THE
THE
CURIOSITIES OF FOOD.
Whatis the prevailing food of the people? Is it chiefly animal or vegetable, and whence is it derived in the two kingdoms? Do they trust to what the bounty of Nature provides, or have they the means of modifying or controlling production, whether in the cultivation of vegetables, or the rearing of animals? Describe their modes of cooking, and state the kinds of condiments they employ. Have they in use any kind of fermented liquor? What number of meals do they make, and what is their capacity for temporary or sustained exertion?
These are some of the enquiries to which a traveller is directed to pay attention, if he wishes to furnish and diffuse useful information.
I do not intend to go over this wide field of investigation in the systematic and scientific manner shadowed forth by these enquiries, but merely desire to assist the reader to pass a leisure hour, although he may probably glean some useful information at the same time.
I propose bringing under notice some of the Animal food in which people in various countries indulge, not that I wish persons to test these meats, or to live uponthem, unless they please. I do not deal in them, and have no interest in their collection or sale, but I merely desire to introduce them to notice that the reader may ascertain the opinions entertained of them, think over them, and know how much better an Englishman is fed than any one else in the world. So that, despite our habit of grumbling, there is at least this undeniable fact before us, that the middle classes are in very easy circumstances; and that English workmen earn good wages, or they could not consume the quantity of animal food they do at the present prices.
According to Vauban, Bossuet, and La Grange, the richest and most comfortable nation is that which eats the most meat. At the present prices of this article here, it certainly must be so, for a poor nation could not indulge in the luxury.
Beef and mutton, and mutton and beef, no matter what their price, John Bull will not dispense with; and although they are 40 or 50 per cent. dearer now than they were ten years ago, and although we import animals largely from abroad, and our cattle-breeders do their best to meet the demand, cattle and sheep will not increase and multiply fast enough to bring down the price for the consumer.
A writer inHousehold Wordsthus alludes to our national weakness.—‘Next to the Habeas Corpus and the Freedom of the Press, there are few things that the English people have a greater respect for and a livelier faith in than beef. They bear, year after year, with the same interminable, unvarying series of woodcuts of fat oxen in the columns of the illustrated newspapers; they are never tired of crowding to the Smithfield Club cattle-show; and I am inclined to think that it is their honestreverence for beef that has induced them to support so long the obstruction and endangerment of the thoroughfares of the metropolis by oxen driven to slaughter. Beef is a great connecting link and bond of better feeling between the great classes of the commonwealth. Do not Dukes hob and nob with top-booted farmers over the respective merits of short-horns and Alderneys? Does not the noble Marquis of Argentfork give an ox to be roasted whole on the village green when his son, the noble Viscount Silvercoral, comes of age? Beef makes boys into men. Beef nerves our navvies. The bowmen who won Cressy and Agincourt were beef-fed, and had there been more and better beef in the Crimea a year or two ago, our soldiers would have borne up better under the horrors of a Chersonesean winter. We feast on beef at the great Christian festival. A baron of beef at the same time is enthroned in St. George’s Hall, in Windsor’s ancient castle, and is borne in by lacqueys in scarlet and gold. Charles the Second knighted a loin of beef, and I have a shrewd suspicion that the famous Sir Bevis of Southampton was but an ardent admirer and doughty knight-errant in the cause of beef. And who does not know the tradition that even as the first words of the new-born Gargantua were ‘A boyre, à boyre,’ signifying that he desired a draught of Burgundy wine—so the first intelligible sounds that the infant Guy of Warwick ever spake were ‘Beef, beef!’ When the weary pilgrim reaches the beloved shores of England after a long absence, what first does he remark—after the incivility of the custom-house officers—but the great tankard of stout and the noble round of cold beef in the coffee-room of the hotel? He does not cry ‘Io Bacche! Evöe Bacche!’ because beef is not Bacchus.He does not fall down and kiss his native soil, because the hotel carpet is somewhat dusty, and the action would be, besides, egregious; but he looks at the beef, and his eyes filling with tears, a corresponding humidity takes place in his mouth; he kisses the beef; he is so fond of it that he could eat it all up; and he does ordinarily devour so much of it to his breakfast, that the thoughtful waiter gazes at him, and murmurs to his napkin, ‘This man is either a cannibal or a pilgrim grey who has not seen Albion for many years.’
It has been well observed, that there are few things in which the public have so great and general an interest, and concerning which they possess so little real knowledge, as of the provision trade and the wholesale traffic in animals live and dead, in their own and other countries. When, where, and how raised, and what processes meat passes through before it reaches their tables, are questions which, though highly important, are very seldom asked by the consumers—all that they usually trouble themselves with is, the current retail price, and the nature of the supply.
Few of us think as we sit down to our rump steak or pork chop, our sirloin or leg of mutton, of the awful havoc of quadrupeds necessary to furnish the daily meals of the millions. I will not weary the reader with statistics, although I have a long array of figures before me, bearing upon the slaughter of animals for food in different countries. It will be sufficient to generalize.
If the hecatomb of animals we have each consumed in the years we have lived, were marshalled in array before us, we should stand aghast at the possibility of our ever having devoured the quantity of animal food, and sacrificed for our daily meals the goodly number ofwell-fed quadrupeds of the ovine, bovine, and porcine races, or the fish, fowl, reptiles, and insects, which would be thus re-embodied.
The average quantity of animal food of all kinds consumed in France is stated on good authority—that of M. Payen—to be as low as one-sixth of a pound per diem to each person. Even in the cities and large towns, especially Paris, the amount of food upon which a Frenchman lives is astonishingly small. An Englishman or an American would starve upon such fare.
In proportion to its population, New York consumes as nearly as possible the same quantity of meat as London, about half-a-pound a day to each person; more beef, however, is consumed there and less mutton, and the latter fact may be accounted for by the comparative inferiority of quality.
It is curious to notice the various parts of animals that are eaten, or selected as choice morsels by different persons or classes. Sheep’s head, pig’s head, calf’s head and brains, ox head, the heads of ducks and geese, ox tongue, reindeer tongue, walrus tongue, crane’s tongue, &c. Fowls and ducks’ tongues are esteemed an exquisite Chinese dainty. The pettitoes of the sucking pig, or the mature feet and hocks of the elder hog, sheep’s trotters, calf’s feet, cow heel, bear’s paws, elephant’s feet, the feet of ducks and geese, and their giblets; ox tail, pig’s tail, sheep’s tail, kangaroo tail, beaver’s tail. And the entrails again are not despised, whether it be bullock’s heart or sheep’s heart, liver and lights, lamb’s fry or pig’s fry, tripe and chitterlings, goose liver and gizzard, the cleaned gut for our sausages, the fish maws, cod liver, and so on. The moufle, or loose covering of the nose, of the great moose deer or elk isconsidered by New Brunswick epicures a great dainty. The hump of the buffalo, the trunk of the elephant, are other delicacies. Deer’s sinews, and the muscle of the ox, the buffalo, and the wild hog, jerked or dried in the sun, and then termed, ‘dendeng,’ is a delicacy of the Chinese, imported at a high price from Siam and the eastern islands.
The eggs of different animals, again, form choice articles of food, whether they be those of the ordinary domestic poultry, the eggs of sea fowl, of the plover, and of game birds, of the ostrich and emu, of the tortoises and other reptilia, as alligator’s eggs, snake’s eggs, and those of the iguana, or the eggs of insects, and of fishes.
