There are four wooden caldrons or tubs for boiling the meat and
evaporating the liquid or broth--the two for boiling the meat, holding
2,300 gallons, will each boil 7,000 lbs. of meat in twelve to sixteen
hours. The other two, for evaporating, will contain some 1,400 gallons
each. All the tubs are heated or boiled by steam passing through long
coiled iron pipes, supplied at pleasure, either from the escape steam
from the engine, or direct from the boiler.
When the meat is so far boiled or macerated, that the liquid or broth
contains the entire nutriment, the meaty, or solid portions are
separated by a simple process of filtering, so that the broth goes into
the evaporator pure and free from fibrous matter. It is then evaporated
to a degree of consistency resembling the golden or Stewart’s sugar
house syrup, its uniform density being determined by a liquid or syrup
gauge. Two pounds of this syrup or extract contains the nutriment of
some eleven pounds of meat (including its usual proportion of bone)
as first put into the caldron. This is then mixed with the best and
finest flour, kneaded and made into biscuit by means of machines. The
biscuit is baked upon pans in an oven so constructed as to produce
an uniform firmness. The proportion is as two pounds of extract are
to three pounds of flour, but by baking, the five pounds of dough is
reduced to four pounds of biscuit, and this will make what the inventor
claims--the nutriment of over five pounds of meat in one pound of
bread, which contains, besides, over ten ounces of flour.
The biscuit resembles in appearance a light coloured sugar-cake. It is
packed in air-tight casks or tin canisters of different sizes, part of
the biscuit being pulverized by grinding in a mill for the purpose, and
then packed with the whole biscuit.
In discussing the extension of our resources of animal food, it is
strange to notice that while we eat the blood of pigs and fowls, we
throw aside as waste the blood of oxen, sheep, goats, calves, &c. Now
blood contains all the principles out of which the tissues are formed,
and must, one would therefore imagine, be eminently nutritious. Why
prejudice has excluded these, while admitting the blood of pigs, is an
anomaly which I cannot understand.
In France, where there are not, as in America, large quantities of
animals which are killed simply for the sake of their hides, it would
be impossible to prepare or supply at a low price either the assayo or
the meat biscuit; but the idea of using the blood of animals killed,
which blood is at present wasted without profit, or, at best, is used
as manure, might have occurred to some one. M. Brocchieri has conceived
this idea. In treating the blood of our slaughter-houses by means which
he has invented, and uniting to flour of the best quality, the albumen
and fibrine which he extracts from it--he makes bread and biscuits
which are easily preserved, and which may be employed to make very
nutritious soups.
At the Great Exhibition, in 1851, he produced _bon-bons_ made of the
blood of the ox, cow, sheep, and hog; biscuits and patties of the blood
of the bull, and delicacies made of calves’ blood. I have specimens of
these preserved in my private museum, although I have not ventured to
taste them.
Generally speaking in England, we do not do much with the blood of
animals, at least, in the shape of food--unless it be in those strings
of black-puddings, with tempting little bits of fat stuck in them,
which stare us in the face in some shops.
But M. Brocchieri has attempted to utilize the nutritious principles of
the blood of animals killed for food, by reducing it to a concentrated
and dried state, for preservation during long periods. The first step
is to prepare a liquid, considered innocuous and antiseptic by the
inventor, by which various bloods are kept fluid and apparently fresh.
Samples of these were shown, and the series of specimens illustrated
the solid parts forming the crassamentum or clot, in a dried and
semi-crystalline state. These solid constituents, including the
gelatine, albumen, and fibrine are next produced, combined with small
proportions of flour, in the form of light, dry masses, like loaves,
cakes, or biscuits. These are inodorous, almost flavourless, and may
be made the bases of highly nutritious soups. They are very uniform in
composition, containing half the nitrogen of dried blood, or forty-four
per cent. of dry flesh, the equivalent of double the nutritive value
of ordinary butcher’s meat. Both the bull’s and calf’s blood gave 6·6
per cent. of nitrogen, equal to forty-three per cent. of flesh-forming
principles. Combined with sugar, the cakes have been made into
_bon-bons_.
The evidence, as to the value of the process, in preserving the samples
in an undecomposed state, is now satisfactorily arrived at. It was
stated in 1851, that the preparations had been advantageously employed
in long voyages. The samples I have in my collection have now been kept
seven years, and have not shown any tendency to decay. Thus proving
that the first attempt has been successful, in rendering available for
food, and portable in form, the otherwise wasted blood of cattle.
