The haul and height of food and drink brought to the King’s Table—much of which the King, benevolently, is having rerouted to other tables according to title, class and lucre—boggles the taste buds and beggars the mind. Between, or more than not often during, every one of the Hundred Courses, he will have some Prohemian Testimonial to pronounce before the partisanship of the Royal Trumpets &c. at his either arm; perhaps, in this way, making up for the uncustomary brevity of his Opening Prayer (which we, alas, only heard at second remove):

“My Prandial Ephesians & Colloquialists!

Our Amphitryon’s God Bless This Restaurant Argusy!

“Thy King and Sponsor will not wax royal with some Paenarration, Peroration or Preambulation of Blessings Had, as would His Want Customary, but shall His Best do to copate a Thoughtful Thanksbegiven—as We shan’t naysay to say Grace, and so pepper our prayers with a Psalter for Salts of the Earth as We—albeit no amount of Nymious Euphuism nor Dundant Pangram could begin to outweigh the Res Indigesta of this our Abounding Corn of Unbounded Boon and Bounty, Livestock Assets, Bumper Crops and Ficiency of Fruith...

“...To whose formidably edible and succulently esculent Epulosity, the Ingluvious Goodth and Dapatical Richth that doth broaden and bloat among us to thine gustative burgeons satisfy ye’ld do well yield—for was it a Plementary Mercy our Poison was into such Foison exchanged and Cold Stones into Hot Scones turned—only to say nowfore that, as Architricline of Deipnosophy, and as Your Lord of Highest Christian Authority, do I hereby repeal and renounce the Penance for the Thirtieth Mortal Sin, Dissipation, and command that we all together our Geusophile Esophaguses of Gulliglutted Egagrogastrimargy Widen More Sociable and Satiable to this a Pageant Larger than Life Itself!—

“And as Royal Gaurantor of such Encorsive Gundyguts, make an Especial Donation of All My Nutritious and Nuvitious Largesse, under the Culinarian Dominion of Those of My Royal Kitchen:

“Clovis, the King’s Cook; Hector, the King’s Cook Steward; Carslbed, Ancillary to Hector; Elton, Underlieutenant to the Ancillary; and Stefan, Satellite to the Aforementioned—(whose collective expertise have of Pantagruelian Gruel provised Portions Epic yea Epicurean in Proportion!)—that we might all the great grolling and grumbling take of Our Big Stomach Capacity to Heavy Heart as besuits Our Sumption in High Gestion to Commence gainst the Inestimable Comestibles At Helping Hand!

“That Everichon Under My Humble Roof shall perimplish their Allegresse & Lurcation for this Royal Abligurition to Overgorge muchwhat in the Upbuoyancy of Jucundity!

“All Table be Gladsome on this Solacious Occasion!

Thanks Be for This Our Quotidial Bread and Diurnal Wine!

Surfeit as Slobbery amongst this Senseless Sulsity as Thou Likest!

Where But For the Gravy of God Go I!?

Amen, Halelujah and Pass the Gas and Gravy!!

Let of this Comessation there be no Cessation!!!

No Periods to Follow Any Cibarious Dish: Only the Tironian Sign, Say I!!!”

For Exemplar, a Veritable Flurch of Famous Fowl, ferreted out by the Royal Fowler then fattened by the King’s Fartor:

Harvest Gossanders: in a Galentine Sauce, served with Onion Dumplings and Sour Cream Potatoes.

“The King brands these Birds of a Feather done well and to a frisling crisp cooked

and for their Royal Carptor cannot one instant more attend!”

Mackintosh Geese: Gooseflesh and Gigeriums burned gold with honeyed flead, saffron butter, the Queen’s Tamara, grated cyvars and black pepper triture, on a bumpy bed of stuffed baby cabbages.

“At the Mere Sight, is of the King’s Back of the Hand all Gooseflesh!”

