In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food by Stewart Lee Allen

container and killed

without seeing daylight. Dipped in poppy seeds.
     
    SEGUNDO
    Porcus Troianu

The famous “Trojan Pig”: an entire steer gutted and

stuffed with a lamb, which is stuffed with a pig,

which is stuffed with a chicken.

Sauce
au jus.
     
    DOLCI
    Rutab Mu’assal

Poached
Khustawi
dates stuffed with almonds and

served in a honey-saffron sauce.
     
    VOMITORIUM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY!

Original Sin
    Most of us think it was the vice of lust that got us thrown out of the Garden. Not so. Gluttony was the villain, according to theologians, who say that Eve’s true sin was simply a love of good food. That’s the true paradox of gluttony; the evil lies not in
over
indulging during dinner but merely
enjoying
it, because the latter indicates the diner is focusing on earthly pleasures instead of the will of God. The seeming innocuousness of the sin makes it one of Lucifer’s favorites for luring the naive deeper into hell. Take the story of Gervais the Washerwoman, the main character of Émile Zola’s classic novel
L’Assommoir
. Gervais dragged herself out of the gutter to set up a modest little laundering service. She helped her neighbors. She even talked her hubby into giving up the bottle. The perfect Christian. Then she developed a taste for good food and went straight down to Hell via the seven sins, from
steak frites
to a little sloth, then adultery, theft, drunkenness, envy, and prostitution. When she’s at her lowest, begging from the people she once employed, the author shoves his point down the reader’s throat by writing “It showed where love of food can land you. To the rubbish heap with all gluttons.” He then let poor Gervais starve to death in a closet under the staircase.
    That as late as the twentieth century a so-called “scientific” writer like Zola (who was French to boot) still portrayed gluttony as the most pernicious of sins indicates how deep runs the antieating sentiment. Legislation intended to curtail the enjoyment of dinner dates back to the early Spartan cultures and was among the first laws in Western culture. The Romans took the opposite course and considered it acceptable for dinner guests to visit the vomitorium to vomit out the preceding courses in order to make room for more food, a custom that caused the great poet Seneca to grumble “they eat to vomit, and vomit to eat.” Disgusting? Perhaps, but hardly more so than the high-tech emetics like olestra and liposuction that we employ today. Roman lawmakers eventually changed their tune and banned the most excessive of dishes, but it was the Christians who really went to war. They passed legislation limiting everything from which vegetables could be enjoyed in which season, to what kind of wine could be served with dinner. Their pathological preaching on the evils of a good meal made starvation a veritable virtue and helped set the stage for modern psychological conditions like anorexia and bulimia.
    Porcus Troianu
    The first thing the waiter does is trim your toenails. Then a glass of Falernian wine from a century-old Opimian vintage is served. A servant singing a poem written by your host, Trimalchio, brings out a heaping platter of cold cuts: spiced sow udders, rooster combs, winged rabbits, testicles, flamingo tongues, and ostrich brains. Finally dinner begins. Milk-fed snails the size of tennis balls served in a sweet-and-sour sauce gets things rolling, followed by an
amuse-gueule
of dormice, eaten whole after being dipped in honey and poppy seeds. Fish are killed
à table
by pouring scalding hot sauce onto them. They’re still moving as you dig in. The fowl course begins with a pastry “egg” containing a minuscule bird called
beccafio
, or fig-pecker, covered in raw yolk and pepper. You eat it in one mouthful, bones and all. Whole roast geese and swans are brought out, but when you take a bite, surprise! They’re made of pork. Finally, the main course: