The pillars of Hercules

Two women sat in front grinding, and as they proceeded filled the flour into a basket. My hostess, seated on the ground, had in her lap a round wooden tray three feet in diameter, the edge resting on the round. The flour-basket was on the right hand, a jar of water on the left. She first took a handful of flour, and dusted it into the tray, then, dipping both hands in the water, passed them through it, and so continued dusting and dipping and then making sweeps right and left through the growing mass, which gradually shaped itself into small grains. The fingers passing quickly and lightly, through and over it, the little moistened particles were augmented from the dry flour, and new ones formed. The art consists in causing it to granulate, and in preventing it from clotting. Each grain receives with its several coatings pressure and manipulation. We are all familiar with the change of substance produced by working crumbs of bread between the fingers; and in some analogous change appears to consist the secret of this dish.

The fact that the tray was sufficiently full, was notified to me by a smart nudge of the elbow. It was then brought upon an even keel, and she dashed away amongst it with both hands in a fine style: it was then thrown into a sieve of pierced sheepskin; and, shaken and tossed, the smaller grains passed through below, the larger were brushed away from the top: the size, which varies, was, in this case, about that of a large pin’s head. The operation was now completed, and it came forth a grain reconstructed from the flour by a process which rendered it fit for food, without fermentation, and almost without firing. From the sieve it is turned into a conical basket of palmetto leaves and placed on the top of one of the long-necked jars boiling on the fire. In a quarter of an hour it is cooked, or rather heated. It is curious to find steam employed, in probably the most ancient of made-dishes.

In this simple form, or with buttermilk, kuscoussoo constitutes the common food of the people. Fowls or meat, when used, are stewed in the pot over which it is steamed: the gravy is poured over it, and the meat or fowl perched on the top. In these cases, it is turned of course out of the basket into an earthen dish. Gideon in his cookery used a basket and a dish.

A still more remarkable operation is that of eating it. The Moor gets his kuscoussoo into his mouth without the aid of a spoon; yet neither does he drop it, nor does he poke in the plate to catch greasy grains, nor smear one hair of his moustache. He beats the chopsticks with the knowing jerk of the South Sea islanders. A monkey only spills his kuscoussoo. With the points of the fingers of the right hand a portion of the grains is drawn towards the side of the dish. It is fingered as the keys of a pianoforte till it gathers together; it is then taken up into the hand, shaken, pressed till it adheres, moulded till it becomes a ball; tossed up and worked till it is perfect, and then shot by the thumb, like a marble, into the open mouth.[258] Eaten otherwise it is no longer kuscoussoo, and the spoon-feeding Frank may live upon it for twenty years, and never know what it is that he is eating.[259]

Dr. Shaw, who lived so long at Algiers and travelled all over Barbary, has remarked—but not accurately—these peculiarities. He calls the ball Hamsa, mistaking cause for effect. The name of the ball is cora. Hamsa is a slang term for hand, corresponding with our word fives, and its dexterity being peculiarly exhibited in this operation, they may have jocularly answered his questions about it with that word.

Marmol, a Christian captive, entertains great respect for kuscoussoo, but Leo Africanus, a Moor of Grenada, a Mussulman and Prince of the Land, thus reviles it. “In winter they have sodden flesh with a kind of meat called Cuscusu, which being made of a lump of dough, is set upon the fire in certain vessels full of holes, and afterwards is tempered with butter and pottage. The said cuscusu is set before them all in one platter only, whereon gentlemen as well as others take it not with spoons, but with their claws five (Hamsa.) The meat and pottage is put all in one dish, out of which every one raketh with his greasy fists what he thinks good. You shall never see knife upon the table, but they tear and greedily devour their meat like hungry dogs. Neither doth any of them desire to drink before he hath well stuffed his paunch: another will sup of a cup of cold water as big as a milk bowl.”

M. Roche, who had the advantage of Leo by a double apostacy, used his proficiency in the opposite sense, and won the day in his late coup de main, by his dexterity in making and projecting coras. Kuscoussoo with other food was put upon a table for him; knives, forks, and spoons were laid out; but he seized the kuskas or kuscoussoo dish, squatted down with it on the floor, and turned up the sleeve of his uniform, observing, “This is the way we eat kuscoussoo.” That other extraordinary adventurer, Ali Bey, who was sent by the Prince of Peace with the scheme of revolutionizing Morocco, until the Spanish forces should be ready to land to take possession of it, was equally expert—in fact, it was a sine quâ non of admission into society.

Vermicelli and macaroni are derived from kuscoussoo. They are both in use in Morocco. Vermicelli is simply the grains of the kuscoussoo rolled long; it is then called spauria. The macaroni is served as a long roll, coiled like a rope, on a large plate. It is called Fidaoush. The Spanish name for macaroni is fidaos, Fideh, the Greek φιδή.

