A visual document of Gastricolium III

The Gastrinauts would like to thank the Gastricolites for their valor that helped them surve the insanities of Gastricolium III.

The Old Gastrinauts and the new member, the Gastricoach prepared to start their official duties.

The smoked fish was served.
The party started.
A Gastrinaut was possesed by Beelzebub.
Gastrichaos ensued.

After a short break, to recover our health, honor and finances, we will announce a Gastricolium IV, where pumpkins won't be thrown onto the street. Stay tuned!

On Gastricolite's Reaction

Utcumque ferculum, eximii et bene noti saporis, appositum fuerit, fiat autopsia convivae; et nisi facies ejus ac oculi vertantur ad acstasism, notetus ut indignus.

This has been translated by the sworn translator of the grand council as follows: Whenever a dish of distinguished and well-known savor is served, the host will serve his guests attentively, and will condemn as unworthy all those whose faces do not express their rapture.

-Brillat-Savarin

On Gourmandism

Gourmandism is an impassioned, considered, and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste. [...] it deserves praise and encouragement. Physically, it is the result as well as the proof of the perfect state of health of our digestive organs. Morally, it is an implicit obedience of the rules of the Creator, who, having ordered us to eat in order to live, invite us to do so with appetite, encourages us with flavor, and rewards us with pleasure.

-Brillat-Savarin

The Saucier's Reasoning

We must consider as leading sauces the espangnole, veloute, allemande, and bechamel, because with these four sauces we can compose a very great number of small sauces, of which the seasoning differs infinitely. . . .
It is in following this reasoning that I have, I dare say, created an infinite number of new things of which my books carry the indelible mark; and in order to obtain the same results, all that is necessary is a little good sense, and occupying oneself without relaxation in the progress of the science which one professes.

-Marie-Antoine Careme in his Art of French Cooking in the 19th Century.

The Roux

The assistant of the stock, the roux, brings to the brown sauce only a flavor note of little importance, beyond its thickening principle, and it has the disadvantage of requiring, in order that the sauce be perfect, an almost absolute elimination of its components. Only the starchy principle remains in a sauce properly skimmed. Indeed, if the element is absolutely necessary to give mellowness and velvetiness to the sauce, it is much simpler to give it pure, which permits one to bring it to the point in as little time as possible, and to avoid a too prolonged sojourn on the fire. It is therefore infinitely probable that before long starch, fecula, or arrowroot obtained in a state of absolute purity will replace flour in the roux.

-From Auguste Escoffier's Guide Culinaire.

An obscure reference to the temperamental benefits of cabbage

Why is it that to those who are very drunk everything seems to revolve in a circle...?
Why is it that to those who are drunk one thing at which they are looking sometimes appears to be many?
Why is it that those who are drunk are incapable of having sexual intercourse?
Why is it that wine which is mixed but tends toward the unmixed causes a worse headache the next morning than entirely unmixed wine?
Why has wine the effect both of stupefying and of driving to a frenzy those who drink it?
Why is it that cabbage stops the ill effect of drinking?
Why are the drunken more easily moved to tears?
Why is it that the tongue of those who are drunk stumbles?
Why is it that oil is beneficial against drunkenness and sipping it enables one to continue drinking?

-From the Problemata, a work traditionally ascribed to Aristotle, the third Book of which is concerned entirely with drinking and drunkenness.

To attain the ultimate in the pleasures of the table

But, the impatient reader may exclaim, how can one possibly assemble, in this year of grace 1825, a meal which will meet all the conditions necessary to attain the ultimate in the pleasures of the table?
I am about to answer that question. Draw near, Reader, and pay heed: it is Gasterea, the loveliest of the muses, who inspired me; I shall speak more clearly than an oracle, and my precepts will live throughout the centuries.
“Let the number of guests be no more than twelve, so that conversation may always remain general;
“Let them be so chosen that their professions will be varied, their tastes analogous, and that there be such points of contact that the odious formality of introductions will not be needed;
“Let the dinning room be more than amply lighted, the linen of dazzling cleanliness, and the temperature maintained at from sixty to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit;
“Let the gentlemen be witty without pretension, and the ladies charming without too much coquetry;
“Let the dishes be of exquisite quality, but limited in their number, and the wines of the first rank also, each according to its degree;
“Let the progression of the former be from the most substantial to the lightest, and of the latter from the simplest wines to the headiest;
“Let the tempo of eating be moderate, the dinner being the last affair of the day: the guests should behave like travelers who must arrive together at the same destination;
“Let the coffee be piping hot, and the liqueurs of the host’s especial choice;
“Let the drawing room which awaits the diners be large enough to hold a card table for those who cannot do without it, with enough space left for after-dinner
conversations;
“Let the guests be disciplined by the restraints of polite society and animated by the hope that the evening will not pass without its rewarding pleasures;
“Let the tea be not too strong, the toast artfully buttered, and the punch made with care;
“Let the leavetakings not begin before eleven o’clock, but by midnight let every guest be home and abed.”
If anyone has attended a party combining all these virtues, he can boast that he has known perfection, and for each of them which has been forgotten or ignored he will have experienced the less delight.

-Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste

Hemp Seed Soup

Italy, 1470

To make 12 servings, take a pound of hemp seeds. Clean them and let them boil in a pot until they begin to open, and then add a pound of white almonds, well pounded, and then add them to the seeds. Pound it well and add a crustless bread. Distemper this with meat broth or thin chicken broth and pass through a sieve. Set it to boil in a pot over the coals far from the fire, stirring many times with a spoon. The add half a pound of sugar and half an ounce of ginger, and a bit of saffron with rosewater. Serve it with sweet spices on top.

(Excerted from "Cooking in Europe, 1250-1650", by Ken Albala)

Dining in Ancient Times

Mesopotamians and Egyptians preferred small, portable tables that might serve only one or two diners, although many tables could be brought into an area for a banquet. The Greeks ate in many different styles, from individual tables to the boardinghouse-style dinners for which Sparta was famous. Rome boasted formal dining rooms, called triclinia, in which three couches were aligned in a U-shape. Each couch traditionally accommodated three diners, who took foods from a central table. Formal dining posture changed during the ancient period. In archaic times, polite society sat upright to dine; by about the seventh century B.C.E the well-to-do started reclining on couches for formal meals, a custom attributed to the Persians. Upright posture remained the rule for informal meals among all classes and civilizations. Women were usually excluded from dinner parties in Greece; they might attend Roman parties, but many times they sat, rather than reclined, on the couches. In the Greco-Roman world sitting up to dine signaled social inferiority.

(Excerpted from "Cooking in Ancient Civilizations", by Cathy K. Kaufman)