Cape Breton Capons: Ten hundreds of them, twenty-six to a hot rejoinder, smothered in a sauce of Chusclan wine, egg fonnell, green currants, fresh skirrets, meadow’d foudrel, friars’ balls and rube beets.

“Capons of Which We Ought Justly Prate the Highliest,

All the More if Snappest the Wishbone or Merrythought to thine Tit for Tat!”

Dover Hens: stodged with fried pandels, potato dowlers, golden henny and rudyard kiplings; the sum resting on no mean hill of Gervais Cheese and Wild Celtic Rice.

“Be Ye as Jocund as My Jowl, and Rotund as these Darling Dover Hens, All!”

Merganser Cordelion: Teen and two and twenty of light meat, commodated with red chuet rice, minced raisin bread, charred lardon, boiled verjuice, buttered alisaundre, sweet faverelles and baked mathon-white.

“Lord Over our Platters with the Lord of all Fowl, the Merganser Cordelion!”

Pheasant Germaine: sacked to the gullet with Easter Oysters fried in Tavel wine and the Queen’s White Margarine, pork challs and chanks, piglet curls, gardener’s snails, parsleyed quenelles and ground gony liver, then dumped on with a dorde of fifteen bulbs of Anglican garlic.

“Praised be God Hoarse of Heart on a Belfry Top

for such Phantastiest Pheasant as this!”

Duck Barrymore: Three Hundred and Thirty Red Alet Drakes brushed off with white gin, red walnut oil and burberry conservatives; redole of dove paté, buttery ramsons, prime-mint and tart garcil; then advocated anon with pecan poret and feldwood corollaires.

“By God if Our Ducks are in a Royal Row!”

Grouse Gumbo: Red Grouse enfarc’d with swine brain pudding, Griswold’s chutney, ten haspinsfull of kipper-nuts, St. Heintz raisin & tomato sauce, and sour orange marmelade.

“Grouse about this and choose thus not to stuff thyself,

and shalt thou be headed and stuffed thyself!”

Gorcock Bardolf: The choicest of the Cornwall Gorcocks, a bevy of their corpuses chocked with church lettuce, parish radishes, choirloft cheese, pig lonks, red crab flesh, and foxhunt croutons; four hundred and counting paddling this-a-way in hot Canterbury Sauce, their skins dabbled with silgreen butter, quaste white pepper, latitudinarian kyrtine and shredded forb’s leaf.

“Of the Situation is the King unable to stay Abreast!”

Chicken Cabot: basted with an eligibility of sourly milk, cane sugar, gold apple cider, bar-le-duc, white corn flour and red vinegar; then gainfully employed by boned sardines, baked clams, pashed potato, holiday royales, steppingstone bybbeys and chibbal goulash.

“Had I the Cipher to this Secret Sauce,

Wrapped in an Enigma, in a Riddle in a Maze,

And I Would Step Down from These King’s Shoes a Happy Man!”

Quail McDowall: A quandary of southern England quail squeezing gellied fat from the splits and arrow wounds of a crackly basted finish, resting in peace on rolling knolls of golden senneth rice, with shrimp-laden cothouse gibbols, blimpish peppers aburst with Lancashire cheese and Conroy ham, kept company with warmed-over Nativity-Rolls (including subsidies of bentley cream and green quince jelly) off to one side.

“When along cometh Quail of such Quantum Quality,

Query no longer as to the Question of Life!”

Goose & Gander (The “Wedding Plate”): direct from the King’s Goosier & the Queen’s Ganderer, the bride and groom blackened to death in a public oven as they exchanged parsley vows, then stoffed with candied pumpkin, breaded flounder, whole St. Bartlett pears, poached egret eggs, buttersome carrots and fileted green beans.

“A Fitting Dish by which we leave One Nest-Pond—”

(putteth his hand momentarily on Queen Charlotte’s)

“—and Swagger over to the Other and Better!”—

(then planteth his winesome oilsome lips onto the hyperbola of Berylla’s cheek.)