Amid all the multiplicity of special dainties, appreciated by different peoples, the prejudices of the stomach are, perhaps, more unconquerable than any other that tyrannize over the human mind. It is almost impossible to get people to adventure, or experimentalize upon anewkind of food. There is a great want of courage and enterprise on this head among Englishmen. John Bull is resolved to eat, drink, and do only what he has been accustomed to. He wants none of your foreign kickshaws, frogs, and snails in fricassées, or sea slug, or bird’s nest soup, or horse flesh steak. It is true he has gradually adventured upon, and now appreciates, a few select foreign delicacies. Real lively turtle and caviar, reindeer tongue, an imitation Indian curry, and such like, have become luxuries; and, probably, under the mysterious manipulations of Gunter, Soyer, and other distinguishedchefs de cuisine, some other foreign delicacies have found, or may yet find, their way upon English tables.
They will probably displace ere long the four standard Scotch dishes, a haggis, a sheep’s head, tripe, and black puddings, or the common dishes of the Devonshire peasant and Cornish fisherman, parsley and squab pies, in which fish, apples, onions, and pork are incongruously blended.
Queen Elizabeth and her ladies breakfasted on meat, bread, and strong ale. Our modern ladies take tea or coffee, and thin slices of toast or bread. The Esquimaux drink train oil, and the Cossacks koumis, an ardent spirit made from mares’ milk. The inhabitants of France and Germany eat much more largely than we do of vegetable diet; and drink, at all times of the day, their acid wines. In Devonshire and Herefordshire, cyder is the common beverage, and in the Highlands of Scotland, oatmeal porridge is, in a great measure, the food, and whiskey the drink of the inhabitants. The Irish peasant lives, or used to do, chiefly on potatoes, and most of the Hindoos of the maritime provinces on rice.
Yet all this variety, and much more, is digested, yields nutriment, and promotes growth; affording undeniable evidence that man is really omnivorous, that he can be supported by great varieties of food.
A recent writer speaking of human diet says, ‘it is a remarkable circumstance, that man alone is provided with a case of instruments adapted to the mastication of all substances,—teeth to cut, and pierce, and champ, and grind; a gastric solvent too, capable of contending with any thing and every thing, raw substances and cooked, ripe and rotten,—nothing comes amiss to him.’
If animals could speak, as Æsop and other fabulists make them seem to do, they would declare man to bethe most voracious animal in existence. There is scarcely any living thing that flies in the air, swims in the sea, or moves on the land, that is not made to minister to his appetite in some region or other.
Other creatures are, generally, restricted to one sort of provender at most. They are carnivorous or graminivorous, piscivorous, or something ivorous; but man is the universal eater. He pounces with the tiger upon the kid, with the hawk upon the dove, with the cormorant upon the herring, and with the small bird upon the insect and grub. He goes halves with the bee in the honey cell, but turns upon his partner and cheats him out of his share of the produce. He grubs up the root with the sow, devours the fruit with the earwig, and demolishes the leaves with the caterpillar; for all these several parts of different vegetables furnish him with food.
Life itself will not hinder his appetite, nor decay nauseate his palate; for he will as soon devour a lively young oyster as demolish the fungous produce of a humid field. This propensity is, indeed, easily abused. Viands of such incongruous nature and heterogeneous substance, are sometimes collected, as to make an outrageous amalgamation, so that an alderman at a city feast might make one shudder; but this is too curious an investigation, it is the abuse of abundance too, and we know that abuse is the origin of all evil. The fact should lead us to another point of appreciation of goodness and beneficence. The adaptation of external nature to man has often been insisted on; the adaptation of man to all circumstances, states, and conditions, is carrying out the idea. The inferior animals are tied down, even by the narrowness of their animal necessities, to a small range of existence; but man can seldom beplaced in any circumstance in which his universal appetite cannot be appeased. From the naked savage snatching a berry from the thorn, to the well-clad, highly civilized denizen of the court, surrounded by every comfort, every luxury; from the tired traveller, who opens his wallet and produces his oaten cake beside the welling lymph which is to slake his thirst, to the pursy justice, ‘in fair round belly with capon lined,’ who spreads the damask napkin on his knees, tucks his toes under the table, and revels in calapash and calapee,—what an infinite diversity of circumstances!
Man, with all his natural and artificial necessities, all his social and domestic dependencies,—more dependent, indeed, upon his fellows than the fowls of the air, from the grand exuberance of nature, and his remarkable adaptation to it in the point alluded to, finds subsistence under circumstances in which other animals might starve.
Perhaps we might properly urge the advice of a recent writer.—‘Make use of every material possible for food, remembering that there are chemical affinities and properties by which nutriment may be extracted from almost every organic substance, the greatest art being in proper cooking. Make soup of every kind of flesh, fish, and leguminosæ.—Every thing adds to its strength and flavour.’
Man eats to satisfy his hunger, and to supply warmth to the body; but the lover of good things, who finds a pleasure in eating, may also be told that there is a beautiful structure of nerve work spread out on the tongue, which carries upwards to the brain messages from the nice things in the mouth.
Moderation in food is, however, one of the greatessentials to health. Sydney Smith, in a letter to Lord Murray, tells him that, having ascertained the weight of food that he could live upon, so as to preserve health and strength, and what he had lived upon, he found that between ten and seventy years of age, he had eaten and drunk forty-four one-horse wagon loads of meat and drink more than would have preserved him in life and health, and that the value of this mass of nourishment was about £7,000.
Sir John Ross tells us that an Esquimaux will eat twenty pounds of flesh and oil daily. But the most marvellous account of gormandizing powers is that published by Captain Cochrane, who in hisNarrative of a Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, says, that the Russian Admiral, Saritcheff, was told that one of the Yakuti consumed in twenty-four hours, ‘the hind quarter of a large ox, twenty pounds of fat, and a proportionate quantity of melted butter for his drink.’ The Admiral, to test the truth of the statement, gave him ‘a thick porridge of rice, boiled down with three pounds of butter, weighing together twenty-eight pounds; and although the glutton had already breakfasted, yet did he sit down to it with great eagerness, and consumed the whole without stirring from the spot; and, except that his stomach betrayed more than ordinary fulness, he showed no sign of inconvenience or injury!’ The traveller I have just quoted also states, that he has repeatedly seen a Yakut, or Tongouse, devour forty pounds of meat a day; and he adds, ‘I have seen three of these gluttons consume a reindeer at one meal.’
It has been well remarked by Dr. Dieffenbach, in theTransactions of the Ethnological Society, that thelabours of modern chemistry have thrown a new and most interesting light on the food of the various races of men, or inhabitants of parts of the globe which are widely different from each other in their geographical and climatological relations. The substances which serve as food, or the quantity which is taken, appear to the superficial observer often of a most extraordinary nature, because they are apparently so heterogeneous from what we are accustomed to; so that travellers relating such facts, do not withhold their astonishment or reprobation.
But it has been demonstrated, that the general use of certain articles, for instance, tea and coffee, betel-nut, tobacco, and wine, depends upon the presence in those substances of elements which are often identical, and which are necessary to the maintenance of the animal economy, more or less, according to the presence or absence of other elements in the food, the different occupation, mode of living, and so on. These points have been well illustrated and explained in theChemistry of Common Life, of the late Professor Johnston. The fact of the Esquimaux consuming large quantities of train oil and blubber ceases to be astonishing, when we reflect that these highly carbonized substances serve to furnish fuel for his increased respiration.
