It is a certain fact that the people of Crete to this day roast their goatsflesh exactly as that was roasted which cheered the fainting soul of the nmch enduring Ulysses after his storm-tossed passage thither. The Pillaw, the well-kno\Mi tower of rice and mutton, the centre dish even now of the oriental table, smoked on the boards of the Persian and . Parthian in the times of the Greeks and the Romans, and there can be no doubt that many a Babylonian stone and marble tower will yet rise and fall in those countries, before the towers of rice will be overthrown. There are certainly many animals and vegetables, and consequently many dislies which have been introduced into lands where they were before unknown, and have thus revolutionized their kitchens. Coffee, potatoes, and maize in Europe, and the spread of our horned cattle in America are the most striking examples of this. Among beverages, tea, wine, and spirituous distillations have also their claims to historical consideration. Neverthekss, taken on the whole, all nations cling with extraordinary tenacity and constancy to their old customs and their old culinary faith, as to their traditions, and myths, and old nurse's stories ; nay, as the examples already referred to prove, the system of cookery often survives systems of religion, and political constitutions fall, while the institutions of the kitchen maintain their ground.
There is a town in Germany, in which, on high festival-days a certain cake is prepared, called a kruU-cake. These cakes are mentioned in the oldest chronicles of the city, in narrating the choice of a Biirgermeister, or some such occurrence. It is recorded in " Piatt Deutsch," that they held a counsel and eat krull-cakes. The city was then catholic. Three hundred years ago, it became protestant, but to the old faith in krull-cakes it has adhered. The inhabitants dressed formerly in the old Spanish costume ; that gradually gave way to the French, but the krull-cakes held their ground, and the Gallicclad senators munched as the Spanish had done. At a later period, the city lost all its old constitution, as part of the Germanic body, and was incorporated with France, and thus the men became outwardly and inwardly another people, spoke another language, wore 6ther clothing, and thought other thoughts. But to this day they bake and eat krull-cakes, as their blessed forefathers did before them, though perhaps they do not resemble them in any other particular. These are things that seem to have escaped the observation and research of philosophers more than any other kind of phenomenon.
To make krull-cakes, fine sifted wheat or flour is taken, skimmed -milk, so many eggs, and certain spices, the dough is put into an iron mould, and toasted at a gentle fire. In this recipe so much seems arbitrary, that one would expect continual change. On the contrary, the fashion of the cake has survived the storms of centuries, and seems to possess a constant power of selfreproduction, like plants and minerals.
The preparation of many kinds of food is maintained in certain forms by religious and political laws, as the unleavened bread of the Jews, which is in form, taste, and essence, the same as it was in the time of Moses. That is intelligible ; but how is the fashion of cookery maintained without any such aid. Strabo mentions certain flat-pressed sausages of pigs-meat, that were favourite articles of food with the people of Byzantium. Byzantium has since been Roman, Greek, Latin, Turkish, and is about to become Russian, and those flat-sausages exist yet in Constantinople, and are carried thence into the neighbouring provinces. So it was, in Strabo's time, the custom, in certain provinces by the Black vSea, to cut beef into long strips and dry it in the air to preserve it. These customs did not certainly arise from any natural necessity, for there are many countries quite as dry, and where there is a still gi'eater want of fuel, where the custom never prevailed, but on the Black Sea it prevails to this day.
The character of many a nation depends certainly, in no small degree, on the food which the country yields, and, on the other hand, the character of the nation as certainly operates on the choice and preparation of its food. Certain inclinations to certain kinds of food, may also bo traced among difierent nations. Swine's fleali was at all titncs an abomination to the Arabians ; and the aversion of the Jew to pork, would alone suffice to show him of Arabian origin. The Germanic nations have always held beef in favour, and they alone know how to prepare it, so as to make it savoury and nutritive. In Germany as in England, in Sweden as in Norway and Denmark, the German blood announces itself by this unfailing test. The Roman nations, the French, the Spaniards, and the Italians, have all something in common in their kitchen, as in their language and history.