St. Alfonse Swan: A Royal Eyrary of rare brown swans selected by the King’s Swanmarker, braised in their sleep with beaks and wings buried in a swaddling sauce of apple brandy, pickled swallow’s egg yolks, hashed red myrobalans, collise of black adrelwort, lemon squash marmelade, gladen root, bitter arum, and fig-and-onion relish; their better halves parked on berths of wild Irish rice nutted with a cormary of sweet archardes, crack’d hestle-nuts and steamed Welsh peanuts.

“To touch this Divine Swan with a Single Additive

is to frub Finish’d Marble, dorify New Gold, lacquer the Natural Lily...

and yet is that how we like it!”

Ostrich Dorchester: each of fifty quared in fives, breaking hearts in floriate oven-quilts and debutante wimbles; all sparsled in split-barley flour, hollandaise sauce and Basque curry; simmered in red sherry, buttermilk paste and almond oil; undressed, doused in persimmon wine stummed with white grape juice; and laid upon a plot of gleaming white Biscay Rice with freshened-up strawberries, stimes of green onions, Livingston bean curd, poached potatoes, Limberger cheese, Camry nuts and loaves of enriched Godfrey bread & permayne butter.

“Aldridges A-Plenty! Estridges Estranged No More!

But of all Ostridges, None the Punch Packeth

Like unto this Rich Ostrich of Dorchester!”

Also an untalliable Morlation of High Meats:

“Red Meat! White Meat!” shouted King Maximilan: “Mete Out the Meat!”

“Where Be the Beef!?” supplemented King Regis.

Beef Laughton: Fifty forcarven table-slabs of Royal Sirloin having been seething ever since St. Vaughan’s Eve in a Gig Young sauce of high burgundy, sour cream, green chervil, topset onions, shredded cyphel, red apple pulment and lingcod’s eggs; presented on estates of sothery rice with red bay leaf, gammons, derricks, pilchards & escaroles (to the inclusion of brazier’d balsam nutty bread besmeared with salty clove butter and orange parow).

“Gird Thy Sirloins! This Beef Laughton shall fit Halsumly and Homoousiously in the Room of My Rumen!”

Beef Bellamy: A Baronage of Beef Lordloin, their underdone silversides rossel’d in jacobin wine, sweet chesboll, white fennel, winter savory, Gentian sage, crumbly filberts and Eaton pear sauce; and their crisp hanks tendered on a landholding of morgan rice with filets of swordfish steaks, blue asparagus, kenspeckled St. Mortimer brown bread, grants of lean bacon cumshaws and cranberry marmelade moved in on all sides.

“Not Since the Crash of Beltan

Hath a King Knived a Beef Bellamy this Godsomely Great and Gorgeous!”

Beef Maugham of Wales: Eighty-eight kevins of Welsh beef (with the iselbon of a St. Holstein cow thrown in for every eighth), stewed about in a great farrage of gentry whiskey, St. Champlin bitters milk, reddish cranapple relish, hogs’ gammerels, baked red potatoes, Roquefort cheese, Midwinter Summer Sausage, speldring, hotch-potch, haberdines, hodmandods, cymling pickles, Dryden mustard and St. Hopkins thyme—all well established on the private property of Red Cumin Rice.

“The Prime of Falstaffian Viandry for our Baser Gobslotches,

Yours Truly the Greatest and Most Fore!”

Beef Cromwell: Rare rear guards of Cambridge beef lifted to the higher nobility of Porterhouse Steaks, proposed with mincemeat and red mushroom pies, Oxford Pudding, sausage botargos, ploughshare harslet, hasted chestnuts, roast darcell wings, apple and cashew butters, Eggs Benedictine, and hare liver patties.

“The King is Struck Down and Anointed by an Hallowed Mad Cow Disease!”

