Hardly a week goes by without a cook — sorry, chef — going bananas about the desecration of his hallowed ‘art’ by food reviewers, whose status is now so elevated that there is even a prize for budding initiates in the half-baked genre. Ancient comedians and satirists endlessly mocked cooks’ sense of their own magnificence.
Cooks in Greek comedy always regarded themselves as supreme experts. A comic cook explained to the man who had hired him: ‘The complete cook is made on a wholly different level. He is an artist, a geometer and a doctor. This enables him to discover a fish’s true potential.’ Another cook instructed his pupils in astrology, architecture, natural science and strategy, while another claimed that he was not one who merely ‘throws fish into a casserole. Oh no, there is true philosophical wisdom in my business’.
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