I had forgotten about this recipe for salad dressing from the Reverend Sydney Smith (a man I should really like to have known for his wit & his ability to lift the spirits) until I heard it again on Poetry Please.
This despite the fact that I have actually used his recipe – albeit without the anchovy sauce & the double helping of salt.
Works well with hot English mustard, or wholegrain or Dijon.
Other kinds of oil are available.
Recipe for a salad
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."
