DIETETIC CURIOSITIES. 35 



abbot is functional to his body only as salt is to pork in preventing 

 imminent putrefaction." 



Essays on diet gravitate toward the Austrian abbot, it seems. 

 But the importance of the three daily meals was indeed wonderfully 

 enhanced by the tedium of convent-life. The god Venter, Ulrich Hut- 

 ten insinuates, was ever of more consequence to the holy fraternity than 

 all the saints of the Roman calendar, and the greatest miracle in their 

 estimation is the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves of bread. 

 With few exceptions the abbeys and prebendaries of mediaeval Europe 

 were strongholds of gluttony, the well-appointed receptacles of the 

 viri amplissimi who carved the board of the dinner-table for the recep- 

 tion of their ample paunches, and whose faces shone at the aspect of a 

 favorite dish as the countenance of Moses on Sinai. Their fasts in Lent 

 were really a satire on the bona fide and chronic fasts of the poor ; pas- 

 try, puddings, and eel-pies in lieu of the normal venison haunches, and 

 butter instead of ham-fat, helped to sweeten the time of penance ; and 

 Erasmus mentions the prior of an abbey who instructed his major-domo 

 to reduce the accustomed number of dumplings for the sake of Good- 

 Friday : " Make only ten to-day," said the pious prelate " but," after 

 some reflection, " you can make them a little larger." 



Of what transcendent interest the bill of fare must have been to 

 Cardinal Dubois, who called on the dying Fontenelle at his boarding- 

 house ! The landlord announcing asparagus for dinner, and asking in- 

 structions in regard to the desired sauce, provoked an animated con- 

 troversy between the two dogmatists. Fontenelle insisted on cream, the 

 Cardinal on melted butter, till the landlord suggested a compromise 

 he would divide the material and use a separate sauce for each half. 

 But Fontenelle was not destined to eat that dinner his day of life was 

 ended by a stroke of apoplexy before the sun had reached the meridian. 

 Dubois, who had recognized the sad fact with a paroxysm of grief, then 

 rushed to the landing and shouted down the memorable words, "Mettez 

 tous au beurre ! " (Butter-sauce for the whole lot !) 



Twenty per cent, of the French revenues were ingulfed by the cui- 

 sine of Louis le Grand, and other court kitchens have furnished very 

 strong arguments to the opponents of royalty. During the ante- 

 Napoleonic era of small German principalities, more than one of those 

 " commanders of four faithful square miles " astonished the world by 

 selecting a Secretary of the Treasury from his staff of French cooks ; 

 but they who wondered did not know what secrets those functionaries 

 could have revealed to a committee of ways and means. Peter the 

 Great, at his departure from Castle Waldeck, where he had been feasted 

 as the guest of the sovereign proprietor for some days, was asked to 

 give his opinion of the chateau. " Everything is splendid," replied the 

 ingenuous Russian, " only the kitchen is too large." 



Such kitchens and their products have often deserved the attention 

 of the historical pragmatist. An indigestible mushroom stew provoked 



