some years ago a contemporary philosopher told us that there was nothing an Englishman would not do ; nothing an American would not say ; nothing an Italian would not sing ; no music to which the Frenchman would not dance ; nothing the German would not covet ; and nothing the Chinese would not eat . it is not our purpose to discuss this dictum . suffice to say that few of us stop to marvel at the progress of civilisation which allows a dish borrowed straight from the prehistoric . how many centuries ago , in some cave or hilly hide , did our forebears home from the chase hold forth from a spear the welcome gobbet of meat or fish burnt and roasted in the homely and protecting flame . how many centuries later did the mercenary in the Roman wars thus impale on pike or lance his evening meal . later came the thrifty peasant , later still the young Victorian buck adventuring in Paris , and even later our attractive young ladies toying with these primitive morsels in the gleam and glitter of our latter-day restaurants . and , if certain dishes and modes of food have persisted down the ages , the motive that preserved them has always been the same . apart from the need for nourishment , the instinct of hospitality has always been strong in mankind . the sharing of a meal in those earliest dangerous days was an admittance into an acquaintanceship far more important than the casual meetings of the present day ; the desire to share something more intimate than mere converse has always been there . the truth is that good food offers a programme of entertainment almost unlimited in its variety and its presentation affords an opportunity of showing a guest something of ourselves . an amazing epoch of grossness and delicacy . it is a far enough cry from the primitive meal-times of a simpler world to the banquets of later days , when the table groaned under its load of complicated dishes , and for all the blossoming of the arts around them the diners were little removed : it was still fingers before forks - from their prototype , the hungry hunter . there was always the spice of an orgy in those Roman feasts , for instance , with all their peacocks and nightingales &apos; tongues ; unreasonable surfeit , too , in the elaborate fashion of eating brought out of Italy into France , we are told , by Catherine de Medici . the peasant in those days , as ever , ate sparingly , but generously enough in his own fashion , save at feast times , when he , too , let himself go ; and it was from his simpler food that the later renaissance of cooking was to come . epicures and gourmands , sated by the unending procession of dishes from those mammoth kitchens of the 18th century - that amazing epoch of grossness and delicacy - sought inspiration at last from the dishes of the country , and , instead of gorging the eye with magnitude , began to understand the value of intelligent selection and comparative simplicity , though nowadays their simplified meals would seem quite monstrous . the fleshpots of Egypt for which Israel sighed . does one , however , know who first thought of boiling water and food ? the ancient Britons , I believe , used to make water hot by dropping a red-hot poker into it , because their pots would not stand fire ; but Jacob must have had one that would , because Esau sold his birthright to him for a mess of pottage - and then we hear of the fleshpots of Egypt after which the Israelites sighed . anyhow , Homer does not seem to have known any way of cooking meat except by roasting and boiling . when Achilles gave a royal feast the principal dish was a grill , which he cooked himself , and he knew how to do it , too : - when the languid flames at length subside , he throws a bed of glowing embers wide ; above the coals the smoking fragment turns , and sprinkles sacred salt from lifted urns . when , however , the Greeks did learn the art of making fireproof earthenware from the Egyptians , their cookery made rapid progress , because they were men of taste and intellect . richly-distilled perfumes as an aid to digestion . a remarkable peculiarity in the banquets of the ancient world was the fact that they did not confine the resources of the table to the gratification of one sense alone . having exhausted their invention in the preparation of stimulants for the palate , they broke fresh ground and called another sense to their aid . by delicate application of odours and richly-distilled perfumes , these refined voluptuaries aroused the fainting appetite and added a more exquisite and ethereal enjoyment to the grosser pleasures of the board . the gratification of the sense of smelling was a subject of no little importance to the Romans . they considered flowers as forming a very essential article in their festal preparations ; and it is the opinion of Bassius that at their desserts the number of flowers far exceeded the number of fruits . when Nero supped in his golden house , a mingled shower of flowers and odorous essences fell upon him ; and one of the recreations of Heliogabalus was to smother his courtiers with flowers . nor was it entirely as an object of luxury that the ancients made use of flowers ; they were considered to possess sanative and medicinal qualities . according to Pliny , and others , certain herbs and flowers proved of sovereign power in preventing the approaches of ebriety , or , as Bassius less clearly expresses it , in clarifying the functions of the brain . the queer dinners of strange lands . it is said that there is nothing new under the sun , but regarding foodstuffs the traveller occasionally encounters a certain measure of novelty . in China , for instance , dried rats are esteemed a delicacy . the visitor is told that they restore the hair of the bald and that a stewed black rat will ward off a fever . a number of newly-born white mice served alive , dipped in treacle and swallowed like a prairie oyster is considered a piece of resistance . among the natives of northern Australia lizards roasted on the point