This notice of blood recalls to my recollection a laughable story told
in a French work, of the life of an unfortunate pig.
‘A French curé, exiled to a deserted part of our forests--and who, the
whole year, except on a few rare occasions, lived only on fruit and
vegetables--hit upon a most admirable expedient for providing an animal
repast to set before the curés of the neighbourhood, when one or the
other, two or three times during the year, ventured into those dreadful
solitudes, with a view of assuring himself with his own eyes that his
unfortunate colleague had not yet died of hunger. The curé in question
possessed a pig, his whole fortune: and you will see the manner in
which he used it. Immediately the bell announced a visitor, and that
his cook had shown his clerical friend into the parlour, the master of
the house, drawing himself up majestically, said to his housekeeper:
‘Brigitte, let there be a good dinner for myself and my friend.’
Brigitte, although she knew there were only stale crusts and dried
peas in her larder, seemed in no degree embarrassed by this order;
she summoned to her assistance ‘Toby the Carrot,’ so called because
his head was as red as that of a native of West Galloway, and leaving
the house together, they both went in search of the pig. This, after
a short skirmish, was caught by Brigitte and her carroty assistant;
and, notwithstanding his cries, his grunts, his gestures of despair,
and supplication, the inhuman cook, seizing his head, opened a large
vein in his throat, and relieved him of two pounds of blood; this,
with the addition of garlic, shalots, mint, wild thyme, and parsley,
was converted into a most savoury and delicious black-pudding for the
curé and his friend, and being served to their reverences smoking
hot on the summit of a pyramid of yellow cabbage, figured admirably
as a small Vesuvius and a centre dish. The surgical operation over,
Brigitte, whose qualifications as a seamstress were superior, darned
up the hole in the neck of the unfortunate animal: and as he was then
turned loose until a fresh supply of black-puddings should be required
for a similar occasion, this wretched pig was never happy. How could
he be so? Like Damocles of Syracuse, he lived in a state of perpetual
fever; terror seized him directly he heard the curé’s bell, and seeing
in imagination the uplifted knife already about to glide into his
bosom, he invariably took to his heels before Brigitte was half-way to
the door to answer it. If, as usual, the peal announced a diner-out,
Brigitte and Gold-button were soon on his track, calling him by the
most tender epithets, and promising that he should have something
nice for his supper--skim-milk, &c.,--but the pig with his painful
experience was not such a fool as to believe them. Hidden behind an old
cask, some fagots, or lying in a deep ditch, he remained silent as the
grave, and kept himself close as long as possible. Discovered, however,
he was sure to be at last, when he would rush into the garden, and,
running up and down like a mad creature, upset everything in his way.
For several minutes it was a regular steeplechase--across the beds,
now over the turnips, then through the gooseberry-bushes--in short,
he was here, there, and everywhere; but, in spite of all his various
stratagems to escape the fatal incision, the poor pig always finished
by being seized, tied, thrown on the ground, and bled: the vein was
then once more cleverly sewn up, and the inhuman operators quietly
retired from the scene to make the curé’s far-famed black-pudding.
Half-dead upon the spot where he was phlebotomized, the wretched animal
was left to reflect under the shade of a tree on the cruelty of man,
on their barbarous appetites; cursing with all his heart the poverty
of Morvinian curates, their conceited hospitality, of which he was the
victim, and their brutal affection for pig’s blood.’
Sir George Simpson, speaking of some of the northern tribes of Indians
in America, says, the flexibility of their stomachs is surprising. At
one time they will gorge themselves with food, and are then prepared to
go without any for several days, if necessary.
Enter their tents; sit there if you can for a whole day, and not for
an instant will you find the fire unoccupied by persons of all ages
cooking. When not hunting or travelling, they are in fact always
eating. Now it is a little roast, a partridge or rabbit perhaps; now
a tit-bit, broiled under the ashes; anon a portly kettle, well filled
with venison, swings over the fire; then comes a choice dish of curdled
blood, followed by the sinews and marrow-bones of deer’s legs, singed
on the embers. And so the grand business of life goes unceasingly
round, interrupted only by sleep.
Dining within the arctic circle, when such a thing as dinner is to
be had, is a much more serious matter than when one undergoes that
pleasing ceremony at a first-rate eating house, hotel, or club.