But the Moors are not ignorant of the art of making bread. On the contrary, they abound in varieties, and have particular kinds for particular seasons. The Spaniards have evidently derived from them their manner of baking, in which the dough is most severely handled, and then, but very slightly, raised or baked. Their bread is something between biscuit and bread: those who have not eaten it in Andalusia, and particularly at Seville, do not know what bread is.

Fortunate are the people who possess a dish like kuscoussoo. Any comparison between them and the bread-eating nations is very difficult, for they have economy and comforts which are too subtle for calculation. The Indian has his rice and curry.[260] The inhabitants of the Eastern and Southern portions of Europe have their dishes (not bread) of Indian corn. The Turks, the Persians, the Tartars, the Arabs, have their pilaf, which spreads from the Adriatic to the Yellow Sea—from the Yrtish to the Indian Ocean. The domain of kuscoussoo extends from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. It does not appear to have been original amongst the Arabs, as indeed no farinaceous food could be; yet it has the unmistakable impress of antiquity. Wheat is one of those inventions or introductions which in Greece, in Egypt, in Etruria, has a date. We know of it nowhere as original. Its modern use is imagined to be restricted to the Northern and Western portions of Europe. It is, however, universal in Northern Africa, and would appear to have been original among its inhabitants; and I infer that we are indebted for it to the Holy Land. If we have borrowed from the Philistines the grain; we have neglected—just as with Indian corn and rice—to borrow the proper way of cooking it. In these other grains we cannot be brought to institute any comparison; but kuscoussoo is wheat.

Bread alone will not serve as a people’s diet, and is, moreover, expensive. We separate the parts of the flour which are adapted to one another—and so best fitted for food—and thus the coarse bread and the fine are equally deteriorated. By fermentation the nature of the grain is changed;[261] and by the baking, while in that state, considerable loss is incurred by the evaporation of alcohol, which our Excise laws now forbid us to collect. The difference in point of economy cannot be less than a quarter in favour of kuscoussoo; and taking it as furnishing forth the meal without the adjuncts which our labouring classes require, it will not be too much to say that, bushel for bushel, the grain is worth to them the double of what it is to us.[262]

A new discovery in baking has been made in New Holland, in consequence of the ignorance of common arts produced by the subdivision of labour. We do not know baking afloat; and in the first settlement of that colony, the women were from the cities, and did not know how to bake. The bakers appear to be a moral class, for the men were equally ignorant. The colony lived for years on biscuits, and even at the governor’s table the guests were in the habit of bringing their own biscuits. The convicts could not be so daintily treated: their weekly allowance of flour was served out to them, and they were allowed to do with it what they liked, when accident or genius led them to treat it in this manner. Each slaked his fourteen pounds with water, and having made it into dough, proceeded to heat and pummel it by the hour: this huge mass of dough was then tumbled into the fire, the ashes having been raked out to heap over it when laid in. The bread so made, is pronounced by those familiar with it, excellent: it is called “damper,” from damping the fire. It is not wet and sodden as might be supposed, the manipulation, as in the kuscoussoo, rendering it palatable, and being perhaps slightly raised by the expansion of the air driven in by the beating which it receives with the fist.

I cannot return from this dissertation without a word on the cooking of the two other grains from which national dishes are made—Indian corn and rice. The uncertainties attending the condition of our own island, increase the importance of the knowledge of the best methods of dressing the substances that might be substituted for potatoes; and in the art of cookery, England is behind every other people.[263]

Indian corn does not do when eaten cold. As bread, it is kneaded with water and fired upon the griddle, and then eaten hot: as polenta it is cooked like Scotch porridge, or eaten with milk, or it is turned out and left to cool, and then, when wanted, is sliced and cooked on the gridiron or fried. In these forms it is an agreeable and wholesome food.[264]

Pilaf is a dish, which, like kuscoussoo, has its secret. I never tasted it eatable when made by a Christian. It is rice and butter, and the art depends in the manner of introducing the butter. Boiled with the rice, or added in the dish, it would be no pilaf. It is only a person deserving the name of cook, who, after several failures, might succeed. Such a person will find all that is requisite in what follows:—

The salt must be put in the water; the pan must be thick; the quantity of water must be adapted to the rice, which varies, so that when the rice is cooked, the whole water be absorbed. It must never be touched or stirred while cooking. Butter is then put in a frying-pan; the proportions experience will teach. When it boils up, it is poured over the rice, which sputters and swells; then one turn with a spoon is given, and it is put on the fire for a moment, and must be served up hot in the pan. The Mussulmans with this, end their dinner, to show that they have not eaten to gratify appetite, but to supply want; and they have a saying, that every pilaf a man does not eat, will rise up against him at the day of judgment.

