Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  Lucullus’s daily entertainments were ostentatiously extravagant, not only with purple coverlets, and plate adorned with precious stones, and dancings, and interludes, but with the greatest diversity of dishes and the most elaborate cookery, for the vulgar to admire and envy. It was a happy thought of Pompey in his sickness, when his physician prescribed a thrush for his dinner, and his servants told him that in summer-time thrushes were not to be found anywhere but in Lucullus’s fattening coops, that he would not suffer them to fetch one thence, but observing to his physician, “So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not lived,” ordered something else that could easily be got to be prepared for him. Cato was his friend and connection, but, nevertheless, so hated his life and habits, that when a young man in the senate made a long and tedious speech in praise of frugality and temperance, Cato got up and said, “How long do you mean to go on making money like Crassus, living like Lucullus, and talking like Cato?” There are some, however, who say the words were said, but not by Cato.

  It is plain from the anecdotes on record of him that Lucullus was not only pleased with, but even gloried in his way of living. For he is said to have feasted several Greeks upon their coming to Rome day after day, who of a true Grecian principle, being ashamed, and declining the invitations, where so great an expense was every day incurred for them, he with a smile told them, “Some of this, indeed my Grecian friends, is for your sakes, but more for that of Lucullus.” Once when he supped alone, there being only one course, and that but moderately furnished, he called his steward and reproved him, who professing to have supposed that there would be no need of any great entertainment, when nobody was invited, was answered, “What, did not you know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines with Lucullus?” Which being much spoken of about the city, Cicero and Pompey one day met him loitering in the forum, the former his intimate friend and familiar, and, though there had been some ill-will between Pompey and him about the command in the war, still they used to see each other and converse on easy terms together. Cicero accordingly saluted him, and asked him whether to-day were a good time for asking a favour of him, and on his answering, “Very much so,” and begging to hear what it was, “Then,” said Cicero, “we shall like to dine with you to-day, just on the dinner that is prepared for yourself.” Lucullus being surprised, and requesting a day’s time, they refused to grant it, neither suffered him to talk with his servants, for fear he should give order for more than was appointed before. But thus much they consented to, that before their faces he might tell his servants, that to-day he would sup in the Apollo (for so one of his best dining-rooms was called), and by this evasion he outwitted his guests. For every room, as it seems, had its own assessment of expenditure, dinner at such a price, and all else in accordance; so that the servants, on knowing where he would dine, knew also how much was to be expended, and in what style and form dinner was to be served. The expense for the Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas, and thus much being that day laid out, the greatness of the cost did not so much amaze Pompey and Cicero, as the rapidity of the outlay. One might believe Lucullus thought his money really captive and barbarian, so wantonly and contumeliously did he treat it.

  —from Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, first century A.D.,

  translated from the Greek by John Dryden

  FRANCES CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA ON MEXICAN FOOD

  Frances Erskine Inglis was born in Edinburgh in 1804 to an affluent family. When her father went bankrupt, Fanny moved to Boston with four of her ten siblings to become schoolteachers. Scottish schoolteachers were prized in New England. Her teaching career ended in a scandal caused by a satire performed at a charity event that may or may not have been written by Fanny. They then moved to Staten Island, where she met her future husband, Angel Calderón de la Barca, fourteen years her senior and born in Buenos Aires to Spanish diplomats. They married in 1838 and the Spanish government sent the newlywed husband to Mexico as the first Spanish minister. While there, the couple researched sources for William Hickling Prescott, a respected historian who was planning a history of the conquest of Mexico. When they returned, Prescott, whose Mexican history was to give him enduring fame, urged Fanny to publish her letters, which she did in 1842.

  —M.K.

  When we arrived, we found dinner laid for forty persons, and the table ornamented by the taste of the gardener, with pyramids of beautiful flowers.

