Thus do the food delicacies differ in different parts of the globe, the nature of the alimentary substances varying exceedingly, and the ‘daily bread’ assuming most diversified forms.
I have confined myself here to the Animal Food, because to have gone into the Vegetable Substances would have carried me too much into detail. As it is, I have only been able to skim over the surface, to make a brief enumeration of some of the more prominent delicacies.
A talented friend has well remarked—‘It is a probable thing, that many new varieties of food will ultimately be produced artificially, but it would be difficult to persuade people to eat them knowingly. Handy Andy, in Lover’s tale, thought stewed leather breeches very fine tripe till he lighted on a button, which suddenly convinced him it was unwholesome food; and Sir Joseph Banks—so says Peter Pindar—did not think fleas equal to lobsters, though of the same genus.
‘The Berlin philosophers have been for many years trying to persuade the community that horse-flesh is good beef, unsatisfactorily; and, amongst civilized communities, it appears to be chiefly in France that people voluntarily eat cats, both as a relish and a vengeance, if we may trust the reports of the Tribunal of Correctional Police, though scandal has long accused inn-keepers, both in France and Spain, of thus feeding their guests, as a substitute for rabbits.
‘The French are chemists as well as cooks, and if fetid potato oil can be converted into a delicious scent akin to attar of roses, we may very well imagine that the partridge or venison bouquet may be obtained from other kinds of flesh.
‘Glue and scraps of gloves, boiled with garlic, are eaten in Spain, and there is, as I have already stated, an 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 stewed down, and converted into calves’-foot jelly. The mechanical problems written and graven on them were doubtless not precipitated on the delicate palates of the ladies or gentlemen consuming them at Almack’s, or elsewhere. It was but carbon gathered by the sheep in the shape of grass from the earth’s surface—kid gloves in another form. Possibly Chemistry will ultimately enable us to make kid gloves and parchment without troubling goats or sheep for them, and artificial gelatine will become a substitute for calves’-feet. It is probable, that even now we occasionally eat old wool and hair in our gravy soups, as well as make it into what is facetiously called ‘felt cloth’—the fibres being glued instead of felted together; and in process of time we may prepare gelatinous tubes, analogous to wool and hair, from carbon, converted into gelatine. It certainly seems odd that a man’s coat should be convertible into his dinner; but ‘Imperial Cæsar,’ according to Hamlet, underwent as strange changes.[38]’
During the time of the Great Exhibition, in 1851, buffalo hides, and sheep and calf skins, advanced cent. per cent. in price. This was caused by the great demand for jellies in the refreshment rooms. Visitors then consumed jellies who never tasted jellies before; and as the usual material was not available, buffalo hides were purchased in tons in Liverpool, for the purpose of making these delicacies. Size and glue were used at first, but the hides were found to be cheapest. No one knows now what he eats in English confectionery. The natives of Java use the fresh hides of cattle as food,—nay even esteem them a dainty beyond any other part of the animal. The first pair of buckskin breeches seen in the South Sea Islands were so little understood, that the natives stuffed them with sea-weed, and had them boiled for dinner.
After the enumeration I have given you of Food Delicacies, who shall venture to determine what is good eating? Some Europeans chew tobacco, the Hindoo takes to betel-nut and lime, while the Patagonian finds contentment in a bit of guano, and the Styrians grow fat and ruddy on arsenic. English children delight in sweetmeats and sugar-candy, while those of Africa prefer rock salt. A Frenchman likes frogs and snails, and we eat eels, oysters, and whelks. To the Esquimaux, train oil is your only delicacy. The Russian luxuriates upon his hide or tallow; the Chinese upon rats, puppy dogs, and sharks’ fins; the Kafir upon elephant’s foot and trunk, or lion steaks; while the Pacific Islander places cold missionary above every other edible. Why then should we be surprised at men’s feeding upon rattle-snakes and monkeys, and pronouncing them capital eating?
I do not know if any of the delicacies I have described may occasion what Charles Lamb calls ‘premonitory moistening of the nether lip,’ but I trust I may not have spoiled the reader’s appetite for dinner or supper. There is a saying of great truth, ‘that one half the world does not know how the other half lives.’ These pages will, I think, serve to verify the adage.
THE END.