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and herons. The Romans roasted, boiled, and stewed their fowls, 

 but stewing was the method most in vogue : perhaps because they 

 could so best disguise the strong flavour of a cormorant or a stork. 

 They generally gave their birds a preparatory boil before they 

 plucked and cleansed them ; or sometimes they steamed them 

 first. 



I have already spoken of one main branch of the Roman dishes, 

 the isicia, our rissoles, quenelles, croquettes, kromeskys, etc. I 

 will now call your attention to the patina, the minutal, and the 

 salacacabla. I have already given an instance of a patina or stew 

 of fish. Patincs or stews of vegetables were made of pounded 

 vegetables, such as asparagus, mixed with eggs, and sometimes 

 with milk, but always with eggs. Honey, pepper, garum, oil, and 

 other ingredients were added. The patincs of fruit answer to our 

 compote of fruit, but we do not now-a-days flavour quinces with 

 leeks, or pears with anchovy sauces. The patincs were elaborate 

 stews, which survived in mediaeval cookery, and are now gone out. 



The minutal was a mess of chopped or minced fish or meat, 

 without either milk or eggs, but bread or biscuit was always an 

 ingredient. The salacacabla was a similar dish, in which bread 

 and cheese was an essential : it was always set by the application 

 of cold. These two dishes, like the patina, died out in mediaeval 

 times : they were too much of a mixture, not to say mess, for 

 modern stomachs. The Patina Apiciana was a mixture of pounded 

 pork, fish, chicken, becaficoes, fieldfares, and qvxacunqat optima 

 fuerunt, pounded and chopped with pepper, lovage, garum, 

 wine, pas urn, pine nuts — a regular Salmigondis. A fair idea 

 of a salacacabla may be got from "Peregrine Pickle," where 

 one is described as consisting of parsley, pennyroyal, cheese, 

 pine tops, honey, vinegar, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and 

 hen livers, all macerated and pounded up in a mortar, and after- 

 wards set by the application of snow. 



Of pastry the Romans made little use, except for pies. They 

 made meat pies, and ham pies, and chicken pies — pies of all sorts 

 of fowl, even of storks and herons. Their paste was made ex farina 

 oleo subacta, that is of flour and oil. 



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