A Christmas Pudding Extraordinary

: Dinners.

When the late Lord Paget was ambassador
at Constantinople, he, with the rest of the gentlemen who were in a public

capacity at the same court, determined one day when there was to be a grand

banquet, to have each of them a dish dressed after the manner of their

respective countries; and Lord Paget, for the honour of England, ordered a

piece of _roast beef and a plum pudding_. The beef was easily cooked, but

the court cooks no
knowing how to make a plum pudding, he gave them a

receipt:--"So many eggs, so much milk, so much flour, and a given quantity

of raisins; to be beaten up together, and boiled so many hours in so many

gallons of water." When dinner was served up, first came the French

ambassador's dish--then that of the Spanish ambassador--and next, two

fellows bearing an immense pan, and bawling, "_Room for the English

ambassador's dish!_" "Confound my stupidity!" cried his lordship; "I forgot

to tell them of the bag, and these stupid scoundrels have boiled it without

one; and in five gallons of water too. It will be good plum broth,

however!"





Dr. Kirwan, the celebrated Irish chemist, having one day at dinner with him

a party of friends, was descanting upon the antiseptic qualities of

charcoal, and added, that if a quantity of pulverised charcoal were boiled

together with tainted meat, it would remove all symptoms of putrescence,

and render it perfectly sweet. Shortly afterwards, the doctor helped a

gentleman to a slice of boiled leg of mutton, which was so far gone as to

shed an odour not very agreeable to the noses of the company. The gentleman

repeatedly turned it upon his plate, without venturing to taste it; and the

doctor observing him, said, "Sir, perhaps you don't like mutton?" "Oh, yes,

doctor," he replied, "I am very fond of mutton, but I do not think the cook

has boiled charcoal enough with it."





When the Archbishop of York sent Ben Jonson an excellent dish of fish from

his dinner table, but without drink, he said,--



"In a dish came fish

From the arch-bis-

Hop was not there,

Because there was no _beer_."





Poor-Man-of-Mutton is a term applied to a shoulder of mutton in Scotland

after it has been served as a roast at dinner, and appears as a broiled

bone at supper, or at the dinner next day. The late Earl of B., popularly

known as "Old Rag," being indisposed at a hotel in London, one morning the

landlord came to enumerate the good things in his larder, in order to

prevail on his guest to eat something, when his lordship replied,

"Landlord, I think I _could_ eat a morsel of a poor man;" which, with the

extreme ugliness of his lordship's countenance, so terrified the landlord,

that he fled from the room and tumbled down stairs, supposing the earl,

when at home, was in the habit of eating a joint of a vassal, or tenant

when his appetite was dainty.



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