Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

Another reason was the absence of good refrigeration, making "masking" necessary. Also the ambition of hosts to serve a cheaper food for a more expensive one--veal for chicken, pork for partridge, and so on. But do we not indulge in the same "stunts" today? We either do it with the intention of deceiving or to "show off." Have we not "Mock Turtle Soup," _Mouton à la Chasseur_, mutton prepared to taste like venison, "chicken" salad made of veal or of rabbit? In Europe even today much of the traditional roast hare is caught in the alley, and it belongs to a feline species. "Roof hare." FOOD ADULTERATIONS There is positive evidence of downright frauds and vicious food adulteration in the times of Apicius. The old rascal himself is not above giving directions for rose wine without roses, or how to make a spoiled honey marketable, and other similar adulterations. Those of our readers with sensitive gastronomic instinct had better skip the paragraphs discussing the treatment of "birds with a goatish smell." But the old food adulterators are no match for their modern successors. Too, some of our own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have made suckling pigs out of dough, partridges of veal, chicken of tunny fish, and _vice versa_. What indeed would a serious-minded research worker a thousand years hence if unfamiliar with our culinary practice and traditions make of such terms as _pette de nonne_ as found in many old French cookery books, or of the famous _suttelties_ (subtleties)--the confections once so popular at medieval weddings? The ramifications of the _lingua coquinaria_ in any country are manifold, and the culinary wonderland is full of pitfalls even for the experienced gourmet. REACHING THE LIMIT Like in all other branches of ancient endeavor, cookery had reached a state of perfection around the time of Apicius when the