The meal thus produced, was eaten either plain, or formed into a paste with water. Diodorus says, that the first inhabitants of Great Britain, after pressing the grains out of the ears, pounded them in a mortar, and so eat them ; and that these grains, thus pounded and bruised, formed their principal food, (1. 5.) The Indians of Peru prepared their barley by first toasting it, then reducing it to meal, and so eating it in spoons, without any further dressing, (Von. d'Ulloa t. 1.) The meal was separated from the bran, either by winnowing, or by passing it through baskets or sieves, made of osiers, or the fibres of bark. The Gauls, according to Pliny, were the first nation that had the ingenuity to make their sieves of horses hair. (I. xviii. s. 28.) The first sort of preparation that was probably given to meal was simply to mix it with water, and eat it in that state, as the people in the Highlands of Scotland do to this day. The water was sometimes applied hot, or the meal was boiled in it, so as to form a kind of hasty pudding, like the farro of the Italians. This kind of preparation was a standing dish with the ancients, which they eat either alone or with meat, and called it pubnen tum, or itulmentariunz. The Sagamite of the Indian tribes is a similar preparation of 'liaise, which they bake in an earthen vessel, with all kinds of meat. Illerurs des Sauv. t. 2.
This mixture of meal and water, when well kneaded together, forms dough, which when fashioned into cakes, and hardened by the fire, constitutes a kind of bread still in use with the poorer sort of people in all coun tries. It was probably this kind of bread that Abraham served up to the three angels that appeared to him in the valley of Mam•e, (Gen. xviii. 6.) The hearth-stone, or embers of the fire, answer the purpose of an oven for bread of this sort, which is dry and tough, and re quires to be eaten almost immediately after it. is baked. It was an improvement upon this mode of baking, to em ploy two hollow stones, between which the cake might be placed, after they had been heated with the fire. The bread of the Norwegians, of the Arabians, and of several American tribes, is baked in this manner at the present day, (Journal des an. 1668.) It was an easy transition from this to the invention of ovens, which are undoubtedly of great antiquity. Suidas gives the honour of this invention to one Annus, an Egyptian, a person entirely unknown in history, (vote 64.1.0); but it was pro bably not confined to any particular country. We find by the book of Genesis, that ovens were known in the time of Abraham, (c. xv. v. 17.), though we may suppose them to have been considerably different from those we now employ.
To perfect the process of making bread, it must be raised and lightened, by being mixed with leaven. This is some of the paste or dough kept, till, by undergoing a certain degree of fermentation, it. swells, rarefies, and
becomes somewhat sour. When this fermented dough is well worked with the fresh dough, and heated in the oven, it excites a similar but less advanced fermenta tion ; and by this means the bread is rendered much lighter to the stomach, and more palatable to the taste. " If ever," says M. de Goguet, " there was a discovery owing to chance, it is this of leaven. The idea of such a thing could scarcely occur naturally to the mind of man. The world was probably indebted for this happy discovery, to the ceconomy of some person or other, who, in order to save a little old dough, mixed it with the new, without foreseeing the utility of this mixture. This person would no doubt be very much surprised to find that the old dough, so sour and distasteful in itself, ren dered the new bread so much lighter, more savoury, and easier of digestion." Orig. of Laws, Ste. part i. b. 2. c. i. art. 2.
It does not appear that the bread which Abraham presented to the angels was leavened. But Moses makes frequent mention of unleavened and leavened bread, and in particular forbids the Israelites to use leavened bread at the eating of the paschal lamb. (Exod. c. xii. v. 15. The invention of beer, or wine of grains, affords a still more perfect method of lightening bread, than by means of leaven. The froth which forms upon this liquor during its fermentation, ana is called yeast, or barn, when mixed with dough, raises it better, and still more quickly, than fermented paste ; and never produces the sourish taste which is sometimes found in bread raised by leaven, owing probably to its fermentation be ing too far advanced.
We shall conclude these observations upon the pro gress of the arts respecting food, with rein rking, that the taste of mankind, in different ages, has been very fluctuating and capricious in this respect. We have already mentioned, upon the authority of Homer, that fish were in no esteem among the ancient Greeks. Among all the feasts mentioned by that poet, we never meet with game, poultry, or eggs. Nothing of this kind appears even on the tables of Penelope's suitors, al though the poet represents them as abandoned to excess and luxury. It is precisely the same thing with respect to fruits and vegetables, which are never once mentioned. Onions, indeed, are once served up, but it is only to excite thirst, Iliad. I. xi. v. 629.) " When Homer com posed his poems," says Lord Karnes, "at least during the Trojan war, the Greeks had not acquired the art of gelding cattle ; they ate the flesh of bulls and of rams. Kings and princes killed and cooked their victuals : spoons, forks, table-cloths, and napkins, were unknown. They fed sitting, the custom of reclining upon beds be ing afterwards copied from Asia; and, like other savages, they were great eaters." Sketches of Man. b. i. sk. 4. 1.