The salt must be put in the water; the pan must be thick; the quantity of water must be adapted to the rice, which varies, so that when the rice is cooked, the whole water be absorbed. It must never be touched or stirred while cooking. Butter is then put in a frying-pan; the proportions experience will teach. When it boils up, it is poured over the rice, which sputters and swells; then one turn with a spoon is given, and it is put on the fire for a moment, and must be served up hot in the pan. The Mussulmans with this, end their dinner, to show that they have not eaten to gratify appetite, but to supply want; and they have a saying, that every pilaf a man does not eat, will rise up against him at the day of judgment. My attention was first turned to their diet by this people’s splendid teeth. Nothing can better exhibit the quality of the food they masticate. Amongst us clean teeth, except by being cleaned, is a thing unknown. Without dentifrices, and without brushes, their teeth are pure and clean--the sure sign that they are free from those acids, which in us produce the greater portion of our diseases; while by the continual strain upon the sources of vitality, they shorten life and diminish its contentment while it lasts. The first of blessings to an individual is health; and the next, supposing it not the cause, sobriety. If these be of such value to the individuals, of what value must they not be to a nation? Yet these are points at which no constitution has ever aimed; they are beyond the reach of legislator, philosopher, or schoolmaster; they can come only from habit, and of this habit the cook is the original and source. It is not without cause that man has been defined a cooking animal. It is in the cooking of the race, that its sense is first tested, oftenest exercised, and longest enjoyed. Rigid Lacedæmon honoured cooks as she did victors at the Olympic games; and although no professional artist might breathe her air, still to unbought excellence in the culinary art she reared statues.[265] How rational to distinguish nations, as formerly, by their food. In ancient times the listener was not sickened with hearing about Sclavonic or German or Anglo-Saxon “race;” neither was he distracted with “aristocratic,” “monarchical.” When they wanted to show what a man was, they said, “he is a fish-eater,” or a “lotus-eater.” So the oracular response to the Spartans, “Beware of them, they live on acorns.”