494 PEOSE HALrBTJTICS. 



the newspapers, and have brought me no end of orders 

 for others. It cost me (as all my great dishes invaria- 

 bly do) a deal of thought — as much labour of brain as 

 it did Jupiter when Minerva issued from his head. Of 

 another quite recent production — a savoury mattyas with 

 new combiaations, one of our poets who supped on it has 

 done me the honour to record in elegant verse that had 

 he as many mouths as Fame, and hands as Briareus, he 

 would desire no better employment than to pick such 

 another in. pieces. But it is by my rose-dish — ^my rlw- 

 donia — or, as I call it, the synthesis of all the resources 

 of our art, that I hope to reach posterity : this is a dish 

 which not only enlists the tongue, the palate, and the 

 stomach of everybody in its praise, but causes more- 

 over such an ineffable sweetness to proceed from each 

 guest who has partaken of it, that he exhales a fragrance 

 as strong as though he wore a chaplet of roses round his 

 brow. My rhodonia requires for its complete success 

 the petals of one particular kind of very fragrant rose, 

 which, when in full blossom, I proceed to incorporate 

 with the other elements of the dish, viz. equal parts 

 of pigs' and turkeys' brains, delicately parboUed ; yolks 

 of eggs, garum, choice wine, and various aromatic spices ; 

 the whole is then heated (in order to preserve the sensi- 

 ble qualities of the rose-petals unimpaired) over a very 

 gentle fire ; and when it is first uncovered at table I can 

 compare the sweet smell which immediately fills the 

 room to nothing so aptly as to that diffusive fragrance 

 which Homer declares to exhale from Juno's body when 

 she rises from her celestial bath ; 



parts of tke globe. He further relates, tliat while the philosophic 

 host was descantiag upon these outworks, the hungry guests, los- 

 ing patience and manners, carried the walls by assault, and then 

 demolished and sacked all the good things which they found in 

 the iaterior. 



