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Show I I THINGS TO KAT. If you lilce delicious things to eat. you certainly picked out the wroni; generation in which to live. The cooUery of centuries ni,ro must have hot'ti exquisite, judging from the writings of some of the ecstatic eaters. eat-ers. The king of Bithynia, Asia Minor, on one of his military expeditions, expe-ditions, developed u violent craving for an ocean herring. The ocean was far away. So the king's cook took a big turnip, cut it into the shape of a herring, fried it in oil, seasond it with the powdered grains of a dozen black poppies. The king swore it was the finest fish he ever ate. While you've eaten many a fish that tastes as good, it illustrates illus-trates the phenomenal skill of ancient cooks. Cookery is sometimes some-times classed as one of the lost arts. The most famous course at banquets ban-quets of rich Romans of old was humming bird tonnges, brought long distances by relays of swift runners. Today they would use refrigerator re-frigerator cars or airplanes. Greek chiefs of several thousand years ago were able to serve a whole pig, roasted on one side and boiled on the other, so skilfully prepared that the two parts were as distinct as if they were cooked separately. Tasty? Well, the stuffing was saturated sat-urated with a dozen or more kinds of wine. A race of gluttons was the natural development from this marvelous ancient cooking. A part-master of them, named Apieius, specialized at large shrimps. Hearing that the shrimps along the African coast were much larger he actually bought a ship, made tlie trip, was disappointed, and returned in deep melancholy. Philoxenus, asked what he wished most, promptly. A crane's neck, so I would be longer in partaking of my meals. Those good old days are gone. The last stronghold of eating as a ceremony was the banquet, now being made extinct by prohibition. Even the tradition Sunday dinner is losing out, in- the number of courses if not in taste. People are beginning to eat scientifically, by calorics and getting the job finished finish-ed as quickly as possible, gulping. It is just as well that cookery is becoming a lost art, though, for fine cooks ruin more digestions than good cooks, by enticing to over eat-j eat-j ing. |