Receipt for a Winter Salad

Two large potatoes passed through kitchen-sieve
Unwonted softness to the salad give.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon –
Distrust the condiment which bites too soon,
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt.
Three times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And once with vinegar procured from town.
True flavor needs it, and your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected animate the whole.
And, lastly, on the flavored compound toss
A magic teaspoon of anchovy sauce.
Then though green turtle fail, though venison’s tough,
And ham and turkey are not boiled enough,
Serenely full the epicure may say,
“Fate cannot harm me – I have dined today!”


By Sidney Smith, retrieved from Appleton’s Journal, v. 5, no. 2, p. 180, accessed via http://www.hti.umich.edu on 5/3/2005