The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

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 into bon-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 a laughable 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 a pyramid 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 of eating ship’s rum, or chewing brandy and water. It is not only necessary to ‘first catch your fish,’ but also essential to thaw it; 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.’