Food and drink

The thought that rosé wine can be made by mixing red and white wine is, naturally, unthinkable to any self-respecting wine manufacturer; one must conclude that cheap rosés, particularly in France, are sometimes made unthinkingly.
— John Postgate, Microbes and Man, Pelican Books, 1969.

The horse and mule live thirty years,
And nothing know of wines and beers.
The goat and sheep at twenty die
And never taste of Scotch or Rye.
The cow drinks water by the ton
And at eighteen is mostly done.
The dog at fifteen cashes in
Without the aid of rum and gin.
The cat in milk and water soaks
And then in twelve short years it croaks.
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for nogs, then dies at ten.
All animals are strictly dry:
They sinless live and swiftly die;
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three-score years and ten.
And some of us, a very few,
Stay pickled till we’re ninety-two.
— Anon.

The animal machine is governed by three main regulators: respiration, which consumes oxygen and carbon and provides heating power; perspiration, which increases or decreases according to whether a great deal of heat has to be transported or not; and finally digestion, which restores to the blood what it loses in breathing and perspiration.
— Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743 – 1794), Traité de Chimie (1793).

Jack Cade: I will make it a felony to drink small beer
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Henry the Sixth, Part 2, IV, ii, 64.

Wine is the most healthful and hygienic of beverages.
— Louis Pasteur, Etudes sur le Vin, ch. 2.

O for a beaker full of the warm South.
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene
With beaded bubbles winking at the rim
And purple-stained mouth.
— John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale.

Who could have foretold, from the structure of the brain, that wine could derange its functions?
— Hippocrates (c. 400 BCE).

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them.
— Holy Bible, Isaiah, 5:11.

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
— Holy Bible, 1 Timothy, 5:23.

I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
— Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1932 – 1898), Through the Looking-Glass, chapter VIII.

What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to Men.
— John Milton (1608 – 1674), Paradise Lost, Book 1.

Oh many a peer of England brews
A livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
— A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936), A Shropshire Lad, LXII.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad:
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
— A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936), A Shropshire Lad, LXII.

Some have meat and cannot eat,
Some cannot eat that want it:
But we have meat and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
— Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), The Kirkcudbright Grace.

One word’s as good as ten.
Wire in. Amen.
— Trad., Australian shearer’s grace.

We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.
— Holy Bible, the Gospel according to St Matthew, 14: 17.

The steed bit his master;
How came this to pass?
He heard the good pastor
Cry, ‘All flesh is grass!’
— Anon.

In a world where Australian wheat goes to China and the phosphate to grow it comes from Nauru, where iron ore goes from Australia to Japan and returns in part as heavy mining equipment to produce more iron ore, it is obvious that any meaningful human ecosystem must cover the world.
— Macfarlane Burnet, (1899 – 1984), Dominant Mammal, Heinemann 1970, 128.

A certain young gourmet of Crediton
Took some paté de foie gras and spread it on
A chocolate biscuit
Then murmured, ‘I’ll risk it’:
His tomb bears the date that he said it on.
— Anon.

The chief defect of Henry King,
Was chewing little bits of string
— Hilaire Belloc (1870 – 1953) Cautionary Tales.

I am the fire in the stomach which digests all food.
— Bhagavad Gita, 15:14, in the translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.

Jack, eating rotten cheese, did say,
Like Samson I my thousands slay:
I vow, quoth Roger, so you do,
And with the self-same weapon too.
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Impromptu.

The Earle of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.
— John Aubrey (1625 – 1697), Brief Lives, Penguin edition, 465.

Amasis … prepared to lead them against Apries, who hearing of the danger which threatened him, sent Patarbemis, a distinguished member of his court, with orders to bring Amasis live into his presence. Amasis, however, in answer to Patarbemis’ summons, rose in his saddle (he was on horseback at the time), broke wind, and told him to take that back to his master.
— Herodotus (c. 480 BCE – 425 BCE), The Histories, Book 2, Penguin Classics, 195.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet, I, ii, 129.

