Orleans County Monitor

Sterlet Roe at $10 a Head and Peanut
Red Jelly at 5s.
Public interest has recently been excited by a remarkable dinner party
given in London at which twenty-four
people sat down and which cost $15,
ooo. Some high class chefs who knew
the deepest mysteries of their business
are inclined to say that this was really
nothing after all.
The most expensive soup that can be
feasted on is Chinese bird's nest soup,
which can hardly be done at less than
$35 for a moderate plate of it for each
guest.
When the fish course is reached in
the menu the most expensive item possible is the newest caviare, made from
sterlet roe and not from common stur-
geon. There are only one or two Lon-
don restaurants at which this rare
delicacy may be obtained, and the
charge for it is $10 per head.
Mullet roe, another rare dish, costs
more than its weight in silver, while
those who do not wish to advance
quite to this point in expenditure might
be satisfied with a more frequently
served dish, Caribbean pompano, which
has to be brought to London on ice
from Galveston or Pensacola and
which costs $5 to $10 a pound.
A game pie, made of the little birds
called ruffs—small things with long
legs and a ruff of feathers behind their
necks, belonging to the sandpiper family—is about the most expensive thing
possible in this direction and cannot
be done for less than $50 to $75, while
if the ruffs are unusually scarce the
charge for the pie may easily run up
to $100.
Dunstable larks come next. They
are fairly common on the tables of
epicures, but it costs quite $7.50 to
serve a single dish of them.
There are not so many possibilities
for gigantic expenditure when the
joints come on the table, giraffe steak
or bison ribs at anything from $2.50 to
$5 a head being about the best.
As for sweets, the thoughts of a
millionaire host who wanted to beat
the record and knew his business
would naturally fly to a jelly of peanut
buds and ginger, which would be sent
to him in little pots from China at a
charge of $250 a pot, one tablespoonful
in each.
Forced strawberries in the middle of
winter are most expensive to buy and
may run to anything from $5 to $25 a
head.
A great delicacy at one time was the
double cocoanut, or coco-de-mer, which
is only grown on two small islands of
the Seychelles and which was last sold
at $200. It is, however, so extremely
rare now that an enactment has been
passed forbidding its exportation under any circumstances.—London Stray
Stories.