In one word, it is necessary in the present state of chemical and physiological science, to collect analyses of all the substances which are consumed by a particular race, either as food or drink, or by an habitual custom, as so called matters of luxury, or as medicine. The ethnologist has the great merit of working here hand in hand with chemists and physiologists, and fills up in this manner a most important chapter in thenatural history of man; as it shows how instinct and necessity have led him to adopt different customs, and to make use of different articles of consumption in different climates.
Among the ordinary domestic animals, there is little of novelty in the food they supply to man. But I may notice in passing, before proceeding to an investigation of unusual or extraordinary articles of consumption, a few things that may not be generally known.
Jerked beef, ortasajo, as it is termed in Cuba, is imported to the extent of 200 to 350 thousand quintals a year into that island, for feeding the slaves on the plantations.
That imported from Buenos Ayres and Monte Video is preferred for consumption on the sugar estates, to that which is received from Rio Grande, Venezuela, Campeachy, and the United States, it being more substantial, coming in larger and thicker pieces, better cured and salted, and also of handsomer appearance. The class imported from Venezuela and Campeachy, comes in thin pieces calledrebenque, which is not generally liked, and only bought in small parcels, for consumption in the city of Havana. The beef which is cured in the River Plate, from December to May, or in summer, is preferred in Cuba, by reason of its being more nutritive than that which is cured in the other or winter months; the colour is yellowish, and it keeps a longer time.
In South America, the jerked beef is calledcharqui, and when salted, and smoked or dried in the sun,sesina. The commerce is very large in this species of provision.
The mode of preparing it in Chili is as follows:—When the horned cattle are sufficiently fat, or rather at the killing season, which is about the months of Februaryand March, from 500 to 1000, according to the size of the farm, are slaughtered. The whole of the fat is separated from the meat and melted, forming a kind of lard, calledgrasa, which is employed for domestic purposes. The tallow is also kept separate, and the meat is jerked. This process is performed by cutting the fleshy substance into slices of about a quarter-of-an-inch thick, leaving out all the bones. The natives are so dexterous at this work that they will cut the whole of a leg, or any other large part of a bullock, into one uniformly thin piece.
The meat thus cut is either dipped into a very strong solution of salt and water, or rubbed over with a small quantity of fine salt. Whichever mode is adopted, the whole of the jerked meat is put on the hide, and rolled up for ten or twelve hours, or until the following morning. It is then hung on lines or poles to dry in the sun, which being accomplished, it is made into bundles, lashed with thongs of fresh hide, forming a kind of network, and is ready for market. In this operation it loses about one-third of its original weight. The dried meat, orcharqui, finds immediate sale at Lima, Arica, Guayaquil, Panama, and other places. About 6000 quintals ofcharqui, with a proportionate quantity of tallow and fat (grasa) are shipped from Talcahuana to Lima alone. Besides the large quantity consumed in Chili, it furnishes a great part of the food of the slaves in Brazil, the negroes in some of the West India Islands, and seamen, being the general substitute for salt beef and pork. Thegrasaand tallow are also readily sold throughout South America, and are of more value than the meat.
The slaughtering season is as much a time of diversion for the inhabitants of that country as a sheepshearing is in England. The females too are all busied cutting up the fat, frying it forgrasa, and selecting some of the finer meat for presents and home consumption. The tongue is the only part of the head that is eaten, the remainder being left to rot.[1]Dried meat enters largely into consumption in several other countries.
In the Cape Colony dried meat is calledbiltonge. In the East, especially in Siam, the dried sinews of animals are considered a great delicacy; and dried elephant’s flesh we shall find is stored up for food, under the name ofpastoormah. Beef is preserved in Asia Minor with garlic and pepper, and dried in the sun for winter food. It is prepared in Wallachia and Moldavia, and largely shipped from Varna in the Black Sea. Besides providing all Anatolia, Aleppo, and Damascus, 6000 cwt. or more is yearly sent from Kaissariah to Constantinople. Hung beef from Germany is well known at our tables.
Portable and concentrated animal food is of great consequence to explorers and travellers, and therefore it may be well to allude here to the articlepemmican, which is so much used by arctic travellers and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s traders. This is meat of any kind dried and pounded, and saturated with fat. There is as much nourishment in one pound of pemmican as in four pounds of ordinary meat. It may be eaten as it is, or partially cooked, and has a pleasant taste. Sometimes it is mixed with a sufficient quantity of Indian meal and water to cause it to adhere, and then fried or stewed.
The North American Indians dry their venison by exposing thin slices to the heat of the sun, on a stage, under which a small fire is kept, more for the purpose of driving away the flies than for promoting exsiccation; and then they pound it between two stones on a bison hide. In this process the pounded meat is contaminated by a greater or smaller admixture of hair and other impurities.
The fat, which is generally the suet of the bison, is added by the traders, who purchase it separately from the natives, and they complete the process by sewing up the pemmican in a bag of undressed hide, with the hairy side outwards. Each of these bags weighs 90 lbs., and obtains from the Canadian voyageurs the designation of ‘un taureau.’ A superior pemmican is produced by mixing finely powdered meat, sifted from impurities, with marrow fat, and the dried fruit of the Amilanchier.
Sir John Richardson having been employed by government to prepare pemmican on a large scale, at the Victualling Yard, Gosport, for the use of the different arctic expeditions, it will be interesting to describe the process he adopted, as given in hisArctic Searching Expedition, or a Journal of a Boat Voyage, &c.—
‘The round or buttock of beef of the best quality having been cut into thin steaks, from which the fat and membraneous parts were pared away, was dried in a malt kiln, over an oak fire, until its moisture was entirely dissipated, and the fibre of the meat became friable. It was then ground in a malt mill, when it resembled finely grated meat. Being next mixed with nearly an equal weight of melted beef suet or lard, the preparation of plain pemmican was complete; but to render it more agreeable to the unaccustomed palate, a proportionof the best Zante currants was added to part of it, and part of it was sweetened with sugar. Both these kinds were much approved of in the sequel by the consumers, but more especially that to which the sugar had been added. After the ingredients were well incorporated by stirring, they were transferred to tin canisters, capable of containing 85 lbs. each; and having been firmly rammed down and allowed to contract further by cooling, the air was completely expelled and excluded by filling the canister to the brim with melted lard, through a small hole left in the end, which was then covered with a piece of tin and soldered up.
‘As the meat in drying loses more than three-fourths of its original weight, the quantity required was considerable, being 35,651 lbs. (reduced by drying to about 8000 lbs.); and the sudden abstraction of more than one thousand rounds of beef, from Leadenhall Market, occasioned speculation among the dealers, and a rise in the price of a penny per pound, with an equally sudden fall when the extra demand was found to be very temporary.’
We import about 13 or 14 tons of gelatine a year from France, besides what is made at home, and the greater part of what passes under this name is, I believe, used for food. The Americans, some years ago, tried to pass off upon us isinglass made from fish bones, but it would not go down.
Gelatine of all kinds has usually been considered wholesome and nourishing; and while few object to cow-heel or calf’s foot jelly, very many are possibly unaware of the sources of much of the gelatine vended in shapes so beautifully transparent, but which is made from bones and hide clippings, and parchment shavings.It is said that a pair of lady’s gloves have ere now made a ragout; and there is a hiatus in the parchment specifications at the Patent Office, caused by an unlucky boy, who changed them away for tarts, in order that they might be converted into jellies.
The dust of the ivory turner in working up elephants’ tusks forms an excellent material for jellies, and is commonly sold for this purpose, at about 6d.per lb.
