294 MEALS MEDICINAL 
fat poultry should be avoided by the dyspeptic, as such fat is 
particularly apt to become rancid in the stomach. 
Chicken broth, if poured on sippets of bread laid at the bottom 
of the dish in which boiled fowl, or partridge, is served, makes a 
capital sauce therewith, when the invalid is well enough to be 
allowed solid food. Some cooks add the feet when making the 
broth, but these members contribute a peculiar, and not always 
acceptable flavour. Again, those persons to whom cost is an 
object, may make a very good broth of fowls’ heads, ends of 
pinions, and feet alone, these being obtained cheap from any 
poulterer. Fowls’ liver soup (“ Potage & la Camerani ”) was at 
one time prepared according to a secret method known only to 
Grimod de la Reyniere, and his compeers. Thus the fable arose 
that its concoction in 1806 cost three louis d’or for each person 
who partook of it at dinner. To standard broth, just before it 
is done, are added fowls’ livers, one for each person, finely 
minced, whilst the tureen should contain some ready-boiled 
macaroni, and Parmesan cheese. According to certain French 
enthusiasts “a single spoonful of this liver soup will lap the 
palate in Elysium ; and while one drop thereof remains on the 
tongue, each other sense continues eclipsed by a voluptuous 
thrilling of the lingual nerves.” Verily it might be quoted of 
the said boastful “ cordon bleu,” in the words of Ingoldsby :— 
** He seemed by his talk, 
And the airs he assumed, to be ‘ cock of the walk.’ ” 
The right wing of a fowl, having the liver tucked into it, is preferred 
by epicures. “Mr. Pumblechook” (Dickens, in Great Expecta- 
tions) “helped me to the liver-wing, and to the best slice of 
tongue.” Lord Tennyson declared that the only advantage 
he got from being Poet Laureate, was that he invariably had 
given him the liver-wing of a chicken at luncheon. Venetia 
Anastasia, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby (1650), was remarkable 
for her extraordinary beauty; and he was so proud of her that 
to preserve her health he kept her supplied with the flesh of 
capons fed on vipers. In order to retain her lovely complexion 
he was continually inventing new cosmetics for her use; and itis 
suspected that this too great love for her was the cause of her 
death, for one morning she was found dead in her bed, at the 
early age of thirty-three. 
An English officer in India not long ago set before his guests 
