The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

The Malays are fond of the Cerithium telescopium and palustre found in the Mangrove swamps. They throw them on their wood fires, and when sufficiently cooked, break off the sharp end of the spine, and suck the tail of the animal through the opening.

‘The poor people of the Philippines relish the Arca inequivalvis, boiling them as we do cockles or mussels; the flesh, however, is red and very bad-flavoured. Some Monodonta which I have eaten among the Korean Islands are quite peppery, and bite the tongue, producing the same unpleasant effects upon that organ as the root of the Arum maculatum, or leaves of the Taro, but in much less intense degree; and a species of Mytilus, found in the same locality, has very similar unpalatable qualities.’[37]

Of the several species of urchins or sea-eggs, one, the Echinus albus, is eaten by the Chilians and others. The white urchin is of a globular form, and about three inches in diameter; the shell and spines are white, but the interior substance is yellowish and of an excellent taste.

There is a marine delicacy of the Chinese which must not be passed unnoticed; it is a kind of sea-slug, varieties of Holothuria, fished for on the coral reefs of the Eastern seas, and known under the names of Bêche-de-mer and Tripang.

When dried it is an ugly looking dirty-brown colored substance, very hard and rigid until softened by water, and a very lengthened process of cooking, after which it becomes soft and mucilaginous. It is rendered down into a sort of thick soup, after partaking of which a Chinaman sleeps in the seventh heaven of Chinese bliss. It looks like a dried sausage or blood-pudding, and some resemble a prickly cucumber. There are at least 33 different varieties enumerated by the Chinese traders and others skilled in its classification, for fashion and custom have caused each variety to have a different market. While the gourmand of the South smacks his lips on the juicy white and black, the less cultivated taste of those at the North is satisfied with the red and more inferior varieties. One of the inferior kinds is slender, and of a dark brown colour, soft to the touch, and leaves a red stain on the hands; another is of a grey colour and speckled; a third is large and a dark yellow, with a rough skin and tubercles on its side. The second kind is often eaten raw by the natives, as I have seen a red herring eaten raw. The price varies from £7 to £14 the picul, of 133 lbs., and as there are about 1,000 of the slugs in a picul, they are worth from 2d. to 4d. each, according to quality, wholesale.

The process of curing and preparation for market is very simple. The slug, on being taken from the boat, is simmered over a fire in an iron caldron for about half-an-hour, after which it is thrown out upon the ground, and the operation of opening commences, this being effected by a longitudinal cut along the back with a sharp knife. It is then again placed in the caldron and boiled in salt water, with which a quantity of the bark of the mangrove has been mixed, for about three hours, when the outer skin will begin to peel off. It is now sufficiently boiled, and after the water has been drained off, the slugs are arranged in the drying-houses (small huts covered with mats) upon frames of split bamboo spread out immediately under the roof. Each slug is carefully placed with the part that has been cut open facing downwards, and a fire is made underneath, the smoke of which soon dries the tripang sufficiently to permit its being packed in bags or baskets for exportation.

Mr. Wingrove Cooke, in his cleverly described account of a Chinese banquet, thus narrates his impression of the dish prepared from them: ‘The next course was expected with a very nervous excitement. It was a stew of sea-slugs. As I have seen them at Macao they are white, but as served at Ningpo they are green. I credit the Imperial academician’s as the orthodox dish. They are slippery, and very difficult to be handled by inexperienced chopsticks; but they are most succulent and pleasant food, not at all unlike in flavour to the green fat of a turtle. If a man cannot eat anything of a kind whereof he has not seen his father and grandfather eat before, we must leave him to his oysters, and his periwinkles, and his cray-fish, and not expect him to swallow the much more comely sea-slug. But surely a Briton, who has eaten himself into a poisonous plethora upon mussels, has no right to hold up his hands and eyes at a Chinaman enjoying his honest well-cooked stew of bêche-de-mer.’

The peculiarities of this animal have been thus graphically described: ‘It can stand erect and graze on the sea grasses, or crawl on its belly, and digest the contents of sea-shells sufficient to fill a cabinet; harder and bigger than a brick, it can yet go through a lady’s ring: its natural shape is that of a cucumber, yet it will take the mould of any vessel in which it is placed: apparently without sight, night is the time it collects its food: furnished with teeth, they are only used to hold on by, while at the opposite end the fish gapes to receive its tiny prey, which it draws in by feelers thrust forward for the purpose. Opened by the conchologist, he will be rewarded with a store of minute shells most perfectly cleaned: boiled and dried it reduces to one-twelfth its weight and one-fifth its size: resoaked, it expands to nearly its former dimensions; but damped, it becomes glue, nasty and disagreeable: sliced up and boiled it becomes isinglass, of use to none but the Chinese gourmand. The reefs of the Archipelago have been ransacked for it, and many a risk has been run in procuring it from the Cannibal Isles of the Pacific. The main supplies for the China market, are furnished by the Celebes proas. The industrious merchants of this island bring it in their fleets from Torres Straits, and the far-off reefs of New Guinea, and collect it from every islet and village in the Archipelago. Other supplies with this find their way to the Dutch and Spanish trading ports on the larger islands, and are from them shipped to Batavia, Singapore, and Manila. From this last port a few Spanish vessels have procured it in the Sooloo Sea; but this fishery, as well as all the others well known, has yielded its best supplies, and the enhanced price in China adds inducement to seek out reefs less frequented for more abundant yield. At the above-named ports it commands, for mixed cargoes, a higher price than in China itself. American vessels are constantly engaged in this trade in the South Pacific, and I noticed recently that two vessels from San Francisco had procured cargoes from the Southern Isles, and were on their way to Manila or China. It is a business in which, to be successful, no little tact is required to deal with the treacherous natives, as well as a knowledge of curing and preparing for the market; but it is one that will long give a great return for small investments to the daring and successful adventurers.’

When M. De Blainville states he has never heard that any of the Holothuriæ were of much utility to mankind, but that M. Delle Chiaje does indeed inform us that the poor inhabitants of the Neapolitan coasts eat them, he appears to have forgotten the great oriental traffic carried on with some of the species, as an article of food.

Some years ago, in my Colonial Magazine, I called attention to the fact, that the fishing for, and shipment of, this sea-slug to China might prove a very profitable trade, but it seems to be an employment for which European seamen are by no means well adapted.