The explanation is, I think, that we, owing to our
climate and our curious habit of taking physical exercise, have strong appetites. Few things are so inimical to good cooking as animal hunger. I am confirmed in this theory by the history of cooking. Our savage ancestors, when they killed a reindeer, tore it limb from limb. The Homeric heroes were only slightly more advanced. What they liked was " a sheep's back and fat goat's, and a great hog's chine rich in fat." These crude viands were grilled on spits upon a gridiron, even as kebabs are grilled in the village of Hissarlik today. It was only when appetites became jaded that the art of cooking began. Even Alcibiades can scarcely have indulged in anything more subtle than olives, garlic, cuttle-fish, radishes and little white beans. When the Romans found their Empire and lost their digestions, cooking became a most important element in their civilisation. Apicius committed suicide when he discovered that he would have to moderate his diet, and the many devices adopted by the Romans for the stimulation of appetite and the relief of indigestion prove that hunger was a delight that the richer Roman never knew. From Rome, after many centuries, the art of cooking passed, with Catherine de Medici, to France. Great names arose. There was Bechamel, butler to Louis XV ; there was Vatel, chef to Conde ; there was Careme, chef to Alexander I, to Talley- rand and to Baron Rothschild ; there was Alexis Soyer, chef to the Reform Club, who, during the hungry forties, in- vented a dish of trufjes de Perigord boiled in champagne and garnished with foie gras which cost five guineas a guest.
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