(From condio, to preserve). Artyma, conditura. A condiment or preserve. It signifies whatever procures sweetness and a grateful taste to any substance. But, in a more restrained sense, that is called condimentum which is used in preparing aliments, whether with an intention of rendering them palatable, or assisting their digestion.

Condiments make so considerable a part of modern luxuries, that a more particular consideration of the poignant substances employed to give a relish, which health and hunger have denied, becomes necessary. We mean not to say that every condiment is designed to give an artificial appetite. Spices in the warm climates are essential to health; and salt in every climate seems to be the same. But we must be more particular.

The condiments employed are those used to preserve meat from putrefaction, and those added occasionally in the process of cooking, or at table. Of the former kind, some merely preserve animal food without adding to the poignancy of the taste, as ice, vinegar, or a few pepper corns. Others give a poignancy, and alter the quality of the food, as salt, sugar, nitre, and smoke; vinegar and spices more intimately mixed, or in a larger proportion. Of the first we need not speak particularly, but only to suggest the necessity of gradually thawing meat preserved by ice, as its texture is otherwise destroyed. Salt condenses the muscular fibres, and renders them harder of digestion; but a large proportion of sugar lessens the inconvenience, and nitre is said to have a similar effect. Nitre, however, in the quantity employed, is by no means a powerful antiseptic; and, as a condiment, it seems of little importance. It chiefly imparts a more uniform and pleasing red colour than salt. The poignancy of the salt, however, renders many substances much more digestible, particularly the fatter part of the hog, the bacon. This, if cut thin, is easily, when broiled, borne by the tenderest stomach, and the addition of vinegar assists its digestion. Sugar, we have said, does not harden the animal fibres, and it preserves meat very successfully. It is usually mixed with salt, though in too small a proportion. The weight of each should be equal, or of the sugar superior; and the kind used should be the coarsest brown. Smoke is employed sometimes alone to preserve fish and animal food; sometimes, as in the herring, bacon, and some forms of Indian cookery, to give a peculiar flavour. If not carried so far as to dry and harden the meat, it seems to render it by no means unwholesome, or difficult of digestion. If the red herring is peculiarly indigestible, it is owing to the rancidity which its oil acquires in the preparation.

Vinegar is seldom employed to preserve animal food. Brawn owes little to it; for, composed of gelatinous matter not easily putrescible, it is preserved by preventing the access of air, in consequence of its being tightly rolled. To vinegar and salt we owe the preservation of many different kinds of fish; but for a long continuance of their perfect state, Spices must be added. In the sauer kraut, the acetous acid, which contributes to the preservation of the cabbage, is formed by its spontaneous fermentation. Potted meats owe their preservation to spice, and to the air being excluded.

In all these instances, hard salted meat excepted, we do not find that the food is rendered less digestible. The warmth of the condiment may prevent this effect; but we must at the same time reflect, that these highly seasoned dishes are eaten only in small quantities.

The condiments added in the cookery, or at table, are, salt, vinegar, pickles, spices, wine, ardent spirit, soy, ketchup, mushrooms, oil, sugar, and various indigenous roots and vegetables, with a slight preparation, or in their natural state, as well as some animal substances, particularly fish. Of the ancient condiments we cannot speak with precision. The asafoetida supplied the flavour of garlic; the garum was not very distant from the anchovy; and many of their native vegetables are supplied at our tables, by the more pleasant aroma-tics of the east. What seems disgusting in ancient cookery, was perhaps not really so; as partly from custom, more certainly from the proportion employed, the effect might be pleasing. We know that even asafoetida, rubbed only on a warm plate, gives a more pleasing flavour than garlic; and that a judicious mixture of different spices is not only more agreeable, but often more wholesome than a large proportion of one only. Who would think of adding a red herring to soup? yet it is often done with success; and, in a small proportion, gives the flavour of ham. We should have apologised for entering so largely on the subject of cookery, but that a most respectable "brother of our order"has indulged his taste in publishing a collection of receipts, in a work entitled Culina Famulatrix. We shall, however, chiefly enlarge on condiments, as salutary or otherwise, and shall notice each in its order.

Salt, we have already remarked, is almost the universal condiment of animated nature; and it is by no means improbable that the extinction of the vast animal, the mammoth of America, was, in a great degree, occasioned by their collection in search of their prey wear the salt lakes of the Alleghany mountains, at the time of some general convulsion; such at least is probable from the vast collection of their bones in that spot. Salt, in this instance, acts as a stimulant; for its excess is as destructive as its moderate use is salutary. Even an oyster may be killed by an additional quantity of sea salt to sea water. As it is void of flavour, we seldom use it in excess; and we only see the effects of its increased quantity, in the constant use of salt provisions at sea. But to the effects of salt at sea must be added the unalimentary quality of animal food long kept in this state, as well as the almost constant moisture to which sailors are exposed. In some instances, when used too largely, it is said to have brought on symptoms of sea scurvy even on shore.