
A collection of exotic and aphrodisiac recipes of varying complexity both for the kitchen and bedroom. Some are drawn from ancient Greece and Rome, some from hearsay and some, it seems, from trial and error. Not your ordinary cookbook! And not your run-of-the-mill aphrodisiac recipes, either: Testicles of lamb. Skink. Vulvae Steriles. Pish-Pash. Fritters of Elder Flower. Sucking pig with eels, et al.
But what would you expect from that fount of English lettres, the inimitable Norman Douglas, founder of the Capri School of Writing who, following a leisurely dinner with a coterie of middle-aged notables (including Graham Greene and D.H. Lawrence), was lamenting their declining vigour. Douglas proposed their salvation might be found in certain legendary dishes whose ingredients reputedly were capable of reviving failing ardours. While not every gourmet will be able to obtain skink, an aphrodisiac reptile native to the deserts of Africa, or clean and truss a young crane, much less obtain a sufficiency of leopard's marrow to cook in goat's milk (a recipe for offsetting timidity), the ubiquitous oyster is present in various recipes, as are other comestibles found in todays's pantries.