The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

‘On the banks of the River Indejiska the number of swans and geese resorting there in the moulting season, is said to be much greater even than on the River Kolyma.’

The choicest dish of the Greenlanders is the flesh of the reindeer. But as those animals have now become extremely scarce, and several of them are soon consumed by a hunting party, they are indebted to the sea for their permanent sustenance, seals, fish, and sea-fowl. Hares and partridges are in no great estimation as delicacies. The head and fins of the seal are preserved under the grass in summer, and in winter a whole seal is frequently buried in the snow. The flesh, half frozen, half putrid, in which state the Greenlanders term it mikiak, is eaten with the keenest appetite. The ribs are dried in the air and laid up in store. The remaining parts of the seal, as well as birds and small fishes, are eaten, well boiled or stewed with a small quantity of sea-water. On the capture of a seal, the wound is immediately stopped up to preserve the blood, which is rolled into balls like forcemeat.

The intestines of small animals are eaten without any further preparation than that of pressing out the contents between the fingers.

They set a great value on what they find in the reindeer’s maw, making it into a dish which they call Nerukak (the eatable), and send presents of it to their friends. The entrails of the rypeu, mixed with fresh train oil and berries, compose another mess which they consider as a consummate delicacy. Their preserves for winter are composed of fresh, rotten and half-hatched eggs, crake berries, and angelica, thrown together into a sack of seal skin, filled up with train oil. They likewise suck out the fat from the skins of sea-fowls; and, in dressing seal skins, they scrape off the grease which could not well be separated in the skinning, to make a kind of pancake.

In the second voyage of Sir John Ross to the arctic regions, it is related of the steward, that he purchased a sledge of the Esquimaux, and on examining it, it was found to be made of salmon, with skins sewed over them; but the cross pieces were the leg bones of the reindeer. It was not an erroneous conjecture of some of the crew, that when these poor creatures are driven to extremity for food, they turn to and make a dainty meal of their sledges, as, with the exception of the reindeer bones, the whole of them is eatable. When we refer to the description which the late Sir John Franklin gives of the different articles of food by which he and his party were maintained, the component parts of the sledge of an Esquimaux would, under circumstances of extreme want, be considered a real dainty.

There cannot be any comparison between a meal of tripe de roche and the stinking marrow of a reindeer bone, and a piece of dried salmon, which by its exposure to the frost has been kept from putridity; indeed, the epicures amongst the Esquimaux do not hesitate to declare, that the flavor of the salmon is rather enhanced by its long keeping, on the same principle we suppose that the flavour of game of this country rises in the estimation of the epicure in proportion as the bird or animal approaches to putridity. At all events, it must be a novel and curious exhibition, to observe a party of Esquimaux cutting up a sledge, and carving out pieces of salmon, according to their respective tastes, and seasoning them with some of the oil extracted from the blubber of the whale. The latter condiment is to the Esquimaux what Burgess’ anchovy is to the citizen of London; and instances are not rare, in which an Esquimaux has been known to devour four pounds of seal flesh, or of salmon, well soaked in whale oil, at one meal, with about half-a-gallon of water as the beverage.

Much of the animal food comes frozen to the markets of St. Petersburg. The sledges which bring it are used as stalls to sell it. The matting is thrown aside, and the poultry and frozen carcases are arranged so as to attract buyers. Whole sledge loads of snow-white hares find their way to the market. The little animals are usually frozen in a running position, with their ears pointed, and their legs stretched out before and behind, and when placed on the ground, look at a first glance as if they were in the act of escaping from the hunter.

Bear’s flesh is also sometimes offered for sale in the market, and here and there may be seen a frozen reindeer lying in the snow, by the side of a booth, its hairy snout stretched forth upon the ground, its knees doubled up under its body, and its antlers rising majestically into the air. It looks as if on our approaching it, it would spring up and dash away once more in search of its native forests.

The mighty elk is likewise no rare guest in this market, where it patiently presents its antlers as a perch for the pigeons that are fluttering about, till, little by little, the axe and the saw have left no fragment of the stately animal, but every part of the carcase has gone its way into the kitchens of the wealthy.

The geese are cut up, and the heads, necks, legs, and carcases sold separately by the dozen, or half dozen, strung upon small cords. Those who cannot afford to dine on the breast of a goose, purchase a string of frozen heads, or a few dozen of webbed feet, to boil down into soup. The frozen oxen, calves, and goats, stand around in rows. Sucking pigs are a favourite delicacy with the Russians. Hundreds of these, in their frozen state, are seen ranged about the sledges, mingled with large frozen hogs.