Who’s your fat friend?
— Beau Brummell (1778 – 1840), of the then Prince of Wales.

When he lies on the opposite side, I can look directly into the cavity of the stomach, and almost see the process of digestion … I have frequently suspended flesh, raw and wasted, and other substances into the perforation to ascertain the length of time required to digest each.
— William Beaumont, describing his experiments on Alexis St Martin.

We enjoyed most gratefully our two wallabies, which were stewed, and to which I had added some greenhide to render the broth more substantial. This hide was almost five months old, and had served as a case to my botanical collection, which, unfortunately, I had been compelled to leave behind. It required, however, a little longer stewing than a fresh hide, and was rather tasteless.
— Ludwig Leichhardt, Journal of an Inland Expedition in Australia, 1847, quoted by A. B. and J. W. Cribb, Wild Food in Australia, 15.

Should I refuse a good dinner, simply because I do not understand the process of digestion?
— Oliver Heaviside (1850 – 1925), on being accused of using mathematics he did not fully understand).

There isn’t any nitrogen or phosphorus or albumen in ordinary things to eat. In any decent household all that sort of stuff is washed out in the kitchen sink before the food is put on the table.
— Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), Literary Lapses (1910).

Slept not soe well after eating Rice pudden.
— Robert Hooke (1635-1703), diary.

And they spoke politely about the currents and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen.
— Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), The Old Man and the Sea, 1952.

… whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
— Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), ‘A Voyage to Brobdingnag’ in Gulliver’s Travels.

Less spectacularly, but more catastrophically, the insane farming practices in the south are steadily reducing the fertility per acre, which has fallen, in spite of machines and artificial fertilizers, forty per cent in the last seventy years. In another forty years, they expect it to be at zero over large areas …
— Aldous Huxley, letter to Julian Huxley from California, 1941, Letters of Aldous Huxley, Chatto and Windus, 1969, 465.

… will the public and those in authority pay any attention to what you say, or will the politicians go on with their lunatic game of power politics, ignoring the fact that the world they are squabbling over will very shortly cease to exist in its old familiar form, but will be transformed, unless they mobilize all available intelligence and all available good will, into one huge dust bowl, inhabited by creatures whom hunger will make more and more sub-human?
— Aldous Huxley, letter to Fairfield Osborn, 16/1/1948, Letters of Aldous Huxley, Chatto and Windus, 1969, 578.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
— Nursery rhyme.

How can you or I or anyone know
How oats and beans and barley grow?
— English nursery rhyme.

Thurs 18 Feb, 1790
… after I was relieved from Guard I went down to my Island to look at my Garden and found that Some Boat had landed since I had been there last and taken away the Greatest part of a fine Bed of Onions — it is impossible for any body to attemp to raise any Gardin Stuff for before it comes to perfection the[y] will Steal it — I thought that having a Garden on an island it would be more Secure but I find that they even get at it — my corn comes on as well as corn can doe…

Sunday 21 Feb.
… Soon after Breackfast I went out in my Boat down to my Island to See my Garden and found that Some persons had been the again and have taken away all my potatoes — however the[y] are I wish that the[y] were in hell for the kindness…

Sunday 28^th
… they have stole about 1500 Cobbs of corn…
— Ralph Clark, The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark 1787-1792. Sydney: Australian Documents Library, 1981.

Although they appear to treat their children kindly when they can in some measure help themselves, yet infanticide is frequent among the women, who often dislike the trouble of taking care of their babies, and destroy them immediately after birth, saying that ‘Yahoo’ or ‘Devil-devil’ took them. One woman, whom Mr. Meredith saw a day after the birth of her baby, on being asked where it was, replied with perfect nonchalance, ‘I believe Dingo patta!’ — She believed the dog had eaten it! Numbers of hapless little beings are no doubt disposed of by their unnatural mothers in a similar manner.
— Louise Ann (Mrs Charles) Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales. London: John Murray, 1844, and Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1973, 95.

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