Great Uncle Fred? I have been playing outside all day and it’s been really really hot. When I came inside there was a jug of home-made lemonade in the fridge and I drank a glass and it was the most delicious thing ever, ever. Then I thought, well, I remember a glass of cold milk when I had been playing tennis and that was almost as delicious. And once there was an apple... Great Uncle Fred? What do you think is the most delicious thing in the whole world? (Jack, Summer 2007)

Well, I can understand the lemonade. On a hot day I am most partial to cranberry juice with fizzy water in it. But I am really old, remember: what I most like the taste of is a whisky from Orkney, a red wine from Italy, a white wine from France - but I would not say that they were the most delicious things in the whole world, they are just what I happen to like the best of all the things I have ever tasted. I think I’ll change your question, to make it more universal: how about, ‘What is the greatest delicacy in the whole world?’ Of course, eating depends so much on circumstances. The finest meal I ever had was after being rescued at sea and it was corned beef, dry biscuits, tinned peaches and a cup of tea. But if we are considering what could be considered the greatest delicacy in the world, I think I know the answer... ...as you know, taste is an individual matter. Experts on food argue all the time. The delicacy I am about to tell you about has not been declared the greatest by a panel of experts - it just seems to me that it must be the greatest delicacy. Well then, in China, as you might know, they eat 1000-year-old eggs as a special treat, in Cambodia sparrows and fried spiders; in Japan they favour live baby prawns and in Mexico fried ant larvae. But the country where food is loved best (perhaps) is France and in France, after centuries of experimentation, they have worked out that the most delicious thing to eat is an ortolan (a tiny song-bird, a kind of bunting, about three quarters of an ounce in weight), fattened up and then roasted whole after being plucked and drowned in cognac. The entire ortolan is placed - with only the beak sticking out - in the mouth of the diner. A bite is taken and the beak removed: the rest of the bird is then eaten. The first taste is sweet, rich - the fat and the flesh of the bird. As the diner proceeds, he is next overcome by the bitterness of the guts. And then the tiny bones lacerate the gums and the salty taste of the diner’s own blood mingles with the sweetness of the flesh and the bitterness of the guts in a taste-sensation which devotees of the experience consider wonderful beyond compare. All ortolan-eating diners wear linen napkins over their faces as they chew - they do this because one should ‘hide from God’ while enjoying such a decadent pleasure. It takes 15 minutes to finish eating an ortolan. Those two details - the part played in the experience by the taste of the diner’s own blood and the obligation to hide behind a napkin while eating - convince me that eating an ortolan must be the very finest of all pleasures of the table. Have I ever eaten an ortolan? Certainly not! At the moment there has been no answer logged for this question

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