  I have now formed acquaintance with many Mexican dishes; molé (meat stewed in red chile), boiled nopal, fried bananas, green chile, etc. Then we invariably have frijoles (brown beans stewed), hot tortillas—and this being in the country, pulque is the universal beverage. In Mexico, tortillas and pulque are considered unfashionable, though both are to be met with occasionally, in some of the best old houses. They have here a most delicious species of cream cheese made by the Indians, and ate with virgin honey. I believe there is an intermixture of goats’ milk in it; but the Indian families who make it, and who have been offered large sums for the receipt, find it more profitable to keep their secret.

  Every dinner has puchero immediately following the soup; consisting of boiled mutton, beef, bacon, fowls, garbanzos (a white bean), small gourds, potatoes, boiled pears, greens, and any other vegetables; a piece of each put on your plate at the same time, and accompanied by a sauce of herbs or tomatoes.

  As for fruits, we have mameys, chirimoyas, granaditas, white and black zapotes; the black, sweet, with a green skin and black pulp, and with black stones in it; the white resembling it in outward appearance and form, but with a white pulp, and the kernel, which is said to be poisonous, is very large, round, and white. It belongs to a larger and more leafy tree than the black zapote, and grows in cold or temperate climates; whereas the other is a native of tierra caliente. Then there is the chicozapote, of the same family, with a whitish skin, and a white or rose-tinged pulp; this also belongs to the warm regions. The capulin, or Mexican cherry; the mango, of which the best come from Orizaba and Cordova; the cayote, etc. Of these I prefer the chirimoya, zapote blanco, granadita, and mango; but this is a matter of taste.

  —from Life in Mexico, 1842

  LADY NUGENT ON OVEREATING IN COLONIAL JAMAICA

  Maria Skinner was born in the British colony of New Jersey in 1771. In 1797, at the age of twenty-six, she married George Nugent, a forty-year-old British officer who had fought for Britain in the American Revolution. Lady Nugent lived in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, during which time her husband was lieutenant governor and commander in chief. She wrote her journal for herself and it was not published until 1839, four years after her death, and then only privately for a few friends.

  —M.K.

  The Admiral, &c. set off for Port Henderson, and we for Bushy Park estate, Mr. Mitchell’s, where we breakfasted in the Creole style.—Cassada* cakes, chocolate, coffee, tea, fruits of all sorts, pigeon pies, hams, tongues, rounds of beef, &c. I only wonder there was no turtle. Mr. M.’s delight is to stuff his guests, and I should think it would be quite a triumph to him, to hear of a fever or apoplexy, in consequence of his good cheer. He is immensely rich, and told me he paid £30,000 per annum for duties to Government. His house is truly Creole. The wood-work mahogany—galleries, piazzas, porticoes, &c. In front a cane-piece, and sugar works, with plenty of cocoa-nut trees and tamarind trees, &c. He seems particularly indulgent to his negroes, and is, I believe, although a very vulgar, yet a very humane man.

  After breakfast, set off to Spring Gardens, to review the militia of St. John’s parish and St. Dorothy’s. Spring Gardens was formerly a fine place, but its owner now lives in England, and the house and every thing are neglected. The situation is beautiful. I saw an immense fig-tree, with a palm growing out of the top; it had a most singular appearance, but how the palm was engrafted, no one could tell me. The house has carved mahogany doors, &c. and many remains of its former magnificence.

  On the lawn we found the regiments assembled, and spectators of all colours crowding the place. Kittereens,†
horses, and mules, in abundance, attending.—The whole review, in fact, was most funny. Not one of the officers, nor their men, knew at all what they were about, and each had displayed his own taste, in the ornamental part of his dress. They were indeed a motley crew, and the Colonel whispered me—“Ah, ma’am, if the General did but know half the trouble I have had to draw up the men as you see them, he would not ask me to change their position; for what they will do next I don’t know. You see I have drawn a line with my cane for them to stand by, and it is a pity to remove them from it.” Poor man! I did pity him, for at the first word of command they stared, and then moved in every direction, and such a scene of confusion at any review I believe was never beheld.—A magnificent second breakfast, which succeeded this display, proved that, at Spring Gardens, the business of ménage, or eating and drinking, was better understood than military tactics.

