Two large potatoes pass’d through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give;
Of mordent mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not thou man of herbs a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
True flavour needs it, and your poet begs,
The pounded yellow of two well boiled eggs;
Let onion’s atoms lurk within the bowl,
And scarce suspected animate the whole: and lastly in the flavour’d compound toss,
A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce:
O great and glorious, O herbaceous treat,
‘Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he’d turn his weary soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Discovered in an 1832 expenses diary belonging Thomas Batcheldor, Chapter Clerk (SGC M.876/1), this is a copy of recipe for salad dressing written in rhyme by the Reverend Sydney Smith, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, a well known wit who died in 1845.
Clare (Archivist & Chapter Librarian)