Epicure a term derived from the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who declared happiness to be the highest good, which came to mean, in a food and wine context, a person of refined tastes. In the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries in Britain it was a designation to which many aspired. Nowadays it would be hard to find anyone so aspiring, and the term is half forgotten, or used in a humorous way, as in the well-known limerick:
An epicure, dining at Crewe,
Found quite a large mouse in his stew,
Said the waiter, ‘Don’t shout
And wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one too.’
