BOYER'S PANTHROPREON. * A wonix of eaters is no longer to
pine in want of the history and science of its most universal and necessary, not to say its noblest faculty. "Let me not burst in ignorance" has long been the inarticulate cry of a race in whom, whatever a Carlyle may pro- test to the contrary, soul and stomach are identical. The nine- teenth century, fruitful of so many things, was not to pass with- out responding to the demand ; and Alexis Soyer was the man predestined to the achievement. He says— "In the year 1846 I published a work on cookery, entitled The Gastro- sons& Begenerator, which was very successfuL At page 650 I observed, that if any author were to write a work on the history of food and cookery, it would not only be very interesting, but an extremely useful production. No one, however, having entertained my suggestion, I determined to under- take the task; and, after several years of deep study and perseverance, have completed this voluminous work."
History, poetry, philosophy, and art, the records of revealed re- ligion, and the profane writers of all ages and nations, are laid under contribution for the production of this compendium of the most vital interests of the "natural man." The historian of food has set about his vast task under a deep sense of its importance -and responsibility. He goes systematically through a whole course of nutrition, vegetable, animal, and drinkable, its history and properties, and the chronicles of the table. Every assertion, from the first eulogium on agriculture, as the most primitive com- mencement of the science of edible productiveness, down to the last incident of the Roman banquet, which, with the gusto of a connoisseur and archreologist and the creative power of a poet, he conjures up from the obscure past, is verified by an accurate re- ference; every step in the progress of the human species to an adequate conception of eating, is traceable in a copious index. Henceforward we shall eat and drink intelligently. Whether cab- bage or melon, olive or apple, pig, ox, or ass, (if the unconscien- tions restaurateur substitute that delicacy of Ilmeenas for the or- dered veal,) chicken or peacock, rabbit or wild boar, or the ex- haustless variety of beverage, our pabulum will be rich in histori- cal and moral suggestion ; and in the process of mastication, we shall, as it were, "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest."
The style with whose aid M. Soyer rises to the level of his theme partakes of the stately march of Gibbon and the ironic wit of Voltaire. It is true that he has adopted a different branch of history ; but he does not forget that he too is an historian. Of his own art, the art which forms his subject, he speaks in words of imposing sound and an adequate number of syllables. The magiric ark gastrophagic annals, a gastronomic conquest, the serious and reflective appreciation of gastronomic productions, culinary artists, magiric archives—such are the terms which he loves to bestow upon the science, its records, and professors. England, once fur- nished by Anglo.Saxon providence with a sufficiency of "spits, knives,- plates, and dishes," was "marching with giant strides towards civilization." The teeth are " gastrophagie auxiliaries "; and a recent banquet of the Emperor of the French evinced the "incredible resources of imagination of our Continental neigh- bours." From the section on "The Cook " we extract the follow- ing exordium.
"The author of a rare and very curious work, which no one at prese has time to read, formed the charitable project of reconciling medicine and gastronomy. This was a noble enterprise, worthy of a true philanthropist, and which assuredly presented less difficulties than people may think. In • The Pantropheon; or History of Food and its Preparation, from the Earliest Ages of the World. By A. Soyer, Author of the "Gastronomic Regenerator," &C. Embellished with forty-one Plates'. Published by Simpkin and Marshall. effect, what was the moot question ?—To agree de forms, without interfering with the substance ; to examine whether culinary preparations poison, as has been said, the food which nature gives us, and unceasingly paralyze the salutary action of the dietetic which the faculty prescribe. "For many centuries, cooking has been exposed to these odious re- proaches, the gravity of which we do not pretend to attenuate; and yet, ever pursuing its brilliant career amidst revolutions and ruins, the magiric art, endowed with eternal youth, embellishes each new iera of civilization, re- ceives its most constant homage, and survives it when it fades away. Let us speak plainly : mankind has thrown on cooks all the faults of which they ought to accuse their own intemperance. It was, no doubt, easier than to avoid the fatal abuse of pleasure, and the evils it brings with it ; but there was the crying injustice, which we do not hesitate to denounce ; there lay the obstacle it was necessary to overcome in order to bring about a peaceful understanding between the -disciples of Galen and the followers of Apuuus. "Gourmandise would never have rebelled against the kitchen if all poly- phagists had obtained from the good Ceres the gift she granted to Paadarea —a celebrated eater, who could pass days and nights at table without expe- riencing the slightest indigestion.
" 'But,' say you, Seneca the philosopher perpetually combats, with the authority of his virtuous language, those dangerous men who are busied with a single stomach, and who lay the foundation for a train of maladies.'
"The reply to this .that Seneca, the pedant, should have thundered. against the stomach, which alone is guilty ; (he has sometimes done so;) that this atrabilarious preceptor of Nero, attacked with an incurable con- sumption could only eat very little, which much enraged him; and that his imprecations on the subject of the excessive riches and prodigious luxury of the Romans of his age neither hindered him from possessing and unceasingly increasing a more than royal fortune, nor from feeding—well or ill—several thousand slaves, nor from pompously displaying in his palace five hundred tables—only five hundred—of the most elaborate workmanship, of the rarest wood, all alike, and ornamented with precious incrustations. " How often have people extolled the Lacedwmonians, and their legislator Lycurgus ! Well, Ly•curgus mercilessly commanded poor little children to fast when they looked fresh and fat. Strange lawgiver of a strange people, who never learned to eat, and yet who invented the celebrated black sauce,' the jus nigrum, for which the entrails of the hare served as the foundation. So true it is that cookery always preserves certain imprescriptible rights over the most fervent disciples of frugality. "Moralists do not cease to repeat that Rome would never have had i sump- tuary laws, had it not been corrupted by cooks from Athens and Syracuse. This s an error. All the ordinances of the Consuls proscribed profusion, ex- cess—in a word, all the ruinous expenses of a passionate and ridiculous gas- trophagy—at the same time respecting the magiric art itself; that is to say, that industrious chemistry which composes, decomposes, combines, and mixes—in a word, prepares—the different substances which gluttony, deli- cacy, fashion, or luxury, may confide to it for the space of a few minutes.
"Why render the cook responsible for the extravagant tastes and follies of his age ? Is it for him to reform mankind ? Has he either the means or the right ?
"What is asked of him ? And what can be asked? To understand exactly the properties of everything he employs ; to perfect, and correct if necessary, the savours on which he operates ; to judge with a true taste; to degustate with a delicate palate ; to join the skilful address of the band, and the prompt and comprehensive glance, to the bold but profound conceptions of the brain ; and, above all, it cannot be too often repeated, to identify him- self so well with the habits, the wants, even the caprices and gastronomic eccentricities of those whose existence he embellishes, that he may be able, not to obey them, but to guess them, and even have a presentiment of them."
With all its magniloquence and professional enthusiasm, con- siderable entertainment and a large number of facts may be found in M. Soyer's volume. The plates too, in the invention of some among which also he has a share, are mostly well introduced, though not well executed. In virtue of this book, M. Soyer takes rank as the high-priest of his: patron goddess Victim, ot only for the practical rites and sacrifices, but for the expounding, preaching, and glorifying as well.
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