Dr Johnson on Puddings

Let us seriously reflect what a pudding is composed of. It is composed of flour, that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk, pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milk-maid, whose beauty and innocence might have recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged in no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the destruction of her fellow-creatures—milk that is drawn from the cow, that useful animal that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to Creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider—Can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more be wanted more can be found—It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction—salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of a Pudding.