nt marketing and
transportation systems, food cold storage. They knew, however, to take
care of what there was. They were good managers.

Such atrocities as the willful destruction of huge quantities of food
of every description on the one side and starving multitudes on the
other as seen today never occurred in antiquity.

Many of the Apician dishes will not appeal to the beef eaters. It is
worthy of note that much criticism was heaped upon Apicius some 200
years ago in England when beef eating became fashionable in that
country. The art of Apicius requires practitioners of superior
intellect. Indeed, it requires a superior clientele to appreciate
Apician dishes. But practitioners that would pass the requirements of
the Apician school are scarce in the kitchens of the beef eaters. We
cannot blame meat eaters for rejecting the average _chef d'{oe}uvre_
set before them by a mediocre cook who has learned little besides the
roasting or broiling of meats. Once the average man has acquired a
taste for the refined compositions made by a talented and experienced
cook, say, a composition of meats, vegetables or cereals, properly
"balanced" by that intuition that never fails the real artist, the
fortunate diner will eventually curtail the preponderant meat diet. A
glance at some Chinese and Japanese methods of cookery may perhaps
convince us of the probability of these remarks.

Nothing is more perplexing and more alarming than a new dish, but we
can see in a reversion to Apician cookery methods only a dietetic
benefit accruing to this so-called white race of beef eaters.

Apicius certainly excels in the preparation of vegetable dishes (cf.
his cabbage and asparagus) and in the utilization of parts of food
materials that are today considered inferior, hardly worth preparing
for the table except by the very careful and economical housekeeper.
Properly prepared, many of these things are good, often more
nutritious than the dearer cuts, and sometimes they are really
delicious.

One has but to study the methods of ancient and intelligent people who
have suffered for thousands of years under the perennial shortage of
food supplies in order to understand and to appreciate Apician
methods. Be it far from us to advocate their methods, or to wish upon
us the conditions that engendered such methods; for such practices
have been pounded into these people by dire necessity. They have
graduated from the merciless school of hunger.

F