A Recipe for Salad

Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

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 crown,

And twice with vinegar, procured from town;

And lastly, o’er the flavored compound toss

A magic soupçon 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.”