Beef Waugh: Bastard Cuts of robust prime beef birsel’d in armoured ovens for thirty days if thirty nights then morsel’d out in pewter longpans to a garniture of Chaucerian galingale, barcarole bread crumbs, sour green peas, Low Church Burgundy, stocky potatoes, clive garlic, snobbish cream and swaddling butter; not at all to denigrate the red persimmon chutney, North Sea shrimp, green poppersnipes, brookings ewfras, white powder-fort, baco-bits and St. Meredith brandy sauce.

“Beef Waugh Maketh of the King a Jolif and O So Fat Beefeater!”

(A brief water break:)

“Let Pitchers of Cartesian Water be poured for All and Mouthdry!

I Drink, Therefore I Am!”

(Back to the meats:)

Steak Carbonado: Seven Hundred very well charcoal’d and salubrious Salisbury Steaks from chauffered Birmingham Cows, marled with garlicky alegar and figaro sauce and set afire anew with flaming beer; then served on a bale of parched potatoes, smoky peas and sooty carrots.

“Were the King’s Tongue not Busy Anderwise,

would these Gentle Tenderloins be entitled to an Homily

Indexing the Reasons for His Euphorian Aphasia!”

Sausage English: Eighties of tumid perspiring sausages—fork-porked from a Porgy & Bess Masselade of pigs’ hamches, hofts, hucklebones, haums, harslets, huxens, hetchers, humboldts, and higginbottoms; then lumped further with melting cheese rendles, spicy red capers, and toasted walter pidgeon gravy—that all have been circulating just above fatty licks of red birch flames for hours, sploshed with thick tomato beer on an orderly basis.

“All Up a King could Gobble and All Down Golsh this Sausage English

And Have Spaceful Abarcy still for the Love Felt in this Alacrious Banquet Hall!”

Humperdinck Meat on a Prick (the Queen’s Favorite): Being Bristol Cabobs of the prolonged high-hung bollocks and manly buttocks of strong Baskerville Tauruses, interskewered with red onion toretes, spingel’d rutabagas, gadwall eggs, ruler cucumbers, belon oysters and melon collops; served with Bull’s Cullions, Lancelot’s Buns and Lady Guenevere Beer; and attended to by the Queen’s Butterer.

“See Here! The Queen Hath Gone and Remarried Even Before the King—

And for a Husband Taken a Snorting Bovine!”

Much too much chewing with heads full and mouths on hold to continue our characterizations, we retire only to catalogue titles and salutations:

Beef Ellington and Winslow Salad:

“Our Sinking Teeth and Culent Tongue

Now Know the Why

Beef Ellington hath been Nick-Christed ‘The Duke’!”

Churchillian Pot Roast:

“O’er this Pot Roast this Host Is, from Coast to Coast

to Boast the Most and to the Holy Ghost Raise High Toast,

Supposed!”

Gorbachev Beef Stroganoff:

“Oft Have They Scoffed

As Not To Be, Even Me, To Have Enough

Beef Stroganoff,

Strong Enough!”

Beef Sebastian and Kelley’s Lambertnuts:

“O Sebastian! Sebastian! Sebastian!

Wherefore All a King’s Life

Hast Been Scont?”

Lamb Marlborough:

“So Goutous a Lamb upon the which to Gourmandize,

‘Tis to Endure without Tears Too Dear!”

Lamb Buckingham:

“Buffet Us with this Buffet of Buckingham Lamb!”

Lamb Galimaufry:

“Lickerish Lamb torn Limb from Limb for our Repast and Refectorial Rebirth!”

Lamb Cornelius:

“These tasty gibby-lambs move me to proclaim this High Sunday!”

“But Thine Highness, ‘tis but Saturn on the Day!”

“Then must we rename: For, this is the Day God Rested and was Restored!”

Lamb Huxley:

“As when the trout quaps up to eat the flea,

so doth a snappy King natch up his Lamb Huxley!

Wuthering Heights Lamb Stew:

“On these Heights doth a King meet with Vertigo

and would fain leap to His Sainthood in the Stormy Stew Below!”

