Book 4
68
But the instruments used by a cook are enumerated by Anaxippus, in his Harp-player, as follows:— Bring me a ladle and a dozen spits, A flesh-hook, and a mortar, and a cheese-scraper, A cylinder, three troughs, a knife, four choppers. Will you not, O man hated by the gods, Make haste and put the kettle on the fire And are you now still dawdling at that dish? And with that largest chopper? But Aristophanes calls the dish which we commonly call χύτρα, a κακκάβη, in his play of the Women occupying the Tents; saying— Warm now the κακκάβη of the preceptor. And, in his Daitaleis, he says— To bring the κακκάβη from thence. And Antiphanes, in his Friend to the Thebans, says— We now have everything; for that fine eel From Thebes, a namesake of the one in-doors, Mingling within the hollow κακκάβη, Is warm, and leaps, is boiled, and bubbles up. But Antiphanes calls a dish βατάνιον, in his Euthydicus— Then came a polypus all cut in pieces, And boiled ἐν βατανίοισιν. And Alexis, in his Asclepioclides, says— But I when sojourning in Sicily, Learn'd to cook with such dexterity, That I make all the guests with eagerness Invade the dishes (βατάνια) with their teeth at times. But Antiphanes spells the word with a π; writing it πατάνιον, in his Wedding— πατάνια, beet, and assafœtida, Dishes and candles, coriander and onions, And salt and olives, and round dishes too. And Philetærus says, in his Œnopion— Here let the cook of dainty dishes (πατανίων) come. And, in a subsequent passage, he says— He seems to have more pupils for his dishes Than even Stratonicus had. And Antiphanes, in his Parasite, said this— A. Another bulky man, large as a table, And nobly born, will come besides this man. B. Whom do you mean? A. A new Carystian, Born of the earth and warm. B. Tell me his name, Or else begone. A. I mean a κάκκαβος, But you, perhaps, would call it merely dish. B. What do I care what name you give to it? Whether men like to call it κάκκαβος Or σίττυβος, I know the thing you mean. But Eubulus, in his Ionian, uses both forms, both βατάνιον and πατάνιον, where he says— Round dishes, and βατάνια, and caccabia, And Iopadia, and πατάνια, in crowds Countless, I could not tell you half their names.
