to receive it. Yet we are told that the Anglo-Saxons possessed forks, some having been found with coins of Caenwulf, King of Mercia and Athelstan,* but these are supposed to have * See Chambers's 'Book of Days.' 12 OUR VIANDS been mere toys, for forks certainly did not come into general use in England before the end of the seventeenth century, although they appear to have been used in Italy at an earlier date. They have now penetrated into the heart of savage Africa, and Mr. A. A. Anderson * describes an interview with Lo Bengula, in which ' a little Mashona boy brought, on a piece of grass matting, four large pieces of bullock's lights, that had been broiled over a fire, and a fork; advancing on hands and knees to his dreaded master, he placed them on the grass in front of his majesty, who took the fork, and transfixing one after the other they disappeared from sight in his capacious mouth.' The table appointments of ancient Egypt are familiar to us from the paintings. We see the guests seated at table in gala dress, be-wigged and be-jewelled, holding the lotus-lily in their hands by way of nosegay, whilst attendants in the very scantiest of attire, naked except for a girdle and a necklace to show that they are slaves, serve them with meat and wine, evidently in too great profusion, for that disgusting practice, which prevailed also among the epicures and gluttons of ancient Rome, of taking emetics when satiated f in order to be able to renew the feast, is most realistically depicted. That which is remarkable in these Egyptian feasts is the * 'Twenty-five Years in a Waggon.' t It may be of interest here to give the receipt of Apicius for digestive salts from Soyer's ' History of Food : ' — take I Ib. of common salt pulverised, mix with 3 oz. white pepper, 2 oz. ginger, I oz. lamoni, \\ oz. thyme, i\ oz. celery seed, 2 oz. wild marjoram, \\ oz. rocket seed, 3 oz. black pepper, \\ oz. holy thistle, 2 oz. hyssop, 2 oz. spikenard, 2 oz. parsley, 2 oz. aniseed. Take a small quantity after a too plentiful dinner. INTRODUCTION 13 preponderance of women represented. It is evident that in those remote times ladies were not consigned to the galleries to look on whilst their lords and masters enjoyed the good things provided by Egyptian cooks, but were allowed their full share both of the comestibles and of the table talk. The ancient Greeks were studiously simple in their habits, and their cookery in early times appears to have partaken of this simplicity. The famous black broth of the Spartans, which was the national dish, and of which they were so fond that they seldom ate anything else, appears to have been a horrible compound of pork broth, with vinegar and salt. Of this dish it is related, that Dionysius, the elder, having had it carefully prepared by a Lacedaemonian slave, just tasted it and threw it from him in disgust, demanding of the slave whether that was the broth of which the Spartans were so found — ' No,' replied the slave, ' it lacks one ingredient, that of violent exercise before partaking of it.'