M. Payen has recently been at pains to disprove the vulgar notion that bones make good soup. The celebratedGelatine Commission, some years ago, declared, as the results of many experiments, that gelatine was not nutritious; and this result has been repeated in almost every text-book of physiology as conclusive, and is adopted by M. Payen, who tests it in another series of experiments. He boiled in one pot a portion of beef completely divested of bone, and in another the bone taken from the beef, with only a little salt. After five hours’ slow boiling, the liquid from the beef was perfectly limpid, and of a light amber colour, leaving that aroma and delicate taste known to belong to good beef tea. The liquid from the bones was whitish-gray, troubled and opaque, having a very slight odour, and a not agreeable taste. Nothing could be more opposed than the two soups thus produced. In another experiment, he repeated this process with the addition of some vegetables, and even some drops of caramel. The beef-soup here maintained its delicious aroma, agreeably combined with that of the vegetables; its limpidity was the same, but its colour of course stronger. The bone-soup had a dominant odour of vegetables, but its troubled and opaque aspect made it very unappetising. From these experiments M. Payen concludes that theprejudice in favour of the addition of bones to the soup is a prejudice, and that, in fact, bones are not at all nutritious.
Liebig also, in hisLetters on Chemistry, pp. 424 and 425, says:—‘It has now been proved by the most convincing experiments, that gelatine, which by itself is tasteless, and when eaten excites nausea, possesses no nutritive value; that even when accompanied by the savoury constituents of flesh, it is not capable of supporting the vital process, and when added to the usual diet as a substitute for plastic matter, does not increase, but on the contrary diminishes the nutritive value of the food, which it renders insufficient in quantity and inferior in quality; and that its use is hurtful rather than beneficial, because it does not, like the non-nitrogenous substances provided by nature for respiration, disappear in the body without leaving a residue, but overloads with nitrogenous products, the presence of which disturbs and impedes the organic processes.’ And he further observes, that ‘the only difference between this and joiner’s glue is its greater price.’ Jellies no doubt were considered most nutritious during the Peninsular war, but we have learned many things since then, of which our poor soldiers ought to have the benefit.
Portable soup is prepared in a very simple manner. The meat is boiled, and the scum taken off as it rises, until the soup possesses the requisite flavour. ‘It is then suffered to cool, in order that the fat may be separated. In the next place it is mixed with the whites of five or six eggs, and slightly boiled—this operation serves to clarify the liquid, by the removal of opaque particles, which unite with the white of egg, at the time it becomes solid by the heat, and are consequently removedalong with it. The liquor is then to be strained through flannel, and evaporated on the water bath, to the consistence of a very thick paste, after which it is spread rather thin upon a smooth stone, then cut into cakes, and lastly dried in a stove, until it becomes brittle. These cakes may be kept four or five years, if defended from moisture. When intended to be used, nothing more is required to be done than to dissolve a sufficient quantity in boiling water.’[2]
For some years past there have been imported into the Continent rather large quantities of dried meat from the southern countries of America, where it is known under the name ofassayo. It gives a soup nearly similar to that of fresh meat. Another sort of food which is prepared in Texas, themeat-biscuit, is generally used in the American navy; but, although greatly appreciated at the Great Exhibition of London, it has not yet entered into general use in Europe. It is made of boiled beef free from grease, the liquor of which is evaporated to the consistency of syrup, and this is mixed with wheaten flour in sufficient proportion to form a solid paste. This paste is then spread out by a rolling pin, is pierced with a number of little holes, is cut into the ordinary dimensions of sea biscuits, and then baked and properly dried. The biscuit is eaten dry, or may be broken, boiled in twenty or thirty times its weight in water, for from twenty-five to thirty minutes, and then seasoned with salt or other things.
The following is the process of manufacturing this biscuit:—
There are four wooden caldrons or tubs for boiling the meat and evaporating the liquid or broth—the twofor boiling the meat, holding 2,300 gallons, will each boil 7,000 lbs. of meat in twelve to sixteen hours. The other two, for evaporating, will contain some 1,400 gallons each. All the tubs are heated or boiled by steam passing through long coiled iron pipes, supplied at pleasure, either from the escape steam from the engine, or direct from the boiler.
When the meat is so far boiled or macerated, that the liquid or broth contains the entire nutriment, the meaty, or solid portions are separated by a simple process of filtering, so that the broth goes into the evaporator pure and free from fibrous matter. It is then evaporated to a degree of consistency resembling the golden or Stewart’s sugar house syrup, its uniform density being determined by a liquid or syrup gauge. Two pounds of this syrup or extract contains the nutriment of some eleven pounds of meat (including its usual proportion of bone) as first put into the caldron. This is then mixed with the best and finest flour, kneaded and made into biscuit by means of machines. The biscuit is baked upon pans in an oven so constructed as to produce an uniform firmness. The proportion is as two pounds of extract are to three pounds of flour, but by baking, the five pounds of dough is reduced to four pounds of biscuit, and this will make what the inventor claims—the nutriment of over five pounds of meat in one pound of bread, which contains, besides, over ten ounces of flour.
The biscuit resembles in appearance a light coloured sugar-cake. It is packed in air-tight casks or tin canisters of different sizes, part of the biscuit being pulverized by grinding in a mill for the purpose, and then packed with the whole biscuit.
In discussing the extension of our resources of animal food, it is strange to notice that while we eat the blood of pigs and fowls, we throw aside as waste the blood of oxen, sheep, goats, calves, &c. Now blood contains all the principles out of which the tissues are formed, and must, one would therefore imagine, be eminently nutritious. Why prejudice has excluded these, while admitting the blood of pigs, is an anomaly which I cannot understand.
In France, where there are not, as in America, large quantities of animals which are killed simply for the sake of their hides, it would be impossible to prepare or supply at a low price either the assayo or the meat biscuit; but the idea of using the blood of animals killed, which blood is at present wasted without profit, or, at best, is used as manure, might have occurred to some one. M. Brocchieri has conceived this idea. In treating the blood of our slaughter-houses by means which he has invented, and uniting to flour of the best quality, the albumen and fibrine which he extracts from it—he makes bread and biscuits which are easily preserved, and which may be employed to make very nutritious soups.
At the Great Exhibition, in 1851, he producedbon-bonsmade of the blood of the ox, cow, sheep, and hog; biscuits and patties of the blood of the bull, and delicacies made of calves’ blood. I have specimens of these preserved in my private museum, although I have not ventured to taste them.
Generally speaking in England, we do not do much with the blood of animals, at least, in the shape of food—unless it be in those strings of black-puddings, with tempting little bits of fat stuck in them, which stare us in the face in some shops.
But M. Brocchieri has attempted to utilize the nutritious principles of the blood of animals killed for food, by reducing it to a concentrated and dried state, for preservation during long periods. The first step is to prepare a liquid, considered innocuous and antiseptic by the inventor, by which various bloods are kept fluid and apparently fresh. Samples of these were shown, and the series of specimens illustrated the solid parts forming the crassamentum or clot, in a dried and semi-crystalline state. These solid constituents, including the gelatine, albumen, and fibrine are next produced, combined with small proportions of flour, in the form of light, dry masses, like loaves, cakes, or biscuits. These are inodorous, almost flavourless, and may be made the bases of highly nutritious soups. They are very uniform in composition, containing half the nitrogen of dried blood, or forty-four per cent. of dry flesh, the equivalent of double the nutritive value of ordinary butcher’s meat. Both the bull’s and calf’s blood gave 6·6 per cent. of nitrogen, equal to forty-three per cent. of flesh-forming principles. Combined with sugar, the cakes have been made intobon-bons.
