Apicius certainly excels in the preparation of vegetable dishes (cf. his cabbage and asparagus) and in the utilization of parts of food materials that are today considered inferior, hardly worth preparing for the table except by the very careful and economical housekeeper. Properly prepared, many of these things are good, often more nutritious than the dearer cuts, and sometimes they are really delicious. One has but to study the methods of ancient and intelligent people who have suffered for thousands of years under the perennial shortage of food supplies in order to understand and to appreciate Apician methods. Be it far from us to advocate their methods, or to wish upon us the conditions that engendered such methods; for such practices have been pounded into these people by dire necessity. They have graduated from the merciless school of hunger. Food materials, we repeat, were never as cheap and as abundant as they are today. But who can say that they always will be so in the future? SCIENCE CONFIRMING ANCIENT METHODS We must not overlook the remarkable intuition displayed by the ancients in giving preference to foods with body- and blood-building properties. For instance, the use of liver, particularly fish liver already referred to. The correctness of their choice is now being confirmed by scientific re-discoveries. The young science of nutrition is important enough to an individual who would stimulate or preserve his health. But since constitutions are different, the most carefully conceived dietary may apply to one particular individual only, provided, however, that our present knowledge of nutrition be correct and final. This knowledge, as a matter of fact, is being revised and changed constantly. If dietetics, therefore, were important enough to have any bearing at all upon the well-defined methods of cookery, we might go into detail analyzing ancient methods from that point of view. To call attention to the "economy," the stewardship, or craftsmanship, in ancient methods and to the truly remarkable intuition that guided the ancient cooks is more important. Without these qualities there can be no higher gastronomy. Without high gastronomy no high civilization is possible. The honest and experienced nutrition expert, though perhaps personally opposed to elaborate dining, will discover through close study of the ancient precepts interesting pre-scientific and well-balanced combinations and methods designed to jealously guard the vitamins and dietetic values in dishes that may appear curiously "new" to the layman that would nevertheless receive the unqualified approval of modern science. We respect the efforts of modern dietitians and food reformers; but we are far removed from the so-called "simple" and "plain" foods advocated by some well-meaning individuals. With the progress of civilization we are farther and farther drifting away from it. Even barbaric and beastly food is not "simple."