Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

of last century. The last decades of this new order is often referred to as the classical period of gastronomy, with France claiming the laurels for its development. "Classic" for reasons we do not know (Urbain Dubois, outstanding master of this period wrote "La Cuisine classique") except that its precepts appeal as classical to our notion of eating. This may not correspond to the views of posterity, we had therefore better wait a century or two before proclaiming our system of cookery "classical." Disposing of that old "classic," Apicius, as slowly as a conservative cooking world could afford to do, the present nations set out to cultivate a taste for things that a Roman would have pronounced unfit for a slave. Still, the world moves on. Conquest, discovery of foreign parts, the New World, contributed fine things to the modern table,--old forgotten foods were rediscovered--endless lists of materials and combinations, new daring, preposterous dishes that made the younger generation rejoice while old folks looked on gasping with dismay, despair, contempt. Be it sufficient to remark that the older practitioners of our own days, educated in "classic" cuisine again are quite apprehensive of their traditions endangered by the spirit of revolt of the young against the old. Again and again we hear of a decline that has set in, and even by the best authorities alarmist notes are spread to the effect that "we have begun our journey back, step by step to our primitive tree and our primitive nuts" (Pennell. Does Spengler consider food in his "Decline of the West?"). It matters not whether we share this pessimism, nor what we may have to say _pro_ or _con_ this question of "progress" or "retrogression" in eating (or in anything else for that matter). In fact we are not concerned with the question here more than to give it passing attention. If "classic" cookery is dying nowadays, if it cannot reassert itself that would be a loss to mankind. But this classic cookery system has so far only been the sole and exclusive privilege of a dying aristocracy. It seems quite