To these Attic _cordons bleus_ in succeeding generations not only Italy but Persia were glad to send pupils, and pay exorbitant fees for tuition. The Attic cook gave himself the same airs of superiority over his Roman brother, as the French _chef_ over the Anglican—him “of a hundred sects but only one sauce.” Carême, the _chef_ of Talleyrand (the author of this _mot_), never abated his claim that to the success of the Congress of Vienna he contributed no less than his master.[490] His salary, however, does not begin to compare with that of Antony’s cook, £3000 a year and “perquisites” galore.
Anaxandrides[491] compares the beauteous work of portrait painters unfavourably with the beauty of a dish of fish. Xenarchus[492] contrasts poets with fishmongers, much to the detriment of the former:
“Poets are nonsense: for they never say A single thing that’s new. But all they do Is to clothe old ideas in language new, Turning the same things o’er again And upside down. But as for fishmongers, They’re an inventive race and yield to none,” etc.
Hegesippus’s summing up, “But the whole race of cooks is conceited and arrogant,” finds confirmation in dozens of instances. Two grandiloquent boasts may serve: “I have known many a guest who has, for my sake, eaten up his whole estate,” and
“I am in truth a God, I bring the dead By mere scent of my food, to life again.”
Self-laudation is no monopoly of Greece, or Sicily, whence came perhaps the most famous of the tribe. In our own Beaumont and Fletcher’s play—_The Bloody Brother_—a _chef_ vaunts,
“For fish I’ll make you a standing lake of white broth, And pikes shall come ploughing up the plums before them, Arion on a dolphin playing Lachrymæ.”
Lucian, in his witty Dialogue,[493] makes Hermes act as auctioneer at the sale of the different creeds as personified by their founders or by philosophers, and dilate on the exceptional merits of the lot then under the hammer, “because he will teach you how long a gnat will live, and what sort of soul an oyster possesses.” Mr. Lambert states that Ausonius wrote a poem on the oyster! To be more accurate, he wrote two,[494] and lengthy ones to boot!
The Emperor Domitian (Juvenal, IV.) ordered a special sitting of the Senate to deliberate and advise on a matter of such grave State importance as the best method of cooking a turbot.