The pantropheon: or, History of food, and its preparation, from the earliest ages of the world / by A. Soyer. Embellished with forty-two steel plates, illustrating the greatest gastronomic marvels of antiquity.

  • Soyer, Alexis, 1809-1858.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pantropheon: or, History of food, and its preparation, from the earliest ages of the world / by A. Soyer. Embellished with forty-two steel plates, illustrating the greatest gastronomic marvels of antiquity. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    68/588 (page 30)
    IV. MANIPULATION OF FLOUR. Man 1ms not always eaten fine wheaten bread, biscuits, or sponge cakes; and, for many centuries, the inexperience of his palate prevented his imagining or understanding those magiric combinations, that science of good living,1 which requires time and serious study. Nature makes us hungry ; art creates, modifies, and directs the appetite these aie incon testable truths, which this work will serve to unfold, and, if necessary, to prove, should any of our readers unfortunately not be already con- vinced of the depth of these wise axioms. Let us go no further back than the year 2000 before the Chiistian era, and enter together the tent of the father of nations—Abraham. We might lead you to the fire-side of each of the nineteen patriarchs who preceded him, but that would take us too far. In the interior of this nomad dwelling, Sarah, the venerable com- panion of the Pastor-King, has just prepared, with flour and water, round pieces of flattened paste, which she places on the hearth, and covers afterwards with hot ashes.2 It was thus that princes and servants made bread in the East. The Jewish people who inhabited the Desert ate no other kind ;3 and the Prophet Elijah, reposing under the shade of a juniper tree, appeased his hunger with this simple, and primitive food.4 Sometimes, however, at certain periods of solemnity, the Hebrews used a gridiron, placed on the coals, or a frying-pan, into which they put the paste;5 but these various modes of cooking produced a kind of cake, dry, thin, and brittle,0 somewhat like the Jewish Passover cake, which was broken by the hand without the aid of a knife, they were called lecliem, choice and chief food,8 and the mother of