The evidence, as to the value of the process, in preserving the samples in an undecomposed state, is now satisfactorily arrived at. It was stated in 1851, that the preparations had been advantageously employed in long voyages. The samples I have in my collection have now been kept seven years, and have not shown any tendency to decay. Thus proving that the first attempt has been successful, in rendering available for food, and portable in form, the otherwise wasted blood of cattle.
This notice of blood recalls to my recollection alaughable story told in a French work, of the life of an unfortunate pig.
‘A French curé, exiled to a deserted part of our forests—and who, the whole year, except on a few rare occasions, lived only on fruit and vegetables—hit upon a most admirable expedient for providing an animal repast to set before the curés of the neighbourhood, when one or the other, two or three times during the year, ventured into those dreadful solitudes, with a view of assuring himself with his own eyes that his unfortunate colleague had not yet died of hunger. The curé in question possessed a pig, his whole fortune: and you will see the manner in which he used it. Immediately the bell announced a visitor, and that his cook had shown his clerical friend into the parlour, the master of the house, drawing himself up majestically, said to his housekeeper: ‘Brigitte, let there be a good dinner for myself and my friend.’ Brigitte, although she knew there were only stale crusts and dried peas in her larder, seemed in no degree embarrassed by this order; she summoned to her assistance ‘Toby the Carrot,’ so called because his head was as red as that of a native of West Galloway, and leaving the house together, they both went in search of the pig. This, after a short skirmish, was caught by Brigitte and her carroty assistant; and, notwithstanding his cries, his grunts, his gestures of despair, and supplication, the inhuman cook, seizing his head, opened a large vein in his throat, and relieved him of two pounds of blood; this, with the addition of garlic, shalots, mint, wild thyme, and parsley, was converted into a most savoury and delicious black-pudding for the curé and his friend, and being served to their reverences smoking hot on the summit of apyramid of yellow cabbage, figured admirably as a small Vesuvius and a centre dish. The surgical operation over, Brigitte, whose qualifications as a seamstress were superior, darned up the hole in the neck of the unfortunate animal: and as he was then turned loose until a fresh supply of black-puddings should be required for a similar occasion, this wretched pig was never happy. How could he be so? Like Damocles of Syracuse, he lived in a state of perpetual fever; terror seized him directly he heard the curé’s bell, and seeing in imagination the uplifted knife already about to glide into his bosom, he invariably took to his heels before Brigitte was half-way to the door to answer it. If, as usual, the peal announced a diner-out, Brigitte and Gold-button were soon on his track, calling him by the most tender epithets, and promising that he should have something nice for his supper—skim-milk, &c.,—but the pig with his painful experience was not such a fool as to believe them. Hidden behind an old cask, some fagots, or lying in a deep ditch, he remained silent as the grave, and kept himself close as long as possible. Discovered, however, he was sure to be at last, when he would rush into the garden, and, running up and down like a mad creature, upset everything in his way. For several minutes it was a regular steeplechase—across the beds, now over the turnips, then through the gooseberry-bushes—in short, he was here, there, and everywhere; but, in spite of all his various stratagems to escape the fatal incision, the poor pig always finished by being seized, tied, thrown on the ground, and bled: the vein was then once more cleverly sewn up, and the inhuman operators quietly retired from the scene to make the curé’s far-famed black-pudding.Half-dead upon the spot where he was phlebotomized, the wretched animal was left to reflect under the shade of a tree on the cruelty of man, on their barbarous appetites; cursing with all his heart the poverty of Morvinian curates, their conceited hospitality, of which he was the victim, and their brutal affection for pig’s blood.’
Sir George Simpson, speaking of some of the northern tribes of Indians in America, says, the flexibility of their stomachs is surprising. At one time they will gorge themselves with food, and are then prepared to go without any for several days, if necessary.
Enter their tents; sit there if you can for a whole day, and not for an instant will you find the fire unoccupied by persons of all ages cooking. When not hunting or travelling, they are in fact always eating. Now it is a little roast, a partridge or rabbit perhaps; now a tit-bit, broiled under the ashes; anon a portly kettle, well filled with venison, swings over the fire; then comes a choice dish of curdled blood, followed by the sinews and marrow-bones of deer’s legs, singed on the embers. And so the grand business of life goes unceasingly round, interrupted only by sleep.
Dining within the arctic circle, when such a thing as dinner is to be had, is a much more serious matter than when one undergoes that pleasing ceremony at a first-rate eating house, hotel, or club.
In arctic banquets, the cheerful glass is often frozen to the lip, or the too ardent reveller splinters a tooth in attempting to gnaw through a lump of soup. We, in these temperate climes, have never had the pleasure ofeatingship’s rum, orchewingbrandy and water. It is not only necessary to ‘first catch your fish,’ but alsoessential tothawit; and there is no chance of the fish being limber, although it is not unusual for heat to bring them to life after they have been frozen stiff a couple of days. In the arctic circle even the very musquitoes, which, by the way, are frightfully large and numerous, become torpid with the intense cold, and are frozen into hard masses, which the heat of the sun, or fire, may restore to animation.
Dr. Sutherland, in his voyage in Baffin’s Bay, says—‘It was necessary to be very careful with our drinking cups. Tin never suited, for it always adhered to the lips, and took a portion of the skin along with it. A dog attempting to lick a little fat from an iron shovel stuck fast to it, and dragged it by means of his tongue, until by a sudden effort, he got clear, leaving several inches of the skin and adjacent tissue on the cold metal. One of the seamen, endeavouring to change the size of the eye of the splice in his tack-rope, put the marling spike, after the true sailor fashion, into his mouth; the result was that he lost a great portion of his lips and tongue.’
We hear frequent jokes of the partiality of the Russians for tallow candles, and, like all inhabitants of the polar regions, the Esquimaux are very fond of fat, the physiology of their craving for fat is now known to everybody. My esteemed friend, the late Mr. Hooper, one of the officers of H.M.S.Plover, in his account of his residence on the shores of Arctic America, states, that ‘one of the ladies who visited them was presented, as a jest, with a small tallow candle, called a purser’s dip. It was, notwithstanding, a very pleasant joke to the damsel, who deliberately munched it up with evident relish, and finally, drew the wick between her set teeth to clean off any remaining morsels of fat.’
He gives also in detail, the history of a Tuski repast of the most sumptuous nature, to which he and his companions were invited, and I must find room for some portion of it.