In arctic banquets, the cheerful glass is often frozen to the lip, or
the too ardent reveller splinters a tooth in attempting to gnaw through
a lump of soup. We, in these temperate climes, have never had the
pleasure of _eating_ ship’s rum, or _chewing_ brandy and water. It is
not only necessary to ‘first catch your fish,’ but also essential to
_thaw_ it; and there is no chance of the fish being limber, although
it is not unusual for heat to bring them to life after they have been
frozen stiff a couple of days. In the arctic circle even the very
musquitoes, which, by the way, are frightfully large and numerous,
become torpid with the intense cold, and are frozen into hard masses,
which the heat of the sun, or fire, may restore to animation.
Dr. Sutherland, in his voyage in Baffin’s Bay, says--‘It was necessary
to be very careful with our drinking cups. Tin never suited, for it
always adhered to the lips, and took a portion of the skin along with
it. A dog attempting to lick a little fat from an iron shovel stuck
fast to it, and dragged it by means of his tongue, until by a sudden
effort, he got clear, leaving several inches of the skin and adjacent
tissue on the cold metal. One of the seamen, endeavouring to change the
size of the eye of the splice in his tack-rope, put the marling spike,
after the true sailor fashion, into his mouth; the result was that he
lost a great portion of his lips and tongue.’
We hear frequent jokes of the partiality of the Russians for tallow
candles, and, like all inhabitants of the polar regions, the Esquimaux
are very fond of fat, the physiology of their craving for fat is now
known to everybody. My esteemed friend, the late Mr. Hooper, one of
the officers of H.M.S. _Plover_, in his account of his residence on
the shores of Arctic America, states, that ‘one of the ladies who
visited them was presented, as a jest, with a small tallow candle,
called a purser’s dip. It was, notwithstanding, a very pleasant joke
to the damsel, who deliberately munched it up with evident relish, and
finally, drew the wick between her set teeth to clean off any remaining
morsels of fat.’
He gives also in detail, the history of a Tuski repast of the most
sumptuous nature, to which he and his companions were invited, and I
must find room for some portion of it.
‘First was brought in, on a huge wooden tray, a number of small fish,
uncooked, but intensely frozen. At these all the natives set to work,
and we essayed, somewhat ruefully it must be confessed, to follow their
example; but, being all unused to such gastronomic process, found
ourselves, as might be expected, rather at a loss how to commence.
From this dilemma, however, our host speedily extricated us, by
practical demonstration of the correct mode of action; and, under
his certainly very able tuition, we shortly became more expert. But,
alas! a new difficulty was soon presented; our native companions, we
presume, either made a hasty bolt of each morsel, or had, perhaps, a
relish for the flavour of the viands now under consideration. Not so
ourselves--it was sadly repugnant to our palates; for, aided by the
newly-acquired knowledge that the fish were in the same condition as
when taken from the water, uncleaned and unembowelled, we speedily
discovered that we could neither bolt nor retain the fragments, which,
by the primitive aid of teeth and nails, we had rashly detached for
our piscatorial share. It was to no purpose that our host pressed us
to ‘fall to;’ we could not manage the consumption of this favourite
preparation (or rather lack thereof), and succeeded with difficulty
in evading his earnest solicitations. The next course was a mess of
green stuff, looking as if carefully chopped up, and this was also hard
frozen. To it was added a lump of blubber, which the lady presiding,
who did all the carving, dexterously cut into slices with a knife
like a cheesemonger’s, and apportioned out at different quarters of
the huge tray before mentioned, which was used throughout the meal,
together with a modicum of the grass-like stuff, to the company; the
only distinction in favour of the strangers and guests of high degree
being, that their slices were cut much thinner than for the rest. We
tasted this compound, and ... we didn’t like it: at this no one will
wonder--the blubber speaks for itself; and the other stuff, which
really was not very unpalatable, we discovered in after-times to be
the unruminated food of reindeer which had been slaughtered--at least,
so we were told: but I am not quite clear on this point. Our dislike
to the dish had no offensive effect upon our host, who only seemed to
be astonished at our strange want of taste, and, with the rest of the
guests, soon cleared the board; the managing dame putting the finishing
stroke by a rapid sweep of her not too scrupulously clean fingers
over the dish, by way of clearing off the fragments to prepare for
