Note 756 — CANTO THE FIFTEENTH.
Reading edition
{563}A dish "à la Lucullus." This hero, who conquered the East, has left his more extended celebrity to the transplantation of cherries (which he first brought into Europe), and the nomenclature of some very good dishes;—and I am not sure that (barring indigestion) he has not done more service to mankind by his cookery than by his conquests. A cherry tree may weigh against a bloody laurel; besides, he has contrived to earn celebrity from both.
[According to Pliny (Nat, Hist., lib. xv. cap. xxv. ed. 1593, ii. 131), there were no cherry trees in Italy until L. Lucullus brought them home with him from Pontus after the Mithridatic War (B.C. 74), and it was not for another hundred and twenty years that the cherry tree crossed the Channel and was introduced into Britain.]