Fancy endeavouring to solve the true inwardness of an ancient Nürnberg treatise which bears this explanation of its contents: "Vollständig vermehrtes Trincier-Buch, von Tafeldecken Trinciren, zeitigung der Mundkoste, Schauessen und Schaugerichten, benebens xxiv Gast oder Tischfragen."
And when we reflect that the German author who undertakes to elucidate a given theme probes it to the very bottom as far as human understanding and science can fathom it, we may readily conclude that to master the literature of German gastronomy would call for stupendous patience on the part of an alien.
Yet Germany has contributed a volume in the French language respecting a province of the nation under consideration, wherein the table manners, customs, alimentation, and the public and private life of the old Germans are most picturesquely and minutely set forth.[23] The ancient province of Alsace, where forty-two varieties of pâtés and countless varieties of cakes have been in use for several centuries, has ever been noted for the excellence of its cooks and its fondness for good cheer. In the tenth century Bishop Uthon of Strassburg viewed with alarm the table excesses of the priests of his diocese, which he attempted to check by establishing monastic schools. In the fourteenth century, on the other hand, Bishop de Lyne, who was termed _Kappen-Esser_, was charged with gross intemperance by the clergy, who averred he thought only of the pleasures of the table--_gulæ ebrietatique deditus_--and that he was unable to hold morning audiences without having previously partaken of a rich soup and a fat capon.
Dating from early times, Alsace became known as the wine-cellar, granary, and larder of the surrounding countries--a paradise and a garden eminently favourable for good living. Charles Gérard has proved the local Dumas, and his volume, besides its erudite presentation of the resources and olden customs of the country, contains many interesting gastronomical anecdotes, such as "Favourite dishes of celebrated personages," "Influence of a Rhein carp on a financier of the school of Fouquet," "Frying, its nature and effect on manners," etc. Assuredly should a nation be credited with a natural aptitude for gastronomy which in the early part of 1700 could devise an omelette of brook-trout (_Forellen Eyerkuchen_) and cold pâtés of trout (_Forellen Kalte Pasteten_), to say nothing of a certain pâté of fish (_Pâté de langues de carpes et foies de lottes_) composed of the tongues of carp, eels' livers, and the tails of crawfish--the invention of a Strassburg _Koch_, which he served to the Cardinal de Rohan, and which M. Gérard defines as the supreme limit of epularly eminence.