the reception of the next delicacy. After this interesting operation
she conveyed her digits to her mouth, and, engulfing them for a brief
period, withdrew them, quite in apple pie order once more. The board
was now again replenished, this time with viands less repellent to
our unnurtured tastes. Boiled seal and walrus flesh appeared, and our
hospitable friends were greatly relieved when they beheld us assist
in the consumption of these items, which, being utterly devoid of
flavour, were distasteful only from their extreme toughness and mode
of presentation; but we did not, of course, desire to appear too
singular or squeamish. Next came a portion of whale’s flesh, or rather
whale’s skin. This was perfectly ebony in hue, and we discovered some
apprehensions respecting its fitness as an article of food; but our
fears were groundless. It was cut and re-cut crosswise into diminutive
cubes; venturing upon one of which we were agreeably surprised to
find it possessing a cocoa-nut flavour, like which it also cut, ‘very
short;’ indeed, so much astonished were we on this occasion, that we
had consumed a very considerable number of these cubes, and with great
relish too, before we recovered from our wonder. The dish was ever
afterwards a favourite with me. On its disappearance, a very limited
quantity of boiled reindeer meat, fresh and fat, was served up, to
which we did ample justice; then came portions of the gum of the whale,
in which the ends of the bone lay still embedded; and I do not hesitate
to declare that this was perfectly delicious, its flavour being, as
nearly as I can find a parallel, like that of cream cheese. This,
which the Tuski call their sugar, was the wind-up to the repast and
ourselves, and we were fain to admit that, after the rather unpleasant
auspices with which our feast commenced, the finale was by no means to
be contemned.’
A merchant at a banquet to which he was invited with several
respectable Greenlanders, counted the following dishes:--Dried
herrings; dried seal’s flesh; the same boiled; half-raw, or putrid
seal’s flesh, called Mikiak; boiled auks; part of a whale’s tail in
a half-putrid state, which was considered as a principal dish; dried
salmon; dried reindeer venison; preserves of crow-berries mixed with
the chyle from the maw of the reindeer; and lastly, the same enriched
with train oil.
Dr. Kane, enumerating arctic delicacies, says, ‘Our journeys have
taught us the wisdom of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few
among us who do not relish a slice of raw blubber or a chunk of
frozen walrus-beef. The liver of a walrus (awuktanuk), eaten with
little slices of his fat--of a verity it is a delicious morsel. Fire
would ruin the curt, pithy expression of vitality which belongs to its
uncooked juices. Charles Lamb’s roast pig was nothing to awuktanuk.
I wonder that raw beef is not eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous
fibre, it is neither indigestible nor difficult to masticate. With
acids and condiments, it makes a salad which an educated palate cannot
help relishing; and as a powerful and condensed heat-making and
antiscorbutic food, it has no rival. I make this last broad assertion
after carefully testing its truth. The natives of South Greenland
prepare themselves for a long journey in the cold by a course of
frozen seal. At Upernavik they do the same with the narwhal, which is
thought more heat-making than the seal; while the bear, to use their
own expression, is ‘stronger travel than all.’ In Smith’s Sound, where
the use of raw meat seems almost inevitable from the modes of living
of the people, walrus holds the first rank. Certainly this pachyderm,
whose finely-condensed tissue and delicately-permeating fat--(oh! call
it not blubber)--assimilate it to the ox, is beyond all others, and is
the very best fuel a man can swallow. It became our constant companion
whenever we could get it; and a frozen liver upon our sledge was valued
far above the same weight of pemmican.’
Mr. Augustus Petermann, in a paper upon Animal Life in the Arctic
Regions, read before the Royal Geographical Society, thus enumerates
the food resources:--
‘Though several classes of the animal creation, as for example, the
reptiles, are entirely wanting in this region, those of the mammals,
birds, and fishes, at least, bear comparison both as to number and size
with those of the Tropics: the lion, the elephant, the hippopotamus,
and others not being more notable in the latter respect than the polar
bear, the musk ox, the walrus, and, above all, the whale. Besides
these, there are the moose, the reindeer, the wolf, the polar hare, the
seal, and various smaller quadrupeds. The birds consist chiefly of an
immense number of aquatic birds. Of fishes, the salmon, salmon trout,
and herring, are the principal, the latter especially crowding in such
myriads as to surpass everything of that kind found in tropical regions.
