In Competition No. 3312, you were invited to supply a contribution to a book of recipes invented by fictional characters, entries being for the Carrollean, Dickensian or Shakespearean sections.

Commendations to Martyn Hurst and Jon Robins, both of whom provided Uriah Heep’s recipe for humble pie, and to Mike Morrison’s Hamlet (‘Sous-vide or not sous-vide, that is the question…’); a dishonourable mention to Joe Houlihan’s Fagin (‘in a pilfery pie the ingredients is never the same, being, as I like to say, bestowed by the Almighty… some carrots from the parson’s garden, lifted of a black night; a pound of beefsteak, vanished from beneath the very beak of old Butcher Barnes…’); and a chef’s kiss to the winners below who earn £25.

Hack your dried, withered, decaying fruit into tiny pieces with a cold, brutally sharp knife. Stagnate in brandy, flavoured with tears of bitter abandonment. Leave overnight, abruptly, all alone. Beat butter and sugar remorselessly until they are the pale, drained colour of destroyed hopes. Break four eggs into mixture, break them like hearts and have no mercy. Add a pinch of spices, a pinch sharper than the teeth of mice. Sift flour, let it rain down like cruel words in your lover’s last letter. Scrape the miserable remains of batter into pan, slam the oven door, shut out all light. Bake at a slow, seething 150 degrees until twenty minutes to nine, then stop clocks altogether. Let it burn. Cut out heart of cake and leave ice in its place. Cover in bridal-white marzipan, allow to turn faded yellow of a shroud. When the ruin is complete, leave to rot.

Janine Beacham/Miss Havisham’s wedding cake

Whether Mrs Quilp likes it, the more so if not, I insist upon concocting my mutton curry. I go at it with gusto, furiously dicing the cheapest cut – a tinge of green in the meat never hurts me – and hurling into the pot where I’ve set oil and onions already cooking, browning away nastily. Energetic little homunculus that I am, I busy myself adding ginger, garlic, chillies hot enough properly to sear the tender gizzard and tomatoes sufficient to conjure images of clotting blood. Now I do love to pinch – ask Mrs Quilp if I don’t – so I pinch in chilli and coriander powders of the sort you’ll sweep in abundance from many a custom house floor. With a rusty nail or an iron bar depending on quantity or the foulness of my mood, I stir in coconut, coriander and things unspeakable for my own impish gratification.

Adrian Fry/Daniel Quilp

Thy foes’ offspring are morsels tender to

A haute cuisine revenge they’ll not forget

Until they die, which may be soon enough.

First slit a rapist’s throat or two and let

The one they wrong’d be her that holds the bowl

To catch their blood. Next, grind their bones and mix

A paste to crust and bake their sever’d heads.

Then gorge a damnéd mother’s damnéd throat,

Cooking and catering her punishment.

With one hand canst thou serve the portion that

Will gag her with the vengeance thou dost crave,

Will choke her with what once did swell her womb.

Thine own flesh and thy daughter’s hath she torn

With evil plots and evil progeny,

So feed her, taunt her, stab her, watch her die,

Her belly stuffed with slain sons in a pie.

Chris O’Carroll/Titus Andronicus

Scrooge’s scrumptious Christmas cake

Takes nothing but goodwill to make,

Mix praise to the angelic hosts

With thanks for their redemptive ghosts

Whose love replaces wrath and ire

With rapturous, ecstatic fire;

Stir in a heart once cold now warmed,

A heart by Providence reformed,

Then add a pinch of kindliness

That seeks all men on earth to bless

And whisk it with concerns anew

For all less fortunate than you;

This heavenly fare negates the need

For earthly food to sate men’s greed

But, aiming at the higher goal,

Provides much more – food for the soul.

Alan Millard

In another dimension the Baker explained

His proposal for Snark à la mode

From a mess of ingredients cookbooks disdained

Which he’d bought in the Charing Cross Road.

‘You must start,’ he pronounced,‘with six cinnamon sticks,

Plus blue soybeans from far-off Bhutan.

Sauté them with pilchards and thoroughly mix

With a jolly vin rouge in your pan.

At this juncture the ragout can cook long and slow.

Read a book, take a stroll in the park

While it simmers away in a soup of Bordeaux.

And now all you need is your Snark.’

The Baker then set jubilantly to work

To crown his pièce de résistance.

He explored every place where a Boojum might lurk

But was fated to doubt its existence.

Basil Ransome-Davies

A pretty chicken makes a banquet fit

For a thane – nay, for the King of Scotland.

First, take thy dagger to the bird and slay’t;

Baste it with oil (oil that anoints a king!)

And roast it till ’tis done. Some sisters add

A fenny snake or eye of newt, or e’en

A finger of a babe, but they be weird.

Now ope the door. Behold what thou hast done:

The pretty chicken’s slain, at thine own hand,

And cooked, and what’s done cannot be undone.

Wash thou thy hands! Dispel the smell of blood.

Then serve the dish with that fell insane root

Which take the reason prisoner. Then wash

Thy hands with perfume of Arabia.

Who would have thought the chick had so much blood?

Go, wash, remove that spot of blood, go, wash!

Nicholas Hodgson/Lady Macbeth’s roast chicken

No. 3315: Flower power

Ancient mythology provides an explanation of the origin and nature of the narcissus and sunflower. You are invited to invent a legend that explains the origin and nature of any other flower. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 August.