We have spoken of horse-flesh as introduced at the dinner of the Acclimatization Society, but it is hardly known that the Frenchmen have tried to make it as common as beef. Isidore St. Helain says of it, that it has long been regarded as of a sweetish, disagreeable taste, very tough, and not to be eaten without difficulty; but so many different facts are opposed to this prejudice that it is impossible not to perceive the slightness of the foundation. The free or wild horse is hunted as game in all parts of the world where it exists,—Asia, Africa, and America, and perhaps even now in Europe. The domestic horse is itself made use of for alimentary purposes in all those countries.
"Its flesh is relished by races the most diverse,—Negro, Mongol, Malay, American, Caucasian. It was much esteemed until the eighth century amongst the ancestors of some of the greatest nations of Western Europe, who had it in general use and gave it up with regret. Soldiers to whom it has been served out and people who have bought it in markets, have taken it for beef; and many people buy it daily in Paris for venison."
During the commune many people were glad enough to get horse-flesh for the roast.
Locusts are eaten by many tribes of North American Indians, and there is no reason why they should not be very good. The bushmen of Africa rejoice in roasting spiders; maggots tickle the palates of the Australian aborigines; and the Chinese feast on the chrysalis of a silk-worm.
If this is what they ate, what then did they drink? No thin potations, no half-filled cups for the early English. Wine-bibbers and beer-bibbers, three-bottle men they were down to one hundred years ago. Provocatives of drink were called "shoeing horses," "whetters," "drawers off and pullers on."
Massinger puts forth a curious test of these provocatives:—
"I asked
Such an unexpected dainty bit for breakfast
As never yet I cooked; 'tis red botargo,