‘Nearly all these animals furnish wholesome food for men. They are,
with few exceptions, distributed over the entire regions: their
number, however, or the relative intensity of the individuals, is very
different in different parts. Thus, on the American side, we find the
animals decreasing in number from east to west. On the shores of Davis’
Straits, in Baffin’s Bay, Lancaster Sound, Regent Inlet, &c., much
less in number are met with than in Boothia Felix, and Parry groups.
The abundance of animal life in Melville Island and Victoria Channel,
is probably not surpassed in any other part on the American side.
Proceeding westward to the Russian possessions, we find considerable
numbers of animals all round and within the sea of Kamtschatka, as
also to the north of Behring’s Straits. The yearly produce of the
Russian Fur Company, in America, is immense, and formerly it was much
greater. Pribylon, when he discovered the small islands named after
him, collected, within two years, 2,000 skins of sea otters, 40,000 sea
bears, (ursine seals,) 6,000 dark sea foxes, and 1,000 walrus-teeth.
Lütke, in his _Voyage_ _Round the World_, mentions that, in the
year 1803, 800,000 skins of the ursine seal alone were accumulated
in Unataski, one of the depôts of the Russian Fur Company, 700,000
of which were thrown into the sea, partly because they were badly
prepared, and partly to keep up the prices. But in no other part of the
arctic zoological region is animal life so abundant as in the northern
parts of Siberia, especially between the Rivers Kolyma and Lena.
‘The first animals that make their appearance after the dreary winter,
are large flights of swans, geese, ducks, and snipes; these are killed
by old and young. Fish also begin to be taken in nets and baskets
placed under the ice.
‘In June, however, when the river opens, the fish pour in in immense
numbers. At the beginning of this century, several thousand geese were
sometimes killed in one day at the mouth of the River Kolyma. About
twenty years later, when Admiral Wrangel visited those regions, the
numbers had somewhat decreased, and it was then called a good season
when 1,000 geese, 5,000 ducks, and 200 swans were killed at that place.
The reindeer chase forms the next occupation for the inhabitants. About
the same time, the shoals of herrings begin to ascend the rivers, and
the multitudes of these fish are often such that, in three or four
days, 40,000 may be taken with a single net.
‘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.
The bones and meat being all rendered equally hard by the frost,
the animals are sawn up into a number of slices, of an inch or two
in thickness, and by this operation a quantity of animal sawdust is
scattered on the snow, and afterwards gathered up by poor children, who
haunt the market for that purpose. Fish, which is offered for sale, is
sawn and sold in the same frozen condition.[3]
‘If one is to judge from the _restaurants_ at Moscow,’ writes a
correspondent of the _Times_, ‘there is no better place in the world
to come to in order to try the temper. The best of them is dear and
bad beyond comparison, and the only things good are the wine and the
bread. It must be admitted that the latter is excellent, light, sweet,
white, and wholesome, and our London bakers would do well if they came
to Moscow for an apprenticeship in the art of making bread. It is very
hard to have to pay 1_l._ for cabbage soup, _filet du cheval_, a bit of
bad fish, one stewed pear, and a bottle of light French wine; but it
is harder still to wait for twenty minutes between every dish, while
leaden-eyed waiters are staring at you with a mixture of contempt and
compassion because of your ignorance of the Russian tongue. Tired,
cross, and dyspeptic, the stranger seeks a Russian dining room where
the arts of French cookery have never been employed to render bad meat
still worse. There, amid the odours of tobacco--for a Russian not being
able to smoke in the streets makes up for it _chez lui_--you resign
yourself to an unknown bill of fare and the caprices of your bearded
attendant. It is fair to say of the said waiter, that he is clad in a
milk-white and scrupulously clean robe, which descends in easy folds
from his neck to his heels, so that he looks like a very high priest
of the deity of gastronomy, and that you need not be as uneasy about
his fingers and hands as you have good cause to be at the Russo-French
_restaurants_. First you will be presented with a huge bowl of cabbage
soup, a kind of _pot-au-feu_, which must be eaten, however, with
several odd adjuncts, such as cakes stuffed with chopped vegetables,
a dish of guelots, chopped fat, fried brown and crisp, and lastly a
large ewer full of sour milk. Then comes a _vol-au-vent_ of fowl and
toad-stools. Next, if you are alive, porosenok, or a boiled sucking
pig, with tart sauce; then a very nasty little fish, much prized in
Moscow, and called sterlet; a fid of roast beef and a dish of birds
about the size of pigeons, called guillemots; a compote of fruit closes
the meal. I have forgotten to say how it begins. Before dinner a tray
is laid out with caviare, raw salt herrings, raw ham and sardines,
bottles of brandy, vodka, anisette, and doppel kümmel, a sweet spirit
with a flavour of mint. It is _de rigueur_ to eat some of this, and as
the caviare is generally good, it is the best part of the dinner.’
