SALADS. 625 
“alec,” highly esteemed by the epicures of those days. Amphore 
oi the former have been exhumed at Pompeii, the contents 
thereof being now voted ‘“darksome, saltish, biting, and 
beastly ” ; though this condiment, prepared from the intestines 
of fish allowed to putrefy, and then spiced to a degree, was the 
popular Roman Sauce, as proverbially as melted butter is now 
that of the English. Sydney Smith writing (June, 1844) to 
M. Eugene Robin, said: “I am living among the best society 
in the Metropolis, and at ease in my circumstances; I dine 
with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the country ;— 
passing from the Sauces of Dives to the sores of Lazarus.” 
“ Fames optimum condimentum est,—‘‘ Hunger is the poor 
man’s best Sauce.” Some wiseacre has scoffed at us English 
as “a people with only one Sauce.” The fact is we have as 
many Sauces as we have kinds of meat; each in the process of 
cooking yields its native sap, and this is the best of all sauces 
conceivable. Only English folk know what is meant by gravy ; 
consequently the English alone are competent to speak on the 
question of Sauce. Gravy is a watery solution of meat extract, 
which is browned by the action of heat whilst nearly dry, the 
change from broth to gravy being analogous to that which sugar 
undergoes when it becomes caramel. Broth, however highly 
concentrated, has never the stirring effect of gravy (not too 
brown). Such broth still requires the addition of flavouring 
vegetables, and condiments. When the extractive matters otf 
meat turn in cooking to reddish-brown gravy, the alkaloids, and 
peptonoids of the previously pale soup undergo a change, like 
that of starch, and sugar, when heated to a high degree of 
temperature ; they lose water, become doubled, or trebled in 
chemical structure, and assume new properties, the brown 
products being caramels, and exercising powerful effects on the 
nervous system. 
Charles Lamb, in Elia’s TYable-talk, has humorously said : 
“Tt is a desideratum in works that treat “de re culinarii” 
that we have no rationale of Sauces, or theory of mixed flavours, 
so as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, 
whilst laudable with brawn; why the haunch of mutton seeks 
the alliance of currant jelly, but the shoulder civilly declineth it ; 
why loin of veal (a pretty problem!), being itself unctuous, 
seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter; and why 
the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it ; 
: 40 
