Competition: Food glorious food

In Competition No. 3133 you were invited to provide a passage about food written in the style of a well-known author.

Douglas G. Brown’s ‘Observation on a Vegetable That Was Probably Unknown to Ogden Nash’ struck a chord: ‘Kale consumed raw/ Gets stuck in one’s craw;/ But kale, marinated,/ Is still overrated’. Nick Syrett and Martyn Hurst also stood out, as did Nick MacKinnon’s Shelley on molecular gastronomy — ‘My name is Heston Blumenthal, chef of chefs./ Look on my pud, ye hungry, and despair!’ — and Katie Mallett’s updating of Betjeman’s ‘Vers de Sociéte’. They were only narrowly outflanked by the winners, printed below, who each snaffle £25.

‘A peach just beautifully is!’ she cried, with startling vehemence. ‘Ah, that.’ Maunder’s spoon hovered over his île flottante. He was now sharply aware that far too much of his conversation had concerned the series of dishes that had been set before them. He had grandly taken her, in a phrase as banal as it was unavoidable, ‘under his wing’. He had promoted the bisque — beyond its merits as it turned out; had expatiated on the constituents and processes required for a true Béarnaise sauce, and had then acclaimed the chef-patron’s version in a manner that on reflection might have seemed overweening. Not until the choice of dessert had he stood accommodatingly back. If only, he thought wryly, she had broken out earlier! He had mistaken a kindly tolerance for shyness. The question now was whether the error was irrecoverable. No matter what was to follow. W.J. Webster/Henry James The most eminent natural philosophers of Laputa (including a remarkably fierce-looking girl of 16) having prophesied irrefutably that the world would end in fire and horror if citizens continued to consume meat and vegetables and such, Laputans of any decency all desired fervently to be seen avoiding such wickedness.