WANTED—A NEW MEAT.
Thelack of variety in those meats which, whether flesh or fowl, must always form the ground-work and basis of an English bill-of-fare, is a want keenly felt, but most difficult to remedy. To judge from the list of fresh food which the improved transport of the last few years has made available for the London dinner-table, a natural inference would be that, so far as novelty has been studied, we had made provision, not for man as humanized by Schools of Cookery, but for a race of fruit-eating apes. We have a dozen new fruits, shaddocks, limes, custard-apples, bananas, pines, Italian figs, pomegranates, lichees, ground-nuts, gourds, water-melons, and avocado pears. But among the thousands of tons of foreign game imported yearly, there is hardly a beast or bird which may not be had in better quality and condition at home, except the prairie-bird and the quail; for those canvas-backed ducks which escape the keen search of the New York dealers and find their way across the Atlantic, alight only on the tables of City Companies and millionaires, like the caladrus of old, that appeared only at the deaths ofkings. Yet there are probably twenty people in this country who have eaten canvas-backed duck for one who has ever tasted swan, or rather cygnet, the finest water-fowl for the table alike in size and flavour, a bird easy to rear, most prolific, rivalling even the breast of a teal, without the fatal drawback of that excellent little bird, that no one has ever been able to get enough of it. Even now, though so neglected by the world, swans may be had from the Norwich Swan-Pit for £2 each. They weigh some sixteen pounds, and with them is forwarded an ancient recipe for cooking them—“done into rhyme by a Person of Quality.”
Another “fowl” which was once reserved for the tables of kings, and is now hardly thought good enough for aldermen, is the peacock. What roast swan is to roast goose, such is roast peacock to roast turkey. Many owners of country houses who keep peacocks and let them run wild and nest in their woods and shrubberies, take little trouble either to fatten or cook the pea-chicks. If they did, they would perhaps take more pains to rear these birds for the table. The meat is very white, and of exceedingly fine and close grain, and has the true game-flavour, with none of the stringiness of the common turkey. The American wild turkey is, however, an even finer bird for the table than the peacock. Those which appear in the poulterers’ shops of London generally arrive in such bad condition from careless packing and refrigerating, that they are inferior to the domestic bird. But when allowed to run wild and nest inEnglish woods, as is done on some estates, on its merits, and apart from any tricks of cookery, it is perhaps the very best land-bird that is available for food. The game-flavour is not too pronounced, but gives a character to the whole which is altogether absent in the tame black turkeys of the farmyard.
But flesh, and not fowl, is what is mainly desired to widen the possibilities of the dinner-table. Fatted swans, or peacocks, or American turkeys might be increased and multiplied without affording more than an occasional relief to the monotony of themenuand the brain-searching of housekeepers. What is wanted is some new and large animal, whose flesh has a character of its own which would readily distinguish it from beef or mutton, and an excellence which shall make it independent of any special treatment in cooking,—something which shall combine the game-flavour with the substantial solidity of a leg of mutton. An increase in the quantity of venison reared in this country naturally suggests itself; and it is not impossible that, in neglecting the produce of our deer-parks, we are hardly less careless than in losing sight of the culinary possibilities of the swannery. Good doe-venison may be bought in the neighbourhood of some large parks at a much lower price than mutton; and the quantity of first-class venison which finds its way to London is surprisingly little, considering the number of parks and private herds in the country. It is objected that deer can never pay to fat for food, because the annual growth of their horns reduces them so much incondition as for a time to make the venison worthless. But this applies only to the bucks; stags might be kept like bullocks, and doe-venison might still be remunerative. As early as 1740, an enterprising Jersey squire, of the name of Chevallier, who had succeeded to an estate in Suffolk—whose descendants still constantly sit in Parliament—had formed a small park for fattening deer and sending them up to London. His accounts of the cost and profits of the enterprise are still preserved, and he abandoned the scheme, not from difficulties encountered in fattening or selling the deer, but because of the uncertainty of carriage to London. Venison, even when reared under the present unscientific method, or rather want of method, varies greatly in quality, that from certain parks being much superior to that grown on less suitable pasture; and it is not too much to hope that, if bred and fattened solely for the table, venison would be in demand as something more than an occasional luxury.
