The octopus

by Henry Lee

I have tasted the octopus, sepia, and loligo, and am quite of Professor Forbes’s opinion that they are very palatable when really well cooked. They are all the better for being dressed with made gravy, but may be eaten plainly boiled, and served with egg-sauce. They are apt, however, to be very tough unless slowly simmered, and should first be well beaten with a wooden mallet or the flat of a cleaver. At Gibraltar, the Spanish fishermen may frequently be observed engaged in softening an octopus by dashing it several times with great violence on the stone landing steps at the fish-market.[25] The flavour is not unlike that of the skate, or the white part of a scallop. A writer in the “Echo” called the flesh of the octopus “a sort of marine tripe, the chief merit of which lay in the sauce in which it was served.” I am inclined to agree with him.

To many persons who have not, like the Greeks, been accustomed from childhood to regard it as a delicacy, the appearance of an octopus, alive or dead, is very revolting; and I admit that its boiled carcase, put before one in unadorned simplicity, is not appetizing.

I shall never forget the utter loathing, ludicrously mingled with determination to conquer or conceal that feeling, which was depicted on the countenances of some of the guests at a memorable “octopus-lunch” given by my friend Sir John Cordy Burrows at Brighton, in 1874.

His cook had never before prepared an octopus, and was, probably, not well pleased to do so then. The nasty-looking object was placed on the table in all its undisguised ugliness. Its skin, which in the process of boiling had become lividly purple, and had not been removed, was in places offensively broken and abraded; and its arms, shrivelled and shrunk, sprawled helplessly on the dish, and, somehow, looked, as they proved to be, as tough and ropy as so many thongs of hunting-whips. Our genial host saw in an instant that it was a failure in cookery, but, as usual, he was equal to the occasion. With a twinkle of his eye he “took a sly glance at me,” and gravely handed a portion of the octopus to an honoured guest. “Now, sir,” said he, “just taste that, and enjoy one of the luxuries of the ancient Greeks!” The ancient Greeks were, as it seemed to me, mentally anathematized; but the plate was accepted, its contents earnestly scanned, the knife and fork just brought into contact with the viand, and then all were thrust hastily away. A gallant colonel, who would probably be in “the first flight” across country, and would not hesitate to lead a charge of his regiment, also “craned” at his plate, and declined to taste the “luxury.” Sir Cordy then looked to me as his “forlorn hope.” With the air of a veteran and connoisseur I helped him and myself to some of the most approved portions of the leathery creature. Manfully and perseveringly for some minutes I tried to masticate a mouthful of it, but it was useless; and feeling that if human teeth could make no more impression on it than on the sole of an old boot, the human stomach incurred risk of difficulties which all the well-known medical skill of our good host might be unable to cure, I declined to sacrifice myself to an idea, and——; well, I did not swallow it.

The octopus had not been beaten. We were! I afterwards saw this little private experiment seriously described in a newspaper paragraph, which was extensively quoted, as an endeavour to introduce to the public a new and valuable article of marketable food.

In my opinion, the squid, or sleeve (Loligo), is the best of the three. Rondeletius recommends their being dressed with oil and vinegar. On the Normandy coast they are boiled with onions and other vegetables, the liquor being saved as good stock for soup. At Marseilles they are stuffed with dried tendrils of the vine. The Chinese and Japanese prefer them seasoned with vinegar and ginger, and attribute to the flesh various medicinal properties. In Mauritius and the neighbouring islands they are generally curried.

The various genera of cuttle-fishes were held in high estimation by the ancients; and it was a custom of the Greeks to send them out as presents on the fifth day after the birth of a child, and before giving it a name. At the nuptial feast of Iphicrates, who married the daughter of Cotys, King of Thrace, a hundred polypi and sepiæ were served. The Greek epicures prized them most when they contained “roe,” and had them cooked with highly seasoned sauces. The Lacedæmonians boiled them entire, and were not disgusted by the black froth formed by their inky liquor diffusing itself in the water.

In “The Deipnosophists” of Athenæus are numerous quotations from older writers relating to the use, as food, of the various kinds of cuttle-fishes. Athenæus, who was an Egyptian, born in Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic mouth of the Nile, lived and wrote in the first half of the third century. He appears to have been imbued with a great love of learning, in the pursuit of which he indulged in the most extensive and multifarious reading. His “common-place book” must have been a marvel of industrious annotation and careful record, for he has saved from oblivion, by his extracts from their writings, many authors whose works have been long ago lost, and of whose existence future generations would have been unaware, if he, by his faithful and pains-taking acknowledgment of his indebtedness to them, had not handed them down to posterity. He devotes many chapters to the history of festive entertainments, and the dishes served at banquets of the old Romans and Greeks; and by his collection from numerous authors of passages, some of which contain but a few words, and were probably regarded by their contemporaries as of fugitive interest, has given us an insight of the elaborate preparations made for dinner-parties, and the appreciation of artistic cookery by gourmets in those days. Some of our household cooks in this nineteenth century would “give warning” instantly if asked to get ready for table for their master’s friends such a profuse variety of dishes. Course followed course in skilfully arranged sequence, all intended to tempt the palate, or supposed to possess some medicinal or stomachic virtue, and presenting, in their combination, a feast compared with which our lord mayor’s dinners are unrefined in their mere plenty. In all important entertainments, public or private, the cuttle-fishes of the Mediterranean were highly esteemed as delicacies, and were as well known and regularly looked for in the menu as are salmon and turbot at similar gatherings now. In the following extracts from the notebook of Athenæus, by the “polypus” is meant the Octopus, by the “cuttle-fish” the Sepia, and by the “squid” or “squill,” the genus represented by our Loligo.

Plato, the comic poet, mentioning in his “Phaon” the banquet of Philoxenus the Leucadian, says:—