The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

Few of us think as we sit down to our rump steak or pork chop, our sirloin or leg of mutton, of the awful havoc of quadrupeds necessary to furnish the daily meals of the millions. I will not weary the reader with statistics, although I have a long array of figures before me, bearing upon the slaughter of animals for food in different countries. It will be sufficient to generalize.

If the hecatomb of animals we have each consumed in the years we have lived, were marshalled in array before us, we should stand aghast at the possibility of our ever having devoured the quantity of animal food, and sacrificed for our daily meals the goodly number of well-fed quadrupeds of the ovine, bovine, and porcine races, or the fish, fowl, reptiles, and insects, which would be thus re-embodied.

The average quantity of animal food of all kinds consumed in France is stated on good authority—that of M. Payen—to be as low as one-sixth of a pound per diem to each person. Even in the cities and large towns, especially Paris, the amount of food upon which a Frenchman lives is astonishingly small. An Englishman or an American would starve upon such fare.

In proportion to its population, New York consumes as nearly as possible the same quantity of meat as London, about half-a-pound a day to each person; more beef, however, is consumed there and less mutton, and the latter fact may be accounted for by the comparative inferiority of quality.

It is curious to notice the various parts of animals that are eaten, or selected as choice morsels by different persons or classes. Sheep’s head, pig’s head, calf’s head and brains, ox head, the heads of ducks and geese, ox tongue, reindeer tongue, walrus tongue, crane’s tongue, &c. Fowls and ducks’ tongues are esteemed an exquisite Chinese dainty. The pettitoes of the sucking pig, or the mature feet and hocks of the elder hog, sheep’s trotters, calf’s feet, cow heel, bear’s paws, elephant’s feet, the feet of ducks and geese, and their giblets; ox tail, pig’s tail, sheep’s tail, kangaroo tail, beaver’s tail. And the entrails again are not despised, whether it be bullock’s heart or sheep’s heart, liver and lights, lamb’s fry or pig’s fry, tripe and chitterlings, goose liver and gizzard, the cleaned gut for our sausages, the fish maws, cod liver, and so on. The moufle, or loose covering of the nose, of the great moose deer or elk is considered by New Brunswick epicures a great dainty. The hump of the buffalo, the trunk of the elephant, are other delicacies. Deer’s sinews, and the muscle of the ox, the buffalo, and the wild hog, jerked or dried in the sun, and then termed, ‘dendeng,’ is a delicacy of the Chinese, imported at a high price from Siam and the eastern islands.

The eggs of different animals, again, form choice articles of food, whether they be those of the ordinary domestic poultry, the eggs of sea fowl, of the plover, and of game birds, of the ostrich and emu, of the tortoises and other reptilia, as alligator’s eggs, snake’s eggs, and those of the iguana, or the eggs of insects, and of fishes.

Amid all the multiplicity of special dainties, appreciated by different peoples, the prejudices of the stomach are, perhaps, more unconquerable than any other that tyrannize over the human mind. It is almost impossible to get people to adventure, or experimentalize upon a new kind of food. There is a great want of courage and enterprise on this head among Englishmen. John Bull is resolved to eat, drink, and do only what he has been accustomed to. He wants none of your foreign kickshaws, frogs, and snails in fricassées, or sea slug, or bird’s nest soup, or horse flesh steak. It is true he has gradually adventured upon, and now appreciates, a few select foreign delicacies. Real lively turtle and caviar, reindeer tongue, an imitation Indian curry, and such like, have become luxuries; and, probably, under the mysterious manipulations of Gunter, Soyer, and other distinguished chefs de cuisine, some other foreign delicacies have found, or may yet find, their way upon English tables.

They will probably displace ere long the four standard Scotch dishes, a haggis, a sheep’s head, tripe, and black puddings, or the common dishes of the Devonshire peasant and Cornish fisherman, parsley and squab pies, in which fish, apples, onions, and pork are incongruously blended.

Queen Elizabeth and her ladies breakfasted on meat, bread, and strong ale. Our modern ladies take tea or coffee, and thin slices of toast or bread. The Esquimaux drink train oil, and the Cossacks koumis, an ardent spirit made from mares’ milk. The inhabitants of France and Germany eat much more largely than we do of vegetable diet; and drink, at all times of the day, their acid wines. In Devonshire and Herefordshire, cyder is the common beverage, and in the Highlands of Scotland, oatmeal porridge is, in a great measure, the food, and whiskey the drink of the inhabitants. The Irish peasant lives, or used to do, chiefly on potatoes, and most of the Hindoos of the maritime provinces on rice.

Yet all this variety, and much more, is digested, yields nutriment, and promotes growth; affording undeniable evidence that man is really omnivorous, that he can be supported by great varieties of food.