A couple days ago U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt used the term "delicious conundrum" in what would seem to be the most inappropriate context. Here is the quote from the ABC News article (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2045194&page=2) where I saw it:

With local authorities in charge of the all-important distribution of medicines, how to prioritize who gets vaccine and treatment first? Who should go to the front of the line: the elderly, the sickest, the young, health-care workers or the military?

"This is a delicious conundrum," Leavitt said, acknowledging it was a "hard problem." He pointed out that any pandemic was likely to last about a year or a year and a half before it petered out. The country needs to be prepared to handle other disasters during that time too, Leavitt said.

I was not familiar with the term delicious conundrum and I about fell off my chair when I saw how it was used in the article. Apparently, as I found out by doing a Google search, Leavitt did not coin this term. I imagine its origin is some well-known work of literature. Does anyone know if this is true and if so, where it was first used?