Beethoventorte

His Master's favorites were trout, macaroni-and-cheese, and "a kind of bread soup, cooked like mush." Near death, he resorted to "beef and vegetables, which caused him more grief than anything else." The Master: Ludwig van Beethoven. The disciple: Government Professor Howard Erdman, a specialist in Third World politics, who has completed a several-hundred page manuscript on the composer's diet. Erdman and a few other Dartmouth professors began celebrating the Master's birthday with an authentic, home-cooked feast, and then came the book ― complete with recipes. The idiosyncratic L.V.B. piled dirty dishes in his bedroom, measured his coffee precisely at 60 beans to the cup, and terrorized waiters.

Intestinal fortissimo.