Life Is Meals_ A Food Lover's Book of Days - James Salter [16]
PERFECT DIET
The heroes of the Trojan War seem to have feasted mainly on mutton and roast pork. Actually, the ancient Greeks ate a great amount of fish, the sea being on every side: sole, turbot, tuna, octopus. There was also abundant game.
There is no single food that can supply all the nutrition humans need, though this is not the case with animals. Diets vary from country to country and through the ages, but most of them tend to supply, in one form or another, what is necessary. For the citizens of Athens, Socrates recommended a diet of bread, cheese, vegetables, olives, and fruit. They would, as a result, lead healthy lives and die at a ripe old age. Galen, the great Greek physician who stamped his ideas on medicine for several centuries, regarded fruit with suspicion, however. His father, he stated, had lived to be one hundred because he never ate any.
In the Middle Ages, the concept that the right diet was of greater importance than medicines and cures—an idea that still has its power—dominated Western medicine. The question of the right diet was another matter. It was accepted that all things were made up of four elements: air, fire, water, and earth. In humans, this took the form of four corresponding “humors”: blood, bile (anger or choler), phlegm (calmness or apathy), and black bile (melancholy). Thus, a man of choleric temperament (fire) should avoid “hot” foods, while “cold” foods, such as fruit, were suitable.
Conversation at dinner, one can speculate, might be thought of as hot or cold also. Religion, politics, and sex could be called hot, although George Bernard Shaw once observed that they were the only topics of interest to an intelligent person.
SOFT-BOILED EGG
The greatest dishes are very simple dishes, Escoffier said.
What could be more simple and pure than a single soft-boiled egg on the breakfast table in an egg cup along with some buttered toast? The egg cup is essential. It is an altar enhancing the egg’s beauty as well as holding it, still too hot to touch, while the crown is gently removed. A bit of salt, perhaps a touch of butter, and a spoon small enough to fit inside—one of life’s feasts is before you. No omelet or elaborate egg dish—poached, sauced, scrambled, whatever—can surpass it.
To soft-boil, put an egg that is at room temperature into slowly boiling water for approximately six minutes. Remove and serve immediately.
For a hard-boiled egg, leave in for ten to twelve minutes, then place in cold water for six to seven minutes to stop the cooking and make the shell easy to peel. Eggs cooked too long have rubbery whites and yolks that tend to crumble.
BEING EARNEST
1895. The eve of the opening of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in London. In the play, at teatime in Jack’s garden, Jack and Algernon are caught in lies by their fiancées, who have stormed off.
JACK: How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins, when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me perfectly heartless.
ALGERNON: Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.
JACK: I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.
ALGERNON: When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
CHOCOLATE
It is not surprising that chocolate, with its reputation as an aphrodisiac, is a favorite gift on Valentine’s Day. Celebrating love and romance, one legend says the holiday is named for a martyred Roman priest who secretly performed marriage ceremonies in defiance of Emperor Claudius II, who believed unmarried men made better soldiers.