Goat Barnabas:

“Carpe Capram Cornu et Clune!” £

Monte Cristo Sandwiches, Reuben Sandwiches, PB&J’s, McBLT’s, & the Royal Club Sandwich:

“Which Wich will I Wish,

is a Conundrum set Best at Rest

by an Unbigoted Bingeing At Long and At Large!”

King Hugh’s Hanoverian Hoagy:

“King Maximillian You Say?

Died Hath He and Hied to join Hugh in Hoagy Heaven!”

Stags of Old York:

“Ye have heard no Ordinary God say,

‘Plenish our Spiritual Eucrasia with judies and puncheons of pingmedo wine,

as our stags have fruits from the King’s Espaliered Orchard speared on their bezantlers

and raw scallion’d cullacks a-ring their surryals from the Queen’s Onionery!’ ”

Bartholomew Glorry Pigs Portly and Gentlemanly in Top Hats and Ties:

“Yum-Yum and Smirkle-Smirkle:

Here waddleth a Premium on Glorry Pigs!”

Swine Westmoreland & the Belliborion Apple:

“Merrily I Say to Thee:

Let thy Pearl Onions of Great Price

be tossed amongst such Succulicious Swine!

Verily, are we casting Earls before Swine!”

Veal of Tours and Venison:

“A Benison on thy Venison and for this Vale of Tears, a Venal Tour-de-Force: Veal of Tours!”

Carlyslian Hog Burgers:

“Jesus Our Christ Himself

might have tarried on this sad Terra Infirma one day longer

had he reassurance had of the prospect of a Carlyslian Hog Burger!”

Cardigan Hams:

“Praise the Lard!

Nothing bespeaks Comity like a Cardigan Ham!”

Winchester Cathedral Pork Chops:

“Could we Commune in our Common Comfort,

Immured and Immune to Harsh Reality unto Late in the Day of Judgment

to be drinking Grape Cider and eating these Pork Chop Ambassadors,

We Were Larger Than Happy!”

Derby Piglets:

“Out with the sloppy Derby Piglets,

and roll one or two this way if you please!”

Boar Carleton:

“A Cask of Potent Falarnum, a Plate of Potato Dumfries,

and enough Boar Carleton to mop the floor with

makes for a Hoddy Man and Good Company His for the Having!”

Capetian Ribs:

“Rubify our Goblets with Larigot Wine and Elaxate our Belts one if more Notches,

for we Kings do sense the Carnal Reflaire of Capetian Ribs coming on!”

Brains and Brandy of Bligh:

“Brains so rare they may yet harbour a presentiment or two!”

Hog’sface-Pudding and Hot Hastery:

“Hog’sface-Pudding and Hot Hastery shall fill Thy Bowels

with the Certitude that Love meaneth never having to say: ‘Am sorry!’ ”

A Platelery of St. Haversham Tube Meats:

“Bratwurst, Greatwurst, Froudwurst, Cramwurst, Drabwurst, Harmwurst, Trammelwurst & Snow Goosewurst:

But of All Wurst Best and First, on the which was thy King Erst Nursed:

Our Lady of the Liverwurst!”

Humboldt’s Three-Legged Henocorn:

“Try With Thy Furk these Tri-Furcate Thighs To Fend,

or Futz and Fumble with thy Fulcra

toward the Furtherance of some Futilitarian Fumarole!”

The King’s Halibut:

“Hereby is the Nomen of this Fish to prefigure

the Holy Ass into Whom a King’s Teeth are soon to return Home!”

Salmon on the Mount of Olives:

“We long for a Salmon on the Mount as sipid with the Salt of the Earth

as are the shores of the Sea of Galilee!”

Filet of Blue Whale:

“Break our Tables, our Backs and our Very Feast with this Whale of a Whale:

This Day We Shall Avenge Jonah!”

Unicorn Updike:

“The Other White Meat!”

Elephant Gunga Din:

“Take Me For A Ride, Babes: I’m Coming Home!”

________________

£ “Seize the goat by the horn and by the hoof!”

Copyright © 1999 by Erich von Abele