‘First was brought in, on a huge wooden tray, a number of small fish, uncooked, but intensely frozen. At these all the natives set to work, and we essayed, somewhat ruefully it must be confessed, to follow their example; but, being all unused to such gastronomic process, found ourselves, as might be expected, rather at a loss how to commence. From this dilemma, however, our host speedily extricated us, by practical demonstration of the correct mode of action; and, under his certainly very able tuition, we shortly became more expert. But, alas! a new difficulty was soon presented; our native companions, we presume, either made a hasty bolt of each morsel, or had, perhaps, a relish for the flavour of the viands now under consideration. Not so ourselves—it was sadly repugnant to our palates; for, aided by the newly-acquired knowledge that the fish were in the same condition as when taken from the water, uncleaned and unembowelled, we speedily discovered that we could neither bolt nor retain the fragments, which, by the primitive aid of teeth and nails, we had rashly detached for our piscatorial share. It was to no purpose that our host pressed us to ‘fall to;’ we could not manage the consumption of this favourite preparation (or rather lack thereof), and succeeded with difficulty in evading his earnest solicitations. The next course was a mess of green stuff, looking as if carefully chopped up, and this was also hard frozen. To it was added a lump of blubber, which the lady presiding, who did all the carving, dexterously cut into slices with aknife like a cheesemonger’s, and apportioned out at different quarters of the huge tray before mentioned, which was used throughout the meal, together with a modicum of the grass-like stuff, to the company; the only distinction in favour of the strangers and guests of high degree being, that their slices were cut much thinner than for the rest. We tasted this compound, and ... we didn’t like it: at this no one will wonder—the blubber speaks for itself; and the other stuff, which really was not very unpalatable, we discovered in after-times to be the unruminated food of reindeer which had been slaughtered—at least, so we were told: but I am not quite clear on this point. Our dislike to the dish had no offensive effect upon our host, who only seemed to be astonished at our strange want of taste, and, with the rest of the guests, soon cleared the board; the managing dame putting the finishing stroke by a rapid sweep of her not too scrupulously clean fingers over the dish, by way of clearing off the fragments to prepare for the reception of the next delicacy. After this interesting operation she conveyed her digits to her mouth, and, engulfing them for a brief period, withdrew them, quite in apple pie order once more. The board was now again replenished, this time with viands less repellent to our unnurtured tastes. Boiled seal and walrus flesh appeared, and our hospitable friends were greatly relieved when they beheld us assist in the consumption of these items, which, being utterly devoid of flavour, were distasteful only from their extreme toughness and mode of presentation; but we did not, of course, desire to appear too singular or squeamish. Next came a portion of whale’s flesh, or rather whale’s skin. This was perfectly ebony in hue, and we discoveredsome apprehensions respecting its fitness as an article of food; but our fears were groundless. It was cut and re-cut crosswise into diminutive cubes; venturing upon one of which we were agreeably surprised to find it possessing a cocoa-nut flavour, like which it also cut, ‘very short;’ indeed, so much astonished were we on this occasion, that we had consumed a very considerable number of these cubes, and with great relish too, before we recovered from our wonder. The dish was ever afterwards a favourite with me. On its disappearance, a very limited quantity of boiled reindeer meat, fresh and fat, was served up, to which we did ample justice; then came portions of the gum of the whale, in which the ends of the bone lay still embedded; and I do not hesitate to declare that this was perfectly delicious, its flavour being, as nearly as I can find a parallel, like that of cream cheese. This, which the Tuski call their sugar, was the wind-up to the repast and ourselves, and we were fain to admit that, after the rather unpleasant auspices with which our feast commenced, the finale was by no means to be contemned.’
A merchant at a banquet to which he was invited with several respectable Greenlanders, counted the following dishes:—Dried herrings; dried seal’s flesh; the same boiled; half-raw, or putrid seal’s flesh, called Mikiak; boiled auks; part of a whale’s tail in a half-putrid state, which was considered as a principal dish; dried salmon; dried reindeer venison; preserves of crow-berries mixed with the chyle from the maw of the reindeer; and lastly, the same enriched with train oil.
Dr. Kane, enumerating arctic delicacies, says, ‘Our journeys have taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few among us who do not relisha slice of raw blubber or a chunk of frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk), eaten with little slices of his fat—of a verity it is a delicious morsel. Fire would ruin the curt, pithy expression of vitality which belongs to its uncooked juices. Charles Lamb’s roast pig was nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With acids and condiments, it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot help relishing; and as a powerful and condensed heat-making and antiscorbutic food, it has no rival. I make this last broad assertion after carefully testing its truth. The natives of South Greenland prepare themselves for a long journey in the cold by a course of frozen seal. At Upernavik they do the same with the narwhal, which is thought more heat-making than the seal; while the bear, to use their own expression, is ‘stronger travel than all.’ In Smith’s Sound, where the use of raw meat seems almost inevitable from the modes of living of the people, walrus holds the first rank. Certainly this pachyderm, whose finely-condensed tissue and delicately-permeating fat—(oh! call it not blubber)—assimilate it to the ox, is beyond all others, and is the very best fuel a man can swallow. It became our constant companion whenever we could get it; and a frozen liver upon our sledge was valued far above the same weight of pemmican.’
Mr. Augustus Petermann, in a paper upon Animal Life in the Arctic Regions, read before the Royal Geographical Society, thus enumerates the food resources:—
‘Though several classes of the animal creation, as for example, the reptiles, are entirely wanting in thisregion, those of the mammals, birds, and fishes, at least, bear comparison both as to number and size with those of the Tropics: the lion, the elephant, the hippopotamus, and others not being more notable in the latter respect than the polar bear, the musk ox, the walrus, and, above all, the whale. Besides these, there are the moose, the reindeer, the wolf, the polar hare, the seal, and various smaller quadrupeds. The birds consist chiefly of an immense number of aquatic birds. Of fishes, the salmon, salmon trout, and herring, are the principal, the latter especially crowding in such myriads as to surpass everything of that kind found in tropical regions.
‘Nearly all these animals furnish wholesome food for men. They are, with few exceptions, distributed over the entire regions: their number, however, or the relative intensity of the individuals, is very different in different parts. Thus, on the American side, we find the animals decreasing in number from east to west. On the shores of Davis’ Straits, in Baffin’s Bay, Lancaster Sound, Regent Inlet, &c., much less in number are met with than in Boothia Felix, and Parry groups. The abundance of animal life in Melville Island and Victoria Channel, is probably not surpassed in any other part on the American side. Proceeding westward to the Russian possessions, we find considerable numbers of animals all round and within the sea of Kamtschatka, as also to the north of Behring’s Straits. The yearly produce of the Russian Fur Company, in America, is immense, and formerly it was much greater. Pribylon, when he discovered the small islands named after him, collected, within two years, 2,000 skins of sea otters, 40,000 sea bears, (ursine seals,) 6,000 dark sea foxes, and 1,000 walrus-teeth. Lütke, in hisVoyageRound the World, mentions that, in the year 1803, 800,000 skins of the ursine seal alone were accumulated in Unataski, one of the depôts of the Russian Fur Company, 700,000 of which were thrown into the sea, partly because they were badly prepared, and partly to keep up the prices. But in no other part of the arctic zoological region is animal life so abundant as in the northern parts of Siberia, especially between the Rivers Kolyma and Lena.
‘The first animals that make their appearance after the dreary winter, are large flights of swans, geese, ducks, and snipes; these are killed by old and young. Fish also begin to be taken in nets and baskets placed under the ice.
‘In June, however, when the river opens, the fish pour in in immense numbers. At the beginning of this century, several thousand geese were sometimes killed in one day at the mouth of the River Kolyma. About twenty years later, when Admiral Wrangel visited those regions, the numbers had somewhat decreased, and it was then called a good season when 1,000 geese, 5,000 ducks, and 200 swans were killed at that place. The reindeer chase forms the next occupation for the inhabitants. About the same time, the shoals of herrings begin to ascend the rivers, and the multitudes of these fish are often such that, in three or four days, 40,000 may be taken with a single net.
‘On the banks of the River Indejiska the number of swans and geese resorting there in the moulting season, is said to be much greater even than on the River Kolyma.’