But swan, peacock, and venison are, after all, only revivals of the old bill-of-fare which was available in the households of Old England. To find a new meat, we must take stock of the world’s resources of animal food, and inquire, after due survey, if there does not still exist some neglected quadruped which will furnish what we seek. Roughly speaking, our main supply of animal food is drawn either from the rodents, the ruminants, or the pachyderms,—represented by the rabbit, the ox or sheep, and the pig. To vary the supply at our disposal, we shall probably notbe able to go beyond these limits; for the general experience of civilized man has already pronounced judgment on the question, and science supports the verdict. It is no good to eat a wolf; for the wolf has already got the benefit of eating the lamb, and left no surplus for us. Of the three great tribes, the rodents may be dismissed from our search; for those that are not already used as food are either too small to be useful, as the lemming or the guinea-pig, or too repulsive in appearance, like the capybara, or in habits, like the rat. Of the pachyderms, we find only one which is domesticated for food—the dear, familiar Berkshire or Yorkshire piggie. The larger pachyderms are too big; the smaller, like the peccary, too savage; the wart-hog and other African varieties too repulsive. Clearly, then, we must have resource to the list of ruminants if we are to find one to add to the British bill-of-fare. At first, the choice seems wide enough. It embraces all the deer-tribe, the wild sheep and antelopes, goats and ibexes, which are numerous; but they all possess a rank and disagreeable flavour, which must prevent their coming into the list of first-class food. The possibility of extending the supply of venison we have already considered. The wild sheep would probably differ so little in flavour from mutton as to make it hardly worth while to domesticate them, though those of the Himalaya will breed freely in confinement. The antelopes and wild oxen, therefore, alone remain, and it is among their number that the animal wanted must be found, if it is to be found atall. If the accounts of African hunters are reliable, the venison obtained from the larger kinds of antelope found in South and Central Africa is really excellent, that of the koodoo, the oryx, and the eland being the best. Perhaps the highest modern authority on the subject is the opinion of Lord Randolph Churchill. Those who read of and sympathized with his account of his sufferings under the cuisine of the Cape steamers, must have marked with a feeling of relief, that in his letters to theDaily Graphiche confessed to having made an excellent supper on stewed roan antelope. His verdict on the eland has not been given, but its flesh is said to surpass that of all other antelopes by as much as Welsh mutton surpasses Lincolnshire “teg.” Ten educated palates have pronounced it “peculiarly excellent, having in addition the valuable property of being tender immediately after the animal is killed, which makes it much appreciated in Central Africa, where the meat is usually tough and dry.”
In addition to the quality of the meat, the eland has the additional recommendation of large size. A full-grown eland is as large as a two-year-old shorthorn, and has far more the appearance of a high-bred Indian bullock than of an antelope. Its horns are short and straight, pointing backwards, and it has a dewlap like an ox. It can live on the hardest fare, and soon grows fat on good pasture. Best of all, it becomes quite tame, and is easily acclimatized.
When Lord Derby, the President of the ZoologicalSociety, died in 1851, he directed that his herd of five elands at Knowsley should be given to the Society for use in their menagerie. They multiplied fast, and six fawns were produced between 1851 and 1855, and it was found that at two years old they stood thirteen hands at the shoulder. The protection necessary was not more than that usual in fattening fine cattle, and the Society resolved to sell their fawns for the experiment of acclimatization in English parks. Lord Hill bought a young male and two females for his large park at Hawkstone; but according to Whitaker’sDeer-Parks of England, none of these survive. The Marquis of Breadalbane also bought three. In 1861, twenty-one calves had been born in the Zoological Gardens since Lord Derby’s gift ten years before, and there is still the nucleus of a herd of their descendants at the Zoo, though their size and stamina is diminished by inter-breeding. It does not appear that eland breeding is now followed with much enthusiasm by the owners of large parks and chases, partly, no doubt, because the “shorthorn mania” was for a time such an absorbing pursuit among country gentlemen as to leave no thoughts for any other experiments.
It seems a waste of the resources of nature to allow these fine animals to be exterminated, as they soon will be, in our new African empire. The argument, that because South African negroes have not tamed them, we should not attempt to do it, is of little force. The African keeps cows to givemilk; meat was supplied in inexhaustible quantities by the wildantelopes and other game, and with far less trouble than domesticated animals give, until the white man with guns destroyed them. We are too apt to forget that England owes the best of her trees, vegetables, and animals to other countries. All are now so good that we are prone to believe that neither can be added to or improved. Perhaps Admiral Rous was right when he declared that it made him “simply sick” when an Arab cross was proposed for our English thoroughbreds. But why should we not save the eland, the harness antelope, and the koodoo, and other large African species from extermination? America has almost allowed the bison to perish. Shall we not take warning, and preserve for our own use the splendid African antelopes, which, within the memory of man, were a thousand times more numerous than they are to-day?