My attention was first turned to their diet by this people’s splendid teeth. Nothing can better exhibit the quality of the food they masticate. Amongst us clean teeth, except by being cleaned, is a thing unknown. Without dentifrices, and without brushes, their teeth are pure and clean—the sure sign that they are free from those acids, which in us produce the greater portion of our diseases; while by the continual strain upon the sources of vitality, they shorten life and diminish its contentment while it lasts.

The first of blessings to an individual is health; and the next, supposing it not the cause, sobriety. If these be of such value to the individuals, of what value must they not be to a nation? Yet these are points at which no constitution has ever aimed; they are beyond the reach of legislator, philosopher, or schoolmaster; they can come only from habit, and of this habit the cook is the original and source. It is not without cause that man has been defined a cooking animal. It is in the cooking of the race, that its sense is first tested, oftenest exercised, and longest enjoyed. Rigid Lacedæmon honoured cooks as she did victors at the Olympic games; and although no professional artist might breathe her air, still to unbought excellence in the culinary art she reared statues.[265]

How rational to distinguish nations, as formerly, by their food. In ancient times the listener was not sickened with hearing about Sclavonic or German or Anglo-Saxon “race;” neither was he distracted with “aristocratic,” “monarchical.” When they wanted to show what a man was, they said, “he is a fish-eater,” or a “lotus-eater.” So the oracular response to the Spartans, “Beware of them, they live on acorns.”

Within the last few years an immense amount of talent and science has been brought to bear upon diet; and contrasting the works that have been produced with anything that has gone before, one remains in astonishment at the advantages which in this respect we possess. Yet what is the profit? A few persons may read these speculations in their library chairs; but what are the advantages even to these at the dinner-tables? Come here and you will see economic food and the healthiest people, who have no “animal chemistry,” and yet illustrate in their practice that which we reason about in books.

One of the weightiest utensils to transport is the handmill, and one of the heaviest occupations of the tent is grinding. How large a share it occupied in the domestic life of Judæa, the repeated allusions to it in the Sacred Writings bear testimony. Travellers are always struck by the amount of labour thus thrown away. A learned commentator selects the long continuance of this practice to illustrate the stupidity of the human race. This is to suppose an Arab tent in the same row with a baker’s shop, or with a farm-yard and a granary attached to it. If they used a windmill they would have to carry it about with them; and if a water-mill, they would require the rivulet’s attendance in their peregrinations. The only variety in the landscape of the Zakel, is here and there the tomb of a saint: the only houses are those appointed for all living. Have they then no stores of grain?

On the spot where it is harvested it is thrashed, winnowed, and treasured up. Holes are dug in the earth and lined with straw; these are called Matmores: there the grain may be kept a hundred or a thousand years, protected from rot, mildew, and man. By this practice they are secured against the uncertainties of the seasons and fluctuation in price. These reservoirs, when forgotten, may be discovered by examining the verdure in spring, when it begins to lose its freshness. Over the matmore the change is first perceptible, as it is dryer beneath. Twenty years ago, four or five successive harvests were destroyed by drought and locusts; famine and pestilence ensued; and but for these stores the country must have been depopulated.[266] There is an exportation of corn making at present to Dublin;—permission has been granted for 50,000 fanegas, or little more than a bushel;—it would cost 6s. 6d. landed at Dublin, or under 40s. a quarter. The last exportation of grain was ten years ago, when Spain being in great need, permission was granted; and from the roadstead of Dar el Baida alone, 45,000 quarters were exported without sensibly augmenting the price.

To effect the change from the handmill to the water or windmill, the matmores would have to be replaced by standing granaries: standing granaries would require fixed habitations; fixed habitations would require walled cities. In the country where I am writing, the land would not suffice to support these, and, consequently, the extinction of the population would be the consequence. Elsewhere, where the land is more fertile, it would place the tribes at the mercy of the governor, and the whole fabric would fall to pieces.

The aim of the political economist is to accumulate profit—to make money; to turn, every way, soil and toil into the banker’s books. The end of the legislator is exactly the reverse. He knows that the danger to society is from the accumulations of profit. He knows that wealth draws wealth, and engenders power, and brings the fall of states. By legislators I mean those who have proved themselves such by their works—the states which they have built up.

In early times we always find the chiefs possessing the greatest ascendancy over their people. How is it they lose this authority? Is it not when, to the influence of blood and station, they have added the influence of wealth? Institutions, therefore, calculated to make a people happy, and preserve it long, must effect the very reverse of modern science, and must prevent the accumulation of capital, and equalize the distribution of food.

