Provincial Dinner with Nikolay Gogol
Finally, after some hors-d'oeuvres of sturgeon's back, they sat down to table--the time being then nearly five o'clock. But the meal did not constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken, seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked, and others were scarcely cooked at all. Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly [...]