Some "modern" preparations are astonishingly ancient, and _vice versa_. Our anchovy sauce is used freely to season fish, to mix with butter, to be made into solid anchovy or fish paste. There are sardine pastes, lobster pastes, fish forcemeats found in the larder of every good kitchen--preparations of Apician character. A real platter of _hors d'oeuvres_, an _antipasto_ is not complete unless made according to certain Apician precepts. _Muria_ is salt water, brine, yet it may stand for a fluid in which fish or meat, fruits or vegetables have been pickled. The difficulties of the translator of Apicius who takes him literally, are unconsciously but neatly demonstrated by the work of Danneil. Even he, seasoned practitioner, condemns _garum_, _muria_, _asa fœtida_, because professors before him have done so, because he forgets that these very materials still form a vital part of some of his own sauces only in a different shape, form or under a different name. Danneil calls some Apician recipes "incredibly absurd," "fabulous," "exaggerated," but he thinks nothing of the serving of similar combinations in his own establishment every day in the year. Danneil would take pride in serving a Veal Cutlet à la Holstein. (What have we learned of Apicius in the Northern countries?). The ancient Holsteiner was not satisfied unless his piece of veal was covered with a nice fat herring. That "barbarity" had to be modified by us moderns into a veal cutlet, turned in milk and flour, eggs and bread crumbs, fried, covered with fried eggs, garnished with anchovies or bits of herring, red beets, capers, and lemon in order to qualify for a restaurant favorite and "best seller." Apicius hardly has a dish more characteristic and more bewildering. What of combinations of fish and meat? _De gustibus non est disputandum._ It all goes into the same stomach. May it be a sturdy one, and let its owner beware. What of our turkey and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam chowder, our divine _Bouillabaisse_? If the ingredients and component parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and details (supposed to be known to any good practitioner) we would have recipes just as mysterious as any of the Apician formulæ.