Here’s a funny recipe for Bolognese Machiavelli:

1. Arrange to have garlic and onions cast into hot oil.
2. The carrot and celery you must divide against themselves. Ground beef, too, shall turn upon the burner; crush any coherent resistance with a spoon of wood. Sautee until no hint of blood remains to stain your hands.
3. Perhaps, in a dark place without witnesses, the tomato shall meet with the knife.
4. The basil and parsley you may use without consequence. For long minutes, all shall be muddled and roil on the surface of the flame.
5. If it is most advantageous, store cold for the proper day.

Genius. Come on, smart guys (Scott Lahti, I’m looking at you), let’s have this same recipe as taken from the kitchens of other philosophers or famous writers.

UPDATE: Erin Manning is amazing! Here’s what she wrote in this thread:

Alexander Pope’s Bolognese

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want or skill
Appears in eating, or in cooking ill
But eating ill the man alone affects
Whilst cooking ill the family can perplex
Thus none should cling to ancient cookery
Or drift too soon to kitchen novelty;
Be not the last by whom the bulbs are fried,
Nor first, the carrots’ green friends to divide.
Let carrot, celery, garlic meet the pot,
And with the onion soon be piping hot.

Nor should the bovine meat be cooked in haste
Or by new custom thought to be replaced
For foul is fowl when, with unwonted grief,
It makes the dinner-guests cry, “Where’s the beef?”
But cooked meat must be, thoroughly, out-bled,
Before tomato adds back in the red:
Tomato’s red for feasts is beauty fine,
Yet none should eat the beef incarnadine.
Sweet basil, dainty parsley add their note
And dinner’s nearness by their grace promote.