  After their repast, Colonel Ogilvy wished me to receive the thanks of the corps, for attending the review; but I begged leave to decline the display, and as soon as possible we all returned to Bushy Park, where we arrived to rest ourselves about 4. Had a profuse dinner at 5.—Sick of so much eating and fatigue, and get rid of the remembrance of it all by going soundly to sleep at 9 o’clock.

  I don’t wonder now at the fever the people suffer from here—such eating and drinking I never saw! Such loads of all sorts of high, rich, and seasoned things, and really gallons of wine and mixed liquors as they drink! I observed some of the party, to-day, eat of late breakfasts, as if they had never eaten before—a dish of tea, another of coffee, a bumper of claret, another large one of hock-negus; then Madeira, sangaree, hot and cold meat, stews and fries, hot and cold fish pickled and plain, peppers, ginger sweetmeats, acid fruit, sweet jellies—in short, it was all as astonishing as it was disgusting.

  —from Lady Nugent’s Journal, February 4, 1802

  GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA ON SICILIAN DINING

  Tomasi di Lampedusa, the last male of a Sicilian noble family with important land holdings, including the island of Lampedusa, died in Rome in 1957 without an heir and with barely a penny. Among his few possessions was the manuscript for a novel that had been twice rejected.

  In 1885, the head of the house had died without a will, and the fights among his nine children destroyed most of the value of the estate. The last prince, Giuseppe, was born in 1896. In 1934, Guiseppe’s father died and left him only a palace in Palermo, which was later bombed into ruins by the Allies. Giuseppe salvaged what furniture remained and most of his books and moved them to a small house along Palermo’s crumbling waterfront. For about twenty years he thought about writing a novel about his vanished world. He was spurred on when his cousin and closest friend won a poetry prize in 1954. In 1955, Giuseppe completed four chapters and sent them to the publisher Mondadori with the title Il Gattopardo (The Ocelot). He later added two more chapters, but the manuscript was rejected in 1956 on the advice of Sicilian author Elio Vittorini. Giuseppe continued working on the book even though he was dying of lung cancer. Several days before his death Vittorini rejected it again.

  Leaving instructions to his adopted son that he was to pursue publication, he also instructed that under no circumstance was his son to accept the humiliation of paying for self-publication. The manuscript continued to circulate. Only months later the young writer Giorgio Bassani announced that he had discovered a masterpiece. A year and a half after the author’s death it was accepted for publication and won Italy’s most prestigious fiction award. While Italians continue to argue about it, The Leopard has continued to sell and have many admirers.

  —M.K.

  The central doors of the drawing-room were flung open and the butler declaimed mysterious sounds announcing that dinner was ready: ‘Prann’ pronn’.’ The heterogeneous group moved towards the dining-room.

  The Prince was too experienced to offer Sicilian guests, in a town of the interior, a dinner beginning with soup, and he infringed the rules of haute cuisine all the more readily as he disliked it himself. But rumours of the barbaric foreign usage of serving an insipid liquid as first course had reached the notables of Donnafugata too insistently for them not to quiver with a slight residue of alarm at the start of a solemn dinner like this. So when three lackeys in green, gold and powder entered, each holding a great silver dish containing a towering macaroni pie, only four of the twenty at table avoided showing pleased surprise; the Prince and Princess from foreknowledge, Angelica from affectation and Concetta from lack of appetite. All the others (including Tancredi, I regret to say) showed their relief in varying ways, from the fluty and ecstatic grunts of the notary to the sharp squeak of Francesco Paolo. But a threatening circular stare from the host soon stifled these improper demonstrations.

