l exists today in many popular examples of cookery: lamb
and mint sauce, steak and catsup, mutton and currant jelly, pork and
apples (in various forms), oyster cocktail, poultry and compote, goose
with apple and raisin dressing, venison and Cumberland sauce, mince
pie, plum pudding--typical survivals of ancient traditions.
"Intuition" is still preceding exact science, and "unnatural unions"
as in social, political and any other form of life, seem to be the
rule rather than the exception.

DISGUISING FOODS

Apicius is often blamed for his endeavor to serve one thing under the
guise of another. The reasons for such deceptions are various ones.
Fashion dictated it. Cooks were not considered "clever" unless they
could surprise guests with a commonplace food material so skillfully
prepared that identification was difficult or impossible. Another
reason was the absence of good refrigeration, making "masking"
necessary. Also the ambition of hosts to serve a cheaper food for a
more expensive one--veal for chicken, pork for partridge, and so on.
But do we not indulge in the same "stunts" today? We either do it with
the intention of deceiving or to "show off." Have we not "Mock Turtle
Soup," _Mouton a la Chasseur_, mutton prepared to taste like venison,
"chicken" salad made of veal or of rabbit? In Europe even today much
of the traditional roast hare is caught in the alley, and it belongs
to a feline species. "Roof hare."

FOOD ADULTERATIONS

There is positive evidence of downright frauds and vicious food
adulteration in the times of Apicius. The old rascal himself is not
above giving directions for rose wine without roses, or how to make a
spoiled honey marketable, and other similar adulterations. Those of
our readers with sensitive gastronomic instinct had better skip the
paragraphs discussing the treatment of "birds with a goatish smell."
But the old food adulterators are no match for their modern
successors.

Too, some of our own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In
centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or
"Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink
guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like
Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have made suckling pigs
out of dough, partridges of veal, chicken of tunny fish, and _vice
versa_. What indeed would a serious-minded research worker a thousand
years hence if unfamiliar with our culin