The Governor of Cape Coast Castle, in his official report to the
Colonial Office, in 1856, speaking of the food and cooking in the
interior, remarks:--‘An officer of government, who has been about two
years here, says, that he reckons he has eaten, during that time, 700
fowls, it being difficult at out-stations to cater in anything else but
fowls.
‘In cooking, the natives seem to have almost a homeopathic
prepossession for trituration. They pound and grind by hand labour,
between stones, their maize, and bake it; so with their yams, and, I
believe, cassada; they pound also their plantains and make soup of them.
‘Fish with a strong flavour and snails are favorites. The latter grow
to a large, I had almost said formidable, size. I have in my possession
the shell of one which I found buried about a foot in the ground,
within a few yards of Government house, and which measures in length
about five inches, and in circumference, in the widest part, about
seven inches. A collection of these snails was once sent to me as a
compliment, but I need hardly say, that I cannot speak of their taste
from experience, though I do not know why I should not as well as I
can of land crabs, which, when properly cooked, are, I think, general
favorites with us. On the subject of cooking, I may observe, that the
country cooked dishes (if of materials of a nature, and in a state,
admitted in the category of our edibles) brought to table in the black
native-made earthen pots in which they are cooked on the fire, are
almost without exception favorites with the Europeans.’
The African Bushmen, who have few or no cattle, live upon what they can
get. Hunger compels them to eat every thing, roots, bulbs, wild garlic,
the core of aloes, the gum of acacias, berries, the larvæ of ants,
lizards, locusts, and grasshoppers--all are devoured by these poor
wanderers of the desert. Nothing comes amiss to them.
The principal diet of the Kaffir is milk, which he eats rather than
drinks in a sour and curdled state. One good meal a day, taken in
the evening, consisting of the curdled milk and a little millet, is
almost all that he requires, and with this he is strong, vigorous, and
robust, proving that large quantities of animal food are by no means
necessary for the sustenance of the human frame.
Singularly enough a Kaffir, like a Jew, will never touch pork. To him
it is unclean, though why he thinks so I suspect he cannot tell. Fish
is likewise abstained from by him, as it is said to have been by the
Egyptian priesthood. Yet with these antipathies he will eat the flesh
of an ox, cooked or raw, when he can obtain it, not excepting portions
of the animal from which one would imagine he would turn away with
disgust.
To such tribes as the Shangalla negroes, occupying the wild tracts
bordering on Abyssinia, roots are their daily food, and locusts and
lizards their luxuries.
The Indians of Brazil do not reject any kind of food, and devour it
almost without being cooked; rats and other small vermin, snakes, and
alligators, are all accepted.
The aborigines of Australia live chiefly on the native animals they can
procure--the kangaroo, the wallaby, bandicoot, kangaroo rat, opossum,
and wombat; every bird and bird’s egg that can be procured; and in the
case of tribes near the sea, cray-fish, and shell-fish, form the staple
article of their diet.
Under the influence of Christianity, the fish, flesh, or fowl, which
the Pacific Islanders previously regarded as incarnations of their
gods, are now eaten without suspicion or alarm. One, for instance,
saw his god in the eel, another in the shark, another in the turtle,
another in the dog, another in the owl, another in the lizard; and
so on throughout all the fish of the sea, and birds, and four-footed
beasts, and creeping things. In some of the shell-fish, even,
gods were supposed to be present. A man would eat freely of what
was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the
incarnation of his own particular god he would consider it death to
injure or to eat. The god was supposed to avenge the insult by taking
up his abode in that person’s body, and causing to generate diseases.
The Sonthal, or lowlander of Bengal, being unfettered by caste, eats
without scruple his cow or buffalo beef, his kids, poultry, pork, or
pigeons, and is not over particular as to whether the animals have been
slain, have died a natural death, or have been torn by wild animals.
