MERCANTILISM is one of the great whipping boys in the history of economics.
There is a sheep's milk ricotta for $5 a half-pound; Beaver Brook's is sweeter than cow's milk ricotta and is great whipped on fresh berries.
As we move from room to room an array of different scenes come up Peter the Great whipping one of his generals, for example, or present-day visitors enjoying the works of art.
And the night I found that the matzo was being served with drably spiced egg salad instead of that great whipped cod, I felt as if I had traded a classic six for a studio.
Peach cobbler is fabulous, at least when peaches are in season, a small mountain of tart fruit and sharp cinnamon and crumbled topping with a snow cap of great whipped cream.
"It is no accident," one insider noted, "That many of the great whips have been connected with one or other of the intelligence services".
But Bryant Ng's charcuterie plate is pretty great, whipped fatback with herbs and delicate terrines rimmed with yellow fat, sweetly spiced smoked sausage, air-dried pork and spicy candied bacon, served with a fermented cabbage relish — you could look at it as either the best conceivable deconstructed bánh mì, or as something a talented butcher in Nantes, France, wishes he could call his own.
But within that turbulence will be, finally, an explanation for what it means to know something when one sees it, or for what the "great liquid whip" of Roger Federer's forehand and the "whip-like thrashing" of the roundworm tell us about string theory, or for how it came to be that three pounds of inelegance thought up such a concept as elegance in the first place.
He was a great Chief Whip and a Minister who served his country with distinction.
The late David Foster Wallace described the Fed forehand as a "great liquid whip", and it remains one of the game's top weapons.
