During the Lenten season, scrapple is not served in the Dining Hall at Old Ivy. Instead, the breakfast meat is hash in various permutations: corned beef hash, roast beef hash, red flannel hash and so forth.
Thus, the first day of Lent is Hash Wednesday.
Roderick feels that to eschew scrapple in favor of hash is to understand the true meaning of suffering.
Scrapple was not served in the court of Franz Joseph; Roderick learned this from his book of Austro-Hungarian trivia. At meals, protocol demanded that the Emperor was served first, and also that everyone must stop eating when the Emperor finished eating; since the Emperor ate quickly, plates placed before junior officers at the foot of the table would be immediately whisked away. Hence, the expression "lunch with the Emperor" came to mean no lunch at all.
"Let's sit down and have a conversation" says Natasha, to Roderick, by which she means "sit there and listen while I talk about me."
"Heh," says Roderick. "Sounds like 'lunch with the Emperor'." His wit makes him smile.
Natasha has no clue what he's talking about.
