XXIII | Seasonings.
The animal and vegetable kingdoms furnish us with an abundant and wholesome food, whose flavour gastronomic caprice unceasingly modifies by the aid of various substances which we denominate seasonings. It is, above all, the perfect knowledge of these ingredients, the manner of employing them, and their skilful mixture, which constitute the art of the cook. Labour and custom, and a kind of routine which the palate acquires easily, will suffice for those who content themselves with this calling, and who, carefully preserving the timid traditions of the past, view progress as ruin and devastation, and the fruitful boldness of inspiration as ridiculous and fatal innovations.
Heresy, and even schism (pardon these expressions), should be allowed in cookery, as soon as they receive the sanction of the doctors ès-banquets—the sole judges competent in such matters. It is to the art professed by Apicius that the celebrated line of Voltaire appears more peculiarly to apply:—
“Tous les genres sont bons, excepté l’ennuyeux.”
Innovate, then, studious disciples of the illustrious Roman: consult only the measures of your strength, the conscience of your genius, and the infallible good taste of some chosen guests. Create for your seasoning unheard-of combinations, the strangeness of which shall strike and astonish; whose flavour shall subjugate and stifle criticism beneath the sweet efforts of a voluptuous mastication.
Learn how to make your areopagitæ eat: this innocent seduction will insure your triumph.
Treat not with too much disdain these Roman recipes; for although the formidable list may excite a smile from the reader, and, perhaps, the scorn of the cook, a great and prolific idea slumbers beneath the cold ashes of the ovens of Apicius which a breath may rekindle; and, at the same time, resuscitate some of those culinary wonders of a bygone civilisation, and endow our modern age, so impatient of the future, so curious concerning the past.
Two Phœnicians—whose names are never mentioned by forgetful posterity—Selech and Misor, taught mankind the art of heightening the flavour of their food by mixing with it a certain quantity of salt. The science of seasoning has no other origin.[XXIII_1]