"Life's a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it."
Gay's Epitaph.]
[754] [For "Potage à la bonne femme," "Dindon à la Périgueux," "Soupe à la Beauveau," "Le dorey garni d'éperlans frits," "Le cuisseau de pore à demi sel, garni de choux," "Le salmi de perdreaux à l'Espagnole," "Les bécasses," see "Bill of Fare for November," The French Cook, by Louis Eustache Ude, 1813, p. viii. For "Les poulardes à la Condé," "Le jambon de Westphalie à l'Espagnole," "Les petites timballes d'un salpicon à la Monglas" (?Montglat), "Les filets de perdreaux sautés à la Lucullus," vide ibid., p. ix., and for "Petits puits d'amour garnis de confitures," vide Plate of Second Course (to face) p. vi.]
[755] {562}[Alexander the Great.]
[756] {563}A dish "à la Lucullus." This hero, who conquered the East, has left his more extended celebrity to the transplantation of cherries (which he first brought into Europe), and the nomenclature of some very good dishes;—and I am not sure that (barring indigestion) he has not done more service to mankind by his cookery than by his conquests. A cherry tree may weigh against a bloody laurel; besides, he has contrived to earn celebrity from both.
[According to Pliny (Nat, Hist., lib. xv. cap. xxv. ed. 1593, ii. 131), there were no cherry trees in Italy until L. Lucullus brought them home with him from Pontus after the Mithridatic War (B.C. 74), and it was not for another hundred and twenty years that the cherry tree crossed the Channel and was introduced into Britain.]
[757] "Petits puits d'amour garnis de confitures,"—a classical and well-known dish for part of the flank of a second course [vide ante, [p. 562]].
[758] {564}["To-day in a palace, to-morrow in a cow-house—this day with a Pacha, the next with a shepherd."—Letter to his mother, July 30, 1810, Letters, 1898, i. 295.]
[NX] No lady but a dish——.—[MS.]