ic and more bewildering.

What of combinations of fish and meat?

_De gustibus non est disputandum._ It all goes into the same stomach.
May it be a sturdy one, and let its owner beware. What of our turkey
and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam
chowder, our divine _Bouillabaisse_? If the ingredients and component
parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless
Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and
details (supposed to be known to any good practitioner) we would have
recipes just as mysterious as any of the Apician formulae.

Danneil, like ever so many interpreters, plainly shared the
traditional belief, the egregious errors of popular history. People
still are under the spell of the fantastic and fanciful descriptions
of Roman conviviality and gastronomic eccentricities. Indeed, we
rather believe in the insanity of these descriptions than in the
insane conduct of the average Roman gourmet. It is absurd of course to
assume and to make the world believe that a Roman patrician made a
meal of _garum_, _laserpitium_, and the like. They used these
condiments judiciously; any other use thereof is physically
impossible. They economized their spices which have caused so much
comment, too. As a matter of fact, they used condiments niggardly and
sparingly as is plainly described in some formulae, if only for the one
good and sufficient reason that spices and condiments which often came
from Asia and Africa were extremely expensive. This very reason,
perhaps, caused much of the popular outcry against their use, which,
by the way, is merely another form of political propaganda, in which,
as we shall see, the mob guided by the rabble of politicians excelled.

We moderns are just as "extravagant" (if not more) in the use of
sauces and condiments--Apician sauces, too! Our Worcestershire,
catsup, chili, chutney, walnut catsup, A I, Harvey's, Punch, Soyer's,
Escoffier's, Oscar's (every culinary coryphee endeavors to create
one)--our mustards and condiments in their different forms, if not
actually dating back to Apicius, are, at least lineal descendants from
ancient prototypes.

To readers little experienced in kitchen practice such phrases (often
repeated by Apicius) as, "crush pepper, lovage, marjoram," etc.,
etc., may appear stereotyped and monotonous. They have not survived in
modern kitchen parlance, because the practice of using spices, flavors
and aromas