Pot-pourri

Pot-pourri (Fr.), the name of a mixture of sweet-scented materials, chiefly flowers, dried, and usually placed in a vase with a perforated lid, in order that their perfume may be diffused through rooms in which it is placed. The principal ingredients are rose-petals, lavender flowers and stalks, violets, jessamine-flowers, woodruff-leaves, cloves, orris-root, pimento, musk, sandalwood-rasplings, cedar-shavings, &c. But it also, and originally, signifies a dish of different sorts of viands, and corresponds in this sense to the Hotch-potch (q.v.) of Scotland and the Oila Podrida (q.v.) of Spain. In Music the name is used for a selection of popular pieces strung together without much arrangement—a kind of medley.