‘Since then, Germany has had its ‘Banquets of Horse-flesh’ for the wits to ridicule—public feastings at which ‘cats’ meat’ was served in various forms, as soup, as bouilli, as fillet, as cutlet; and all the feasters left the table converted hippophagists. In 1841, horse-flesh was adopted at Ochsenhausen and Wurtemburg, where it is now publicly sold under the surveillance of the police. Every week five or six horses are brought to market. At the Lake of Constance, a large quantity of this meat is also sold. In 1842, a banquet of 150 persons inaugurated its public use at Königsbaden, near Stuttgard. In 1846, the police of Baden authorized its public sale, and Schaffhausen followed in the same year. In 1847, at Detmold and at Weimar, public horse-flesh banquets were held with great éclat—in Karlsbad (Bohemia) and its environs, the new beef came into general use—and at Zittau, 200 horses are eaten annually. At Ling, after one of these banquets, the police permitted the sale of horse-flesh, which is now general in Austria, Bohemia, Saxony, Hanover, Switzerland, and Belgium. The innovation made rapid converts. In 1853, Berlin had no less than five abattoirs, where 150 horses were killed and sold. At Vienna, in 1853, there was a riot to prevent one of these banquets; but in 1854, such progress had been made, that 32,000 pounds weight were sold in fifteen days, and at least 10,000 of the inhabitants habitually ate horse-flesh.’ And now Parisian banquets of horse-flesh are common.
These facts are at all events curious. Think of the prejudices to be overcome, and think how unreasoning is the stomach!
Young horses are too valuable to be brought to the shambles, unless killed by accident. But our worn-out hacks, of which 250 or 300 die or are killed weekly in the metropolis,—old horses used up, are capable, we are assured, of furnishing good meat. An old horse, which had done duty for twenty-five years, was the substance of a learned gastronomic feast at Paris.
M. St. Hilaire, the champion of this new addition to our food resources, reasons in this fashion:—‘Horse-flesh has long been regarded as of a sweetish disagreeable taste, very tough, and not to be eaten without difficulty. So many different facts are opposed to this prejudice, that it is impossible not to recognize its slight foundation. The free or wild horse is hunted as game in all parts of the world where it exists—Asia, Africa, and America—and formerly, and perhaps even now, in Europe. The domestic horse itself is made use of as alimentary as well as auxiliary—in some cases altogether alimentary—in Africa, America, Asia, and in some parts of Europe.
‘Its flesh is relished by people the most different in their manner of life, and of races the most diverse, negro, Mongol, Malay, American, Caucasian. It was much esteemed up to the eighth century among 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 in towns who have bought it in markets, have frequently taken it for beef. Still more often, and indeed habitually, it has been sold in restaurants, even in the best, as venison, and without the customers ever suspecting the fraud or complaining of it.
‘And further, if horse-flesh has been often accepted as good under a false name, it has also been pronounced good by those who, to judge of its qualities, have submitted it to careful experiment, and by all who have tasted it in a proper condition, that is, when taken from a sound and rested horse, and kept sufficiently long. It is then excellent roasted; and if it be not so acceptable as bouilli, it is precisely because it furnishes one of the best soups—perhaps the best that is known.
‘It is good also, as experiments prove made by myself as well as others, when taken from old horses not fattened, whose age was 16, 19, 20, and even 23 years, animals thought worth no more than a few francs beyond the value of their skin.
‘This is a capital fact, since it shows the possibility of utilizing a second time, for their flesh, horses which have already been utilized up to old age for their strength; and, consequently, of obtaining a further and almost gratuitous profit at the end of their life, after they had well nigh paid the cost of their rearing and keep by their labour.’
Let us see what additional evidence M. St. Hilaire has to adduce. First, he appeals to his long experience at the Jardin des Plantes, where the greater part of the carnivora are habitually fed on horse-flesh, which keeps them healthy in spite of many unfavourable conditions. But this will not carry much weight with it. Our digestion is not quite so good as that of a lion. The condor has been known to eat, with satisfaction, food which Mrs. Brown would find little to her taste. No dietetic rule for men can be deduced from the digestions of tigers. We prefer the experience of human stomachs. Fortunately this is not wanting, and M. St. Hilaire collects an imposing mass of evidence. Huzard, the celebrated veterinary surgeon, records, that during the revolution, the population of Paris was for six months dieted with horse-flesh, without any ill effects. Some complaints, indeed, were made when it was found that the beef came from horses; but, in spite of prejudice and the terrors such a discovery may have raised, no single case of illness was attributed to the food. Larrey, the great army surgeon, declares that on very many occasions during the campaigns, he administered horse-flesh to the soldiers, and to the soldiers sick in the hospital; and instead of finding it injurious, it powerfully contributed to the convalescence of the sick, and drove away a scorbutic epidemic which attacked the men. The testimony of Parent Duchâtelet is also quoted to the same effect. M. St. Hilaire feels himself abundantly authorized to declare that horse-flesh, far from being unwholesome, is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of alimentary substances: and, to support this declaration, he adduces the testimony of historians and travellers, showing how whole tribes and nations have habitually eaten and highly esteemed it.
Having thus, as he considers, satisfactorily settled the question of wholesomeness, M. St. Hilaire proceeds to deal with the question of agreeableness. Is wholesome horse-flesh agreeable enough to tempt men, not starving, to eat it? It is, of course, of little use that historians and travellers tell of hippophagists—it is nothing to the purpose that soldiers in a campaign, or citizens during a siege, have eaten horses with considerable relish. Under such circumstances, one’s old shoe is not to be despised as a pièce de résistance; and one’s grandmother may be a toothsome morsel. The real point to be settled in the European mind is this—apart from all conditions which must bias the judgment, is horse-flesh pleasant to the taste? M. St. Hilaire cites the evidence of eminent men who, having eaten it knowing what it was, pronounced it excellent—all declaring that it was better than cow-beef, and some that there was little difference between it and ox-beef.