Esau sold his birthright for a 'mess of pottage'. What is the main ingredient of this dish?
Mess of pottage two white men turns away and states, "again, I've sold my birthright. All for a miserable mess of pottage." Mess of pottage A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable. The phrase alludes to Esau's sale of his birthright for a meal ("mess") of lentil stew ("pottage") in and connotes shortsightedness and misplaced priorities. The mess of pottage motif is a common theme in art, appearing for example in Mattia Bortoloni's "Esau selling his birthright" (1716) and Mattias
Mess of pottage the whole of his active life, his very capacity for labour, in return for the price of his customary means of subsistence, to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage." Swift and Byron use the phrase satirically: "Thou sold'st thy birthright, Esau! for a mess / Thou shouldst have gotten more, or eaten less." The Hindu nationalist V. D. Savarkar borrowed the phrase, along with quotations from Shakespeare, for his pamphlet Hindutva (1923), which celebrated Hindu culture and identity, asking whether Indians were willing to 'disown their seed, forswear their fathers and sell their birthright for a mess of