CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT THEY EAT, AND HOW THEY COOK IT.
MAY live without poetry, music, and art:
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks."
According to the light of history, it has not been a civilization commensurate with our own that developed the skill of the cook in Mexico, any more than the more lofty gifts of "music and art.
When the conquerors arrived at the palace of Montezuma, they were amazed to find it complete in every appointment, and displaying a magnificence and grandeur they had not seen equaled; while, according to Bernal Diaz, his cooks must have been fully up to the standard of any that "civilized man" of to-day can employ.
Among their accomplishments these Aztec culinary artists understood more than thirty different ways of dressing meats. At one meal they served up "above three hundred different dishes for the monarch, and for the people in waiting more than one thousand. These consisted of fowls, turkeys, pheasants, partridges, quails, tame and wild geese, venison, musk, swine, pigeons, hares, rabbits, and numerous other birds and beasts. Besides these there were other kinds of provision, which it would have been no easy task to call over by name."
Mexican ladies take great pride in their cook-books, and watch
