(1875)
Location—See [Sentiment Mixed].
Location in Animals—See [Direction, Sense of].
LOCUSTS AS FOOD
In the East, as elsewhere, since the Biblical days of John’s “locusts and honey,” locusts have been deemed more or less edible. In Palestine to this day they are considered a luxury. The Jews fry them in sesame oil, sesame being the grain of which mention is made in the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” a favorite tale in the Arabian Nights entertainments.
In Arabia Petrea locusts are dried in the sun and then ground into a sort of flour for baking; and in Central Africa certain tribes employ locusts for making a thick brown soup.
In Madagascar they are baked in huge jars, fried in grease, and then mixed with rice, forming a dainty much affected by the dusky inhabitants of that big island.
The Algerians have a simpler method. They merely boil the locusts in water and salt them to the taste. The Arabians grind and bake the locusts as cakes, roast them in butter, or else crush them in a mixture of camel’s cheese and dates.
Locusts are also eaten, in times of famine, in southern Russia, generally by the poorest of the poor, among whom the insects are smoked like fish. In the preparation of locusts for food the legs and wings are invariably detached.
It is said that, while the flavor of locusts is strangely disagreeable in the raw state, this flavor is readily disguised and even becomes agreeable when the insect is cooked. Some of the locust soups are, we are told, scarcely to be distinguished from beef broth; and when the little insects are fried in their own oil and slightly salted they take on a pleasing nutty flavor. (Text.)—Harper’s Weekly.