While The Kettle Boils

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 66, 27 September 1940, Page 35

While The Kettle Boils

Dear Friends, We might feel slightly self-conscious about the admission, but one cannot ignore the fact that eating is one of the most important factors in life. Apart from the knowledge that our standard of health depends on what-and when-we eat, there is the pleasure that we extract from eating good and palatable

food. The world looks a much rosier place when we have dined well. Nothing is more conducive to a real fit of the American Blues than an empty tummy. Ladies, let us whisper it softly. The first cook was a man. If we slip back twenty million years or so to the Glacial Age, we find primitive man subsisting on seaweed and nuts. Neolithic man favoured raw, red meat; adding an occasional insect to the main coursewith an entree of an indescribable deli-cacy-oysters. Maybe it was an accident; maybe Neolithic man dropped by mistake a piece of raw meat into the fire, and snatching it out again, sampled his first (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page). taste of grilled steak-and liked it. Anyway, he tried it again-and from then on raw meat was out. Cooking not only provided a novel change, but without doubt primitive man found his digestion vastly improved. It was not till the new art was properly established, however,

that primitive woman was allowed to enter the kitchen cave. And then man discovered the real virtue of a club. The next step forward came with the designing and making of pottery, which brought an element of refinement into the culinary business. It flourished, indeed it became a cult. Each country outvied the other to create new and characteristic dishes. But the original discoverer of cooking appeared to have bequeathed his talents to his male successors. Man still remains unchallenged in the culinary world. Of course, there are good women cooks by the legion, but they occupy the humbler spheres. All the famous restaurants of the world, all leading hotels and hostels are presided over by a male chef, This institution is so firmly founded that not a _ lone feminine voice is lifted in protest. A certain H. I. Phillips put it rather bluntly-‘" The first thing a wife should realise is that she is catering for her husband’s appetite-not his curiosity." We'll let that pass. Those descriptions in past history of monumental feasts, I always regard with a peculiar kind of fascination. What gastronomic powers those ancients possessed. The meals they sat down to would put modern man under the table -and in the hands of a specialist for the rest of his life. Take Nero as a classic example. His session at a banqueting table lasted from mid-day to midnight. The Emperor Vitellius, it is-recorded, ate 1,000 oysters at one sitting. But then, they may not have been of the Stewart Island variety; and in any case I can’t guarantee that legend. In ancient Roman times, the principal meal was eaten at the end of the day. The dining-table was rectangular in shape, with comfortable couches drawn up in lieu of chairs. It was the custom for guests to perform ablutions and to remove their sandals before settling down to a night of food. To say nothing of divers beauteous maidens fluttering about in attendance. Those noble gentlemen certainly did themselves well. One of the favourite dishes served at that time was a whole pig, boiled on one side and roasted on the other. Strange that there is no mention of the morning-after-the-night-before. One’s imagination can supply the missing details. Gastric ulcers must have been the fashionable complaint in those brave days of appetite. Still stranger is this. To-day, man’s appetite in proportion has dwindled to an amazing degree. We merely pick at our food to-day. And yet the radio, the daily papers and journals shout to us a thousand-and-one anti-acid cures for disturbed digestions. As the Yankees would say-We can’t take it! Yours cordially,

Cynthia