  Good manners apart, though, the aspect of those monumental dishes of macaroni was worthy of the quivers of admiration they evoked. The burnished gold of the crusts, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon they exuded, were but preludes to the delights released from the interior when the knife broke the crust; first came a spice-laden haze, then chicken livers, hard boiled eggs, sliced ham, chicken and truffles in masses of piping hot, glistening macaroni, to which the meat juice gave an exquisite hue of suède.

  The beginning of the meal, as happens in the provinces, was quiet. The arch-priest made the sign of the Cross and plunged in head first without a word. The organist absorbed the succulent dish with closed eyes; he was grateful to the Creator that his ability to shoot hare and woodcock could bring him ecstatic pleasures like this, and the thought came to him that he and Teresina could exist for a month on the cost of one of these dishes; Angelica, the lovely Angelica, forgot little Tuscan black-puddings and part of her good manners and devoured her food with the appetite of her seventeen years and the vigour given by grasping her fork half-way up the handle. Tancredi, in an attempt to link gallantry with greed, tried to imagine himself tasting, in the aromatic forkfuls, the kisses of his neighbour Angelica, but he realised at once that the experiment was disgusting and suspended it, with a mental reserve about reviving this fantasy with the pudding; the Prince, although rapt in the contemplation of Angelica sitting opposite him, was the only one at table able to notice that the demi-glace was overfilled, and made a mental note to tell the cook so next day; the others ate without thinking of anything, and without realising that the food seemed so delicious because sensuality was circulating in the house.

  —from The Leopard, 1958,

  translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun

  CHIQUART ON PREPARING A ROYAL FEAST

  In 1420, Chiquart Amizco, chief cook to Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy—the future Pope Felix V—wrote a manuscript of culinary advice, Du fait de cuisine. As chef he was called upon on numerous occasions to mount huge feasts to entertain visiting royalty. One such event was in 1397 and another in 1403 on the occasion of Mary of Burgundy leaving home. This occurred one Friday and Saturday, fast days on which good Catholics were required to deny themselves. Chiquart was charged with preparing one of those peculiar medieval contradictions, a lenten feast, consisting of four meals, almost fifty different dishes, without using meat or meat products. The feat is still remembered. His manuscript is particularly valuable to food historians because, while all other fifteenth-century French cookbooks reflect the dominance of Taillevent, Chiquart’s book documents a different regional cuisine. His cooking was French, and therefore Taillevent-like, but, being in Savoy, also reflected local Alpine cooking and introduced Italian ideas and products. Also, Chiquart’s writing gives the most extensive explanation of cooking techniques of any fifteenth-century cookbook.

  —M.K.

  To begin with, God having granted that a very honorable feast be given, at which there may be kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, counts, countesses, princes, princesses, marquesses, marchionesses, barons, baronesses and prelates of various classes, and nobles, too, in large number, the following things are necessary both to cook for the regular household and to do the feast honor
ably and to the honor of the lord who gives it.

  And firstly, one hundred fat oxen, some one hundred and thirty sheep, also fat, six score of pigs; and, for each day during the feast, one hundred small piglets, both for roasting and for other uses, and sixty large fat pigs, salted, for larding and cooking.

  To this end, the butcher would be well advised to have a good provision of meats so that, should it happen that the feast lasts longer than is intended, all that is needed will be immediately available. Even if there should be any surplus meat, that will not matter because nothing will be wasted.

  For each day of the aforesaid feast you need two hundred kids and lambs, one hundred calves and two thousand head of poultry.

  And your purveyors of game should be able, diligent and fore-sighted enough to have forty horses to get to various places for deer, hares, rabbits, partridge, pheasants, small birds (whatever they can find of these without number), doves, cranes, herons, any wild fowl—whatever sort of game they can get. They should set about this two months or six weeks before the feast; and all of them should bring or send whatever they have been able to get at least three or four days before the feast so that this game can be hung and properly prepared in each case.