When the more substantial good things of life, such as meat and poultry
are scarce, he does not refuse to eat snakes, ants, frogs, and field
rats.
In Eastern Tibet regular meals are not in vogue; the members of a
family do not assemble to dine together, but ‘eat when they’re hungry,
drink when they’re dry.’ ‘We remember,’ says a writer in _Blackwood_,
‘to have heard a graphic description of the Tibetan _cuisine_, from a
humorous _shikaree_, or native Nimrod of our Himalayan provinces. The
Bhoteea folk (he said) have a detestable way of eating. They take a
large cooking pot full of water, and put in it meat, bread, rice, and
what not, and set it on the fire, where it is always a-simmering. When
hungry, they go and fish out a cupful of whatever comes uppermost,
perhaps, six or seven times a day. Strangers are served in the same
way. If a man gets hold of a bone, he picks it, wipes his hands on his
dress, and chucks it back into the pot. So with all crumbs and scraps,
back they go into the pot, and thus the never-ending still-beginning
mess stews on.’
If we visit Burmah, we find there a rather indiscriminate use of all
that can satiate the appetite, without much regard to selection.
Immense quantities of pressed fish are prepared, called _gnapee_, which
constitutes a main article of their diet. In some cases the fish is
washed and pounded, and this description generally consists of prawns.
In the coarser sorts the pieces of fish are entire, half putrid, half
pickled. They are all fetid and offensive to Europeans.
A kind of red ant is eaten fried, or with their dried fish, and a worm,
which in the lower provinces of Burmah is found in the heart of a
shrub, is considered such a delicacy, that every month a great quantity
is sent to the capital to be served up at the table of the emperor. It
is eaten either fried or roasted.
According to Sir John Bowring, the Chinese have no prejudices whatever
as regards food; they eat anything and everything from which they can
derive nutrition. Dogs, especially puppies, are habitually sold as
food. In the butchers’ shops large dogs skinned and hanging with their
viscera, may be seen by the side of pigs and goats. Even to the flesh
of monkeys and snakes they have no objection.
The sea slug is an aristocratic and costly delicacy, which is never
wanting, any more than the edible birds-nests, at a feast where honour
is intended to be done to the guests. These birds-nests are worth twice
their weight in silver. They are glutinous compositions formed by a
kind of swallow, in vast clusters, found in Java, Sumatra, and the
rocky islets of the Indian Archipelago. Dried sharks’ fins and fish
maws are also highly prized.
But while the rich fare sumptuously, the mass of the poor subsist on
the veriest garbage. The heads of fowls, their entrails and fat, with
every scrap of digestible animal matter, earth-worms, sea reptiles of
all kinds, mice, and other vermin are greedily devoured. Lots of black
frogs, in half dozens, tied together, are exposed for sale in shallow
troughs of water. The hind-quarters of a horse will be seen hung up in
a butcher’s shop, with the recommendation of a whole leg attached.
Unhatched ducks and chickens are a favorite dish. Nor do the early
stages of putrefaction create any disgust. Rotten eggs are by no means
condemned to perdition. Fish is the more acceptable when it has a
strong fragrance and flavour to give more gusto to the rice, which
forms the two meals of the population, morning and evening. In the
shops, fat pork chops will be found dried and varnished to the colour
of mahogany, suspended with dry pickled ducks’ gizzards, and strings of
sausages cured by exposure to the sun.
In Hong Kong, rice with salt fish and fat pork is the principal article
of Chinese diet; and for drink, tea and hot samshew, a spirit distilled
from rice, and very unpalatable to Europeans.
Nearly all the beasts of the forest are eaten by the Dyaks of Borneo;
even monkeys, alligators (if small), snakes, and other reptiles are
esteemed. Like the French, they regard frogs as a delicate dish, and
bestow considerable pains in procuring them.
The Greenlanders, although they do not usually eat their meat raw,
have a superstitious custom, on every capture, of cutting out a piece
of the raw flesh and drinking the warm blood. And the woman who skins
the seal, gives a couple of pieces of the fat to each of the female
spectators.
An European writer states, that he frequently followed the example
of the Greenlanders in the chase, and assuaged his hunger by eating
a piece of raw reindeer’s flesh; nor did he find it very hard of
digestion, but it satisfied his appetite much less than cooked meat