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“This occurs in the longest chapters of the book, in the form of ‘A Philosophical History of Cookery, Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern,’ with an appendix, ‘On Parisian Dining-Houses.’ Here, indeed, is richness: the advantages and disadvantages of eating raw meat; the primitive feasting in the ‘Iliad;’ the advent of boiling in the Old Testament; how Cadmus brought the alphabet and good cooking to Greece; the elaborate and sometimes strange taste of the Romans,—as for dormice and assafoetida,—and a survey of the ancient literature of the subject, from the fragmentary poem on gastronomy by Archestratus, to the convivial poetry of Horace and Tibullus. The whole story is told, although briefly, excepting only the peculiar taste of the Greeks for mingling sea-water and turpentine with their wines.

“The mediaeval and modern development of the art is sketched, although of necessity more rapidly, from the rescue of cookery from barbarism by Charlemagne; through the introduction of spices from the East, garlic from Palestine, parsley from Italy, coffee from Turkey, and the potato from America; to the ages of pastry and of sugar, and the final culmination of the art in political gastronomy. Every line of this section contains such good things as ‘coffee should be crushed, not ground;’ and, ‘It was Talleyrand who first brought from Italy the custom of taking Parmesan cheese with soup.’ But to select would be to quote the whole.