>For one brought up with the tasteless and indigestible food of backwater Prussia, Bismarck had developed a liking for good food and exquisite wine. His diet indeed was extraordinary. As a young man he could swallow half a dozen eggs at one sitting. At a time when he complained of a loss of appetite and a disordered digestive system, he could still partake at one meal a succession of soup, eels, cold meat, prawns, lobster, smoked meat, raw ham, roast meat, and pudding. When his doctors ordered an invalid diet, he was content to have nothing but soup, a plump trout, some roast veal, and three large seagulls’ eggs, washed down by abundant droughts of Burgundy. At one time he lived entirely on trout or herrings and beer. In 1870, during the campaign of the Franco Prussian War, he served omelettes with mushrooms, pheasant and sauerkraut, turtle soup, a wild boar’s head, and a compote of raspberry jelly.