Recipe For A Salad, Sydney Smith

I think I may actually try to make this one for the next time I post... stay tuned.

"In a letter to Lady Holland in 1839, Smith gives the recipe for this salad. It follows the poem except that at the close Smith instructs her, "Mix the Salad thoroughly just before it is used" (The Letters of Sydney Smith, Vol. II, ed. Nowell C. Smith [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953]: 684)."*

To make this condiment, your poet begs


The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;


Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,


Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, 


And, half suspected, animate the whole.


Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,


Distrust the condiment that bites so soon; 


But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault, 


To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,


And twice with vinegar procured from town;


And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss


A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.

O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat! 


'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:


Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, 


And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!


Serenely full, the epicure would say,


"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."

(*Poem and note courtesy of Ian Lancashire at the University of Toronto)