GORMANDIZING | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1880

GORMANDIZING.

"Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," our old nursery rhyme told us, was a "dainty dish to set before a king;" but Zimmerman tells us that Frederick the Great required something more substantial. He says:—

"To-day the king has taken a great quantity of soup, made as usual of the strongest gravy drawn from the most healing things. With his portion he mixed a large tablespoonful of pounded mace and pounded ginger. He then ate a large slice of beef stewed in brandy. This he followed up by a copious allowance of an Italian dish, composed half of maize flour and half of Parmesan cheese; to this is added the juice of garlic, and the whole is fried in butter till it acquires a crust as thick as one's finger. This favorite dish is called polenta. At length the king, praising the excellent appetite which the dandelion had given him, concluded the scene with a large plate of eel pie, exceedingly hot and highly seasoned. While at table the king fell asleep, and was seized with convulsions."

If he had escaped the convulsions he would have had the digestion of an ostrich, which rather prefers gravel stones and ten-penny nails to anything lighter for a diet.