of a spear are definitely a delicacy while Mediterranean peoples have a high opinion of the octopus as an article of diet . so have the Japanese and the Chinese . the celestials , apart from eating it fresh , squash it , press it and dry it , in which form , dusted over with flour , you will find a stack of it in almost any provision shop . bats are eagerly eaten in Dahomey , some of the Polynesian islands , the Malay archipelago and elsewhere . badger hams are a delicacy in China while mole is eaten in many parts of Africa . taste and temperament in curiosities of diet . the old saying , one man &apos;s meat is another man &apos;s poison , therefore possesses a great deal of truth . taste and temperament in fact play a great part in life , and there are many instances of eccentricity in diet and dishes , as in everything else in life . mankind has tried all kinds of food from roots to bird &apos;s nests , and from snails to elephant &apos;s feet or walrus blubber . though English folk to-day enjoy shrimps and eat periwinkles with a pin , they shudder at the Frenchman who relishes snails and frogs . the West Indian negro refuses to look at stewed rabbit , but will eat palm worms fried in oils and is fond of baked snakes . in Brazil and Siam the natives eat ants . the entrails of animals are relished in Salonica ; they are eaten just as the Italian eats his macaroni . the heads of the lambs are considered great delicacies and go first . when roasted , the unbounded joy of the native cracking the skull and picking out the tasty bits is nauseating in the extreme . Siberian peasants view with disgust the idea of eating hare . but there are West Indian natives who declare that no food in the world comes up to fricassee of rats that have fattened themselves in the sugar-cane plantations . each to his taste , therefore , seems to be a reasonable policy to pursue . a knowledge of the world &apos;s foods , in any case , ought to increase international tolerance . national foods which affect the temperament . foodlore reflects much more of national temperament than is customarily imagined as well as entering human activities to a greater extent than is usually assumed . we naturally can not overlook that Magyar cookery owes one of its most classic features to the Turkish rule under which the Hungarians groaned for nearly 200 years . if that country had not been for so long a battlefield red with the blood shed to defend Christian civilisation , Hungary would have been deprived of the condiment which provides many Magyar dishes with a vivid and brilliant scarlet hue . the Austrian cuisine embraces the delectable Wiener Schnitzel as well as dishes and stews heightened with aromatics where the paprika insinuates its perfidious fire , aerian creams , ingenious pastries and a crescent-shaped breakfast roll created by a pastry cook to celebrate the victory against the Turks in 1683 . Spanish cookery is reminiscent of bull-fights , of Spanish dancing and of Goja : it is vivid , highly coloured , sometimes quixotic and withal it has a sombre ardour , with streaks of poetry , meat disguised under heavy and vehement sauces , pimentos and rancid butter . the Czechoslovak kitchen , again , is so languorous , so passionate , and possibly comparable alone to a gypsy melody . the paprika and caraway perfume the meats with their antithesis . the opulent varieties of Czechoslovak pastries recall in fact the rich heritage of rich embroideries and costumes specifically national . art and science of the kitchen : the art and science of cookery , however , is essentially French , and , irrespective of the fact that I have never run across anyone in Gaul who has been a glutton , I can positively say that it has been equally difficult to find one who has not been an epicure . the French have an inborn appreciation of good food and the gusto which they derive from gastronomy is intellectual and aesthetic as well as physical . there is the same finesse about their feeding , the same subtle delicacy of touch , the same unfailing sense of proportion as exists among her writers , music composers and other exponents of things that are typically French . the pot-au-feu is as much a national institution in France as is tea drinking among ourselves and it is prepared at least once a week in every bourgeois household . Thackeray , of course , waxed enthusiastic about bouillabaisse and sang - this bouillabaisse a noble dish is , a sort of soup , or broth , or brew , a hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes that Greenwich never could outdo ; green herbs , red peppers , mussels , saffron , soles , onions , garlic , roach and dace . genius &amp; food - food for thought . a fascinating study also opens up in the dietary welcomed by men of genius as well as the foods for which they have had an aversion . Shelley , for example , had a great contempt for animal food , believing that it impaired the intellectual faculties . Bunyan &apos;s breakfast and supper consisted of a piece of coarse bread and a bowl of milk . Dante Gabriel Rossetti had simple tastes in food . at one dinner he is said to have been blind to the charms of turbot and to have been much more interested in the dish in which it was served . he turned it over on the table cloth to examine the marks on the back without going through the formality of having his turbot removed first . Wagner was a highly practical feeder . he ate very fast , placing his food in his mouth and gulping it down as he talked . Brigham Young would make a dinner on tripe which he washed down with beer . a writer who had dinner with Dickens says the menu was Whitstable oysters , a brown sole , a baked leg of mutton with oyster &amp; veal stuffing and a gin punch . the same man went to see Carlyle , and , after mentioning that he had dined with Longfellow told the sage a very funny story which made Carlyle absolutely laugh ; but all the Chelsea philosopher did in return was to ask if his guest would have a cup of tea ! 