This end is obtained amongst the Arabs, not by laws or institutions, but simply through hospitality. No human creature enters an Arab douar and goes without a bellyful, and of this the charge falls upon the chief. When I obtained a new method of preparing wheat, of cooking a dish and eating it; I also observed a new method and manner of distributing it. The tent was like a tavern without bells. Half of Sheik Tibi’s substance goes in kuscoussoo. It is an extraordinary thing to see; it is slowly that the mind takes it in; it is difficult to convey it to another—and testimony is requisite. In Mr. Davidson’s Journal there is a corroboratory passage, which is all the more valuable as coming from one who had no conception of the value of the fact he recorded. Speaking of the great Sheik of Suz, he says, “The Sheik, rich and powerful as he is, dares not shut his door against the dirtiest beast who thinks proper to enter. The kuscoussoo, or teapot, is a general invitation, and all may come in and feed.” This is the interpretation of those words of Isaiah, “Thou hast clothing—be thou our ruler,” as of the reply, “In mine home there is neither bread nor clothing—make me not a ruler.” Of the patriarchal period in our own state, we have a record in the title, Lord, which meant the giver of bread. The word “government” is itself derived from the same source, and to-day in the streets of Athens a beggar will approach you with these words, “χηβερνισὲ μου—govern me, i.e. give me food.” Amongst the Turks, where ceremonial is the bond, rank is given to bread. If a Mussulman sees a bit of bread on the ground, he reverentially picks it up, kisses it, and then places it in some position where it may be seen and used, if requisite, by man or beast.[267] If the Sultan were to come into a room where the humblest were sitting at food, they would not rise to receive him—his dignity is effaced in presence of the “gift of God;” thus, a mendicant may place himself at the table of the Vizir. A person who could not be asked to partake of coffee, who could not presume to be seen with a pipe, may be invited to sit down to dinner. The breaking of bread, the most solemn mystery of our faith, has, in this respect, a meaning which we cannot read. In the East, the injunction of Christ to turn not away from him who asketh, is universally observed.[268] We cannot observe that rule, because we have produced such an amount of pauperism that no private charity can suffice, and we have destroyed the practice of charity, so that it shall not suffice; then we reconcile faith and disobedience by treating the injunction as a metaphor.

In the Moorish government, the practice of the tribes is now reversed,[269] but still the traces are not all lost. “The Kings of Fez,” says Marmol, “have a custom to have their food brought publicly to the Hall of Audience, where, every morning, they receive the compliments of the princes and the great men. After the king has eaten two or three mouthfuls—for he never eats more in public—the dish (of kuscoussoo) is turned from before him, and his children, or his brothers, if they are present, approach, and each take a mouthful and return to their places. Then the great personages and the common come by order of their degrees, till, at last, the very porters and the guards; for all those who are in the hall, great or little, must taste much or little, because they believe that it is a sin to eat alone, without offering to those who look at you. The princes and governors in the province do each the same thing. Every one eats once a day of kuscoussoo, because it costs little and nourishes much.”[270]

“Fill not thy belly in presence of the longing eye.” What are all our homilies on charity to this? What all our constitutions? This is not a proposition; it is a maxim, a rule of conduct; it is a habit—that is, a self-enforcing law.

What is the evil eye? How should such a fancy have taken root? I once commended a child’s beauty: the nurse immediately spat in its face. I asked the reason; she answered, “Against your evil eye.” Pride was there the spell, humiliation the fascinum. The figure of a hand is the ordinary talisman.[271] The open hand denotes generosity, the closed one firmness. The hand so used is neither closed nor open, two fingers being doubled, two extended. What can this signify, if not a measured participation of what you enjoy to prevent the longing, from becoming the “evil,” eye? Associated as the hand is with kuscoussoo, the emblem is appropriate. That superstition has cheered many a heavy spirit and relaxed many a girded heart, and is cheaper than a poor-law.

Thus, by the maxims, habits, and domestic practices and superstitions which centre in and support hospitality—not the hospitality that invites a compeer, but which confers food and raiment upon the destitute—are the inequalities of the human condition moderated; alike prevented from being greatly diverse, the balance is maintained between wealth and numbers, and the classes cemented to each other. As on the one side there can be none absolutely destitute, so can there be none excessively rich; and in all cases riches must flow in benefits around. It is a melancholy fact, that hospitality has disappeared in Christendom—not in practice only, but in every thought—and therefore are our minds a chaos, as well as our condition. Nor is there remedy. Science may be taught, but not simplicity; and duties which we have superseded by legislation, we shall presently prohibit by law.