Taste, Byron's Cookbook, and the Secret Ingredients in the English Cantos of Don Juan

Abstract

The English cantos of Don Juan bring Byron's satiric wit home to his own country and his own time. As a keen student of satire generally and of Augustan satire in particular, Byron appreciates the premise that satire works best when it is possible to historicize it by connecting the figures satirized with their real-life originals. Thus satire becomes a pseudo-history that rests on a humanistic history that illustrates the vanity and frailty of humanity. This essay takes as its starting point the menu of the banquet held by the Amundevilles in Canto 15 of the poem, traced some time ago to the menus of Louis Eustache Ude, author of The French Chef and a celebrated chef in England from before the Regency period to beyond it. Ude for some time worked as Lord Sefton's chef, and the essay interrogates the similarities between the real-life Lord Sefton and Byron's Lord Henry Amundeville, concluding that while Sefton provides much of the basis for Byron's character, the rest of that basis is probably attributable to Sir William Lamb, Second Viscount of Melbourne, and the husband of Lady Caroline Lamb. This aspect of Lord Henry in turn gives way to the probability that Lady Adeline is at least in part based on Lady Caroline. The argument is supported by a close historical reading of the period and the lineages of the main characters of the English cantos.