The choicest dish of the Greenlanders is the flesh of the reindeer. But as those animals have now becomeextremely scarce, and several of them are soon consumed by a hunting party, they are indebted to the sea for their permanent sustenance, seals, fish, and sea-fowl. Hares and partridges are in no great estimation as delicacies. The head and fins of the seal are preserved under the grass in summer, and in winter a whole seal is frequently buried in the snow. The flesh, half frozen, half putrid, in which state the Greenlanders term it mikiak, is eaten with the keenest appetite. The ribs are dried in the air and laid up in store. The remaining parts of the seal, as well as birds and small fishes, are eaten, well boiled or stewed with a small quantity of sea-water. On the capture of a seal, the wound is immediately stopped up to preserve the blood, which is rolled into balls like forcemeat.
The intestines of small animals are eaten without any further preparation than that of pressing out the contents between the fingers.
They set a great value on what they find in the reindeer’s maw, making it into a dish which they call Nerukak (the eatable), and send presents of it to their friends. The entrails of the rypeu, mixed with fresh train oil and berries, compose another mess which they consider as a consummate delicacy. Their preserves for winter are composed of fresh, rotten and half-hatched eggs, crake berries, and angelica, thrown together into a sack of seal skin, filled up with train oil. They likewise suck out the fat from the skins of sea-fowls; and, in dressing seal skins, they scrape off the grease which could not well be separated in the skinning, to make a kind of pancake.
In the second voyage of Sir John Ross to the arctic regions, it is related of the steward, that he purchaseda sledge of the Esquimaux, and on examining it, it was found to be made of salmon, with skins sewed over them; but the cross pieces were the leg bones of the reindeer. It was not an erroneous conjecture of some of the crew, that when these poor creatures are driven to extremity for food, they turn to and make a dainty meal of their sledges, as, with the exception of the reindeer bones, the whole of them is eatable. When we refer to the description which the late Sir John Franklin gives of the different articles of food by which he and his party were maintained, the component parts of the sledge of an Esquimaux would, under circumstances of extreme want, be considered a real dainty.
There cannot be any comparison between a meal oftripe de rocheand the stinking marrow of a reindeer bone, and a piece of dried salmon, which by its exposure to the frost has been kept from putridity; indeed, the epicures amongst the Esquimaux do not hesitate to declare, that the flavor of the salmon is rather enhanced by its long keeping, on the same principle we suppose that the flavour of game of this country rises in the estimation of the epicure in proportion as the bird or animal approaches to putridity. At all events, it must be a novel and curious exhibition, to observe a party of Esquimaux cutting up a sledge, and carving out pieces of salmon, according to their respective tastes, and seasoning them with some of the oil extracted from the blubber of the whale. The latter condiment is to the Esquimaux what Burgess’ anchovy is to the citizen of London; and instances are not rare, in which an Esquimaux has been known to devour four pounds of seal flesh, or of salmon, well soaked in whale oil, at one meal, with about half-a-gallon of water as the beverage.
Much of the animal food comes frozen to the markets of St. Petersburg. The sledges which bring it are used as stalls to sell it. The matting is thrown aside, and the poultry and frozen carcases are arranged so as to attract buyers. Whole sledge loads of snow-white hares find their way to the market. The little animals are usually frozen in a running position, with their ears pointed, and their legs stretched out before and behind, and when placed on the ground, look at a first glance as if they were in the act of escaping from the hunter.
Bear’s flesh is also sometimes offered for sale in the market, and here and there may be seen a frozen reindeer lying in the snow, by the side of a booth, its hairy snout stretched forth upon the ground, its knees doubled up under its body, and its antlers rising majestically into the air. It looks as if on our approaching it, it would spring up and dash away once more in search of its native forests.
The mighty elk is likewise no rare guest in this market, where it patiently presents its antlers as a perch for the pigeons that are fluttering about, till, little by little, the axe and the saw have left no fragment of the stately animal, but every part of the carcase has gone its way into the kitchens of the wealthy.
The geese are cut up, and the heads, necks, legs, and carcases sold separately by the dozen, or half dozen, strung upon small cords. Those who cannot afford to dine on the breast of a goose, purchase a string of frozen heads, or a few dozen of webbed feet, to boil down into soup. The frozen oxen, calves, and goats, stand around in rows. Sucking pigs are a favourite delicacy with the Russians. Hundreds of these, in theirfrozen state, are seen ranged about the sledges, mingled with large frozen hogs.
The bones and meat being all rendered equally hard by the frost, the animals are sawn up into a number of slices, of an inch or two in thickness, and by this operation a quantity of animal sawdust is scattered on the snow, and afterwards gathered up by poor children, who haunt the market for that purpose. Fish, which is offered for sale, is sawn and sold in the same frozen condition.[3]
‘If one is to judge from therestaurantsat Moscow,’ writes a correspondent of theTimes, ‘there is no better place in the world to come to in order to try the temper. The best of them is dear and bad beyond comparison, and the only things good are the wine and the bread. It must be admitted that the latter is excellent, light, sweet, white, and wholesome, and our London bakers would do well if they came to Moscow for an apprenticeship in the art of making bread. It is very hard to have to pay 1l.for cabbage soup,filet du cheval, a bit of bad fish, one stewed pear, and a bottle of light French wine; but it is harder still to wait for twenty minutes between every dish, while leaden-eyed waiters are staring at you with a mixture of contempt and compassion because of your ignorance of the Russian tongue. Tired, cross, and dyspeptic, the stranger seeks a Russian dining room where the arts of French cookery have never been employed to render bad meat still worse. There, amid the odours of tobacco—for a Russian not being able to smoke in the streets makes up for itchez lui—you resign yourself to an unknownbill of fare and the caprices of your bearded attendant. It is fair to say of the said waiter, that he is clad in a milk-white and scrupulously clean robe, which descends in easy folds from his neck to his heels, so that he looks like a very high priest of the deity of gastronomy, and that you need not be as uneasy about his fingers and hands as you have good cause to be at the Russo-Frenchrestaurants. First you will be presented with a huge bowl of cabbage soup, a kind ofpot-au-feu, which must be eaten, however, with several odd adjuncts, such as cakes stuffed with chopped vegetables, a dish of guelots, chopped fat, fried brown and crisp, and lastly a large ewer full of sour milk. Then comes avol-au-ventof fowl and toad-stools. Next, if you are alive, porosenok, or a boiled sucking pig, with tart sauce; then a very nasty little fish, much prized in Moscow, and called sterlet; a fid of roast beef and a dish of birds about the size of pigeons, called guillemots; a compote of fruit closes the meal. I have forgotten to say how it begins. Before dinner a tray is laid out with caviare, raw salt herrings, raw ham and sardines, bottles of brandy, vodka, anisette, and doppel kümmel, a sweet spirit with a flavour of mint. It isde rigueurto eat some of this, and as the caviare is generally good, it is the best part of the dinner.’
The Governor of Cape Coast Castle, in his official report to the Colonial Office, in 1856, speaking of the food and cooking in the interior, remarks:—‘An officer of government, who has been about two years here, says, that he reckons he has eaten, during that time, 700 fowls, it being difficult at out-stations to cater in anything else but fowls.
‘In cooking, the natives seem to have almost a homeopathicprepossession for trituration. They pound and grind by hand labour, between stones, their maize, and bake it; so with their yams, and, I believe, cassada; they pound also their plantains and make soup of them.
