Antiquitates culinariae, or, curious tracts relating to the culinary affairs of the old English / with a preliminary discourse, notes and illustrations by Richard Warner.

Date:
1791
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Antiquitates culinariae, or, curious tracts relating to the culinary affairs of the old English / with a preliminary discourse, notes and illustrations by Richard Warner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    with which the Roman palate was delighted, I have introduced two receipts, tranflated from Apicius. To make thick fauce for a boiled chicken. Put the following ingredients into a mortar; anife-feed, dried mint, and lazer-root * * * §. Cover them with vinegar. Add dates. Pour in liquamen -f*, oil, and a fmall quantity of muftard feeds. Reduce all to a proper thicknefs, with fweet wine warmed; and then pour this fame over your chicken, which fhould previoufly be boiled in anife-feed water. An hog's paunch J. Having cleanfed it wTell, wafli it, firft with vinegar and fait, and afterwards with water. Then take hog’s flelh pounded to a pafte; mix with it the brains of three hogs, cleanfed from the fibres, together with hard eggs. To this put cloves of garlicky add whole pepper, and make it of a proper confiftence with broth. Beat up pepper, ligufticum, afiafcetida, anife-feed, ginger, a fmall quantity of rue, the beft garum, and a little oil. With this compofition fluff the paunch, but not too tightly, that it may not be much agitated in boiling. Tie the mouth of it well, and put it into a boiling cauldron. Then take it out, and prick it with a needle, left it fhould burft. When it is parboiled, take it out again, and hang it up to fmoke, that it may acquire a proper flavour. Laftly, when you untie it for the purpofe of drefiing it, add garum, wine, and a little oil; cut it open with a fmall knife, and ferve it up with liquamen and ligufticum §. From thefe receipts, we may acquire fome idea of the complicated and he- terogeneous mefles, which formed the moft exquifite delicacies of a Roman table. At the prefent day, nothing can be conceived more difgufling, than many of thefe difhes; fince a variety of ingredients, from which a modern would fhrink with abhorrence, were caft into them, by the cooks of Rome, with the moft lavifh hand. Afiafcetida, rue, &c. were ufed in almoft every high- feafoned difh; and we meet repeatedly, with the extraordinary mixtures of oil and wine, honey, pepper, and the putrid diftillation from flunking fifh ||. In fhort, the Roman * From the lazer root a ftrong juice or gum was extracted, fimilar to afiafcetida. Humelbergii Not. in Apicium, p. 23. f The liquamen and garum were fynonymous terms for the fame thing ; the former adopted in the room of the latter by the Romans about the age of Aurelian. It was a liquid, and thus prepared. The guts of large fifh, and a variety of fmall fifh, were put into a veflel, and well falted, and being expoled to the fun, were continued in that flate till putrid. By this procefs, a liquor was produced in a fhort time, which, being drained off, was the liquamen or garum above mentioned. Vide Lifter in Apicium, p. 16. notes. Alfo Pliny Lib. xxxi. c. 7. et 8. The beft garum was made from the fcombrus, the vuorft from the tunny-fifh. Vide Martial Lib. 13. I The fkill of the Roman cooks, was moft apparent in preparing the fiefh of hogs for the table. Wre are told they could, by their fauces, impart to this meat the flavour of any other they pleafed. Arbuthnot on ancient coins, c. 5. § The ligufticum was an herb found in Tufcany, of a very hot nature, and confidered as greatly beneficial to the ftomach. Vide Stumelberg. in Apicium, p. 39. Apicium Lib. vii. c. 7. || The celebrated garum, of the Roman epicure, was no better. Hear what Pliny fays of it, “ Aliud “ etiamnum liquoris exquifiti genus, quod garum vocatur, inteftinis pifcium, cteterifque quae abjicienda effent, fale