Follows here the strict receipt
For that sauce to dainty meat,
Named Idleness, which many eat
By preference, and call it sweet:
First watch for morsels, like a hound
Mix well with buffets, stir them round
With good thick oil of flatteries,
And froth with mean self-lauding lies.
Serve warm: the vessels you must choose
To keep it in are dead men’s shoes.
From Middlemarch, George Elliot.
In Part Two of Middlemarch Fred is trying to get his rich uncle to pay his debts. He also has expectations that when the old man dies he’ll inherit his fortune. Hence the Dead Men’s Shoes.