ANCIENT ESTIMATION OP EISH. 61 



none of your baby food for me.' The Greeks, indeed, 

 appear to have been wholly indiscriminate, cooking every 

 species, and occasionally paying most exorbitantly for 

 mere carrion: the clean and the unclean entered not 

 into their code of dietetics. With the finest perception 

 of the beautiful in many things, the kalon kagathon in 

 fish is what they had no more idea of than a seal or 

 an Esquimaux, and their recorded opinion has reached 

 posterity, that that flesh was finest which was most like 

 fish ; and, conversely, that fish to be preferred which was 

 most Hke flesh.* The nations whom the Greeks and 

 Romans called barbarians — that is, all the rest of the 

 world — had a diflerent code culinaire, often at variance 

 with theirs; e.g. the Egyptians esteeming the coracinus — 

 a fish detested even by the Greeks — as inferior to none 

 in flavour ; the Spaniards set high store upon their 

 dorys, and colias mackerel, famous, as we shall see, in 

 the preparation of fish-sauce ; whUe the salmon, wholly 

 unknown to the Greeks, and only known to the Latins 

 as a foreigner,t was ' the pride of Aquitaine in France.' 

 The remarkable Divine interdict obliging the Jews to ab- 

 stain from certain fish as unclean, cut off from Hebrew 

 tables many species in high esteem amongst surrounding 

 Pagan nations; mackerel, thunny, eels, mursenas, lam- 

 preys, and sturgeon, being defective either in fins or 

 scales, they were not permitted to touch ; and though 

 they too, doubtless, had their predilections, we are not 

 acquainted with them. 



The ancients cooked fish in all the usual modes now 



* TS>v K.peS>v, ra jj.r] Kpea 



"HSiora, Koi t5>v l^Bvmv ol jir] ladies. 

 In accordance with. wMcIl vitiated decision of the palate, we find 

 them enjoying barbel, singing the praises of thunny, and smack- 

 ing their lips over conger-eel. 

 t Hiny. 