‘Fish with a strong flavour and snails are favorites. The latter grow to a large, I had almost said formidable, size. I have in my possession the shell of one which I found buried about a foot in the ground, within a few yards of Government house, and which measures in length about five inches, and in circumference, in the widest part, about seven inches. A collection of these snails was once sent to me as a compliment, but I need hardly say, that I cannot speak of their taste from experience, though I do not know why I should not as well as I can of land crabs, which, when properly cooked, are, I think, general favorites with us. On the subject of cooking, I may observe, that the country cooked dishes (if of materials of a nature, and in a state, admitted in the category of our edibles) brought to table in the black native-made earthen pots in which they are cooked on the fire, are almost without exception favorites with the Europeans.’
The African Bushmen, who have few or no cattle, live upon what they can get. Hunger compels them to eat every thing, roots, bulbs, wild garlic, the core of aloes, the gum of acacias, berries, the larvæ of ants, lizards, locusts, and grasshoppers—all are devoured by these poor wanderers of the desert. Nothing comes amiss to them.
The principal diet of the Kaffir is milk, which he eats rather than drinks in a sour and curdled state. One good meal a day, taken in the evening, consisting of the curdled milk and a little millet, is almost all thathe requires, and with this he is strong, vigorous, and robust, proving that large quantities of animal food are by no means necessary for the sustenance of the human frame.
Singularly enough a Kaffir, like a Jew, will never touch pork. To him it is unclean, though why he thinks so I suspect he cannot tell. Fish is likewise abstained from by him, as it is said to have been by the Egyptian priesthood. Yet with these antipathies he will eat the flesh of an ox, cooked or raw, when he can obtain it, not excepting portions of the animal from which one would imagine he would turn away with disgust.
To such tribes as the Shangalla negroes, occupying the wild tracts bordering on Abyssinia, roots are their daily food, and locusts and lizards their luxuries.
The Indians of Brazil do not reject any kind of food, and devour it almost without being cooked; rats and other small vermin, snakes, and alligators, are all accepted.
The aborigines of Australia live chiefly on the native animals they can procure—the kangaroo, the wallaby, bandicoot, kangaroo rat, opossum, and wombat; every bird and bird’s egg that can be procured; and in the case of tribes near the sea, cray-fish, and shell-fish, form the staple article of their diet.
Under the influence of Christianity, the fish, flesh, or fowl, which the Pacific Islanders previously regarded as incarnations of their gods, are now eaten without suspicion or alarm. One, for instance, saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle, another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and so on throughout all the fish of the sea, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Insome of the shell-fish, even, gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular god he would consider it death to injure or to eat. The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking up his abode in that person’s body, and causing to generate diseases.
The Sonthal, or lowlander of Bengal, being unfettered by caste, eats without scruple his cow or buffalo beef, his kids, poultry, pork, or pigeons, and is not over particular as to whether the animals have been slain, have died a natural death, or have been torn by wild animals. When the more substantial good things of life, such as meat and poultry are scarce, he does not refuse to eat snakes, ants, frogs, and field rats.
In Eastern Tibet regular meals are not in vogue; the members of a family do not assemble to dine together, but ‘eat when they’re hungry, drink when they’re dry.’ ‘We remember,’ says a writer inBlackwood, ‘to have heard a graphic description of the Tibetancuisine, from a humorousshikaree, or native Nimrod of our Himalayan provinces. The Bhoteea folk (he said) have a detestable way of eating. They take a large cooking pot full of water, and put in it meat, bread, rice, and what not, and set it on the fire, where it is always a-simmering. When hungry, they go and fish out a cupful of whatever comes uppermost, perhaps, six or seven times a day. Strangers are served in the same way. If a man gets hold of a bone, he picks it, wipes his hands on his dress, and chucks it back into the pot. So with all crumbs and scraps, back they go into the pot, and thus the never-ending still-beginning mess stews on.’
If we visit Burmah, we find there a rather indiscriminate use of all that can satiate the appetite, without much regard to selection. Immense quantities of pressed fish are prepared, calledgnapee, which constitutes a main article of their diet. In some cases the fish is washed and pounded, and this description generally consists of prawns. In the coarser sorts the pieces of fish are entire, half putrid, half pickled. They are all fetid and offensive to Europeans.
A kind of red ant is eaten fried, or with their dried fish, and a worm, which in the lower provinces of Burmah is found in the heart of a shrub, is considered such a delicacy, that every month a great quantity is sent to the capital to be served up at the table of the emperor. It is eaten either fried or roasted.
According to Sir John Bowring, the Chinese have no prejudices whatever as regards food; they eat anything and everything from which they can derive nutrition. Dogs, especially puppies, are habitually sold as food. In the butchers’ shops large dogs skinned and hanging with their viscera, may be seen by the side of pigs and goats. Even to the flesh of monkeys and snakes they have no objection.
The sea slug is an aristocratic and costly delicacy, which is never wanting, any more than the edible birds-nests, at a feast where honour is intended to be done to the guests. These birds-nests are worth twice their weight in silver. They are glutinous compositions formed by a kind of swallow, in vast clusters, found in Java, Sumatra, and the rocky islets of the Indian Archipelago. Dried sharks’ fins and fish maws are also highly prized.
But while the rich fare sumptuously, the mass of the poor subsist on the veriest garbage. The heads of fowls, their entrails and fat, with every scrap of digestible animal matter, earth-worms, sea reptiles of all kinds, mice, and other vermin are greedily devoured. Lots of black frogs, in half dozens, tied together, are exposed for sale in shallow troughs of water. The hind-quarters of a horse will be seen hung up in a butcher’s shop, with the recommendation of a whole leg attached.
Unhatched ducks and chickens are a favorite dish. Nor do the early stages of putrefaction create any disgust. Rotten eggs are by no means condemned to perdition. Fish is the more acceptable when it has a strong fragrance and flavour to give more gusto to the rice, which forms the two meals of the population, morning and evening. In the shops, fat pork chops will be found dried and varnished to the colour of mahogany, suspended with dry pickled ducks’ gizzards, and strings of sausages cured by exposure to the sun.
In Hong Kong, rice with salt fish and fat pork is the principal article of Chinese diet; and for drink, tea and hot samshew, a spirit distilled from rice, and very unpalatable to Europeans.
Nearly all the beasts of the forest are eaten by the Dyaks of Borneo; even monkeys, alligators (if small), snakes, and other reptiles are esteemed. Like the French, they regard frogs as a delicate dish, and bestow considerable pains in procuring them.
The Greenlanders, although they do not usually eat their meat raw, have a superstitious custom, on every capture, of cutting out a piece of the raw flesh and drinking the warm blood. And the woman who skinsthe seal, gives a couple of pieces of the fat to each of the female spectators.
An European writer states, that he frequently followed the example of the Greenlanders in the chase, and assuaged his hunger by eating a piece of raw reindeer’s flesh; nor did he find it very hard of digestion, but it satisfied his appetite much less than cooked meat. The inhabitants of the high table-lands of Abyssinia, are also accustomed to eat raw flesh—the climate being as cold as that of the northern parts of Scotland. My friend, Mr. C. Johnston, in his travels in that country, thus puts in a plea for the practice by the Abyssinians.
In a country but poorly wooded, the chief supply of fuel being the dung of cattle, an instinctive feeling, dependent upon the pleasures of a state of warmth, has taught the Abyssinians that the flesh of animals eaten raw, is a source of great physical enjoyment, by the cordial and warming effects upon the system produced by its digestion, and to which I am convinced bon vivants more civilized than the Abyssinians would resort, if placed in their situation.