Pantagruelion

World Wide Words: “Pepys doesn’t record salmagundi because the name is first recorded shortly after he stopped writing his diary for fear of his eyesight failing. It has been known by many names, including salladmagundy and Solomon Gundy (it can be traced back to the French salmigondis, but there the etymological trail goes cold, though theories abound). Like its name it was a rather variable dish. Elizabeth Moxon, in her English Housewife in 1764, describes it as a Lenten dish and instructs the cook to take “herrings, a quarter of a pound of anchovies, a large apple, a little onion … or shalot, and a little lemon-peel” and shred them all together. Other recipes suggested eggs, chicken, almonds, grapes, and raisins as ingredients. This highly variable mix led salmagundi later to take on the sense of a mixture or miscellany. Solomon Gundy was also sometimes known as Solomon Grundy, which may explain the nursery rhyme about “Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday …” and the name of Mrs Grundy, the personification of social conformity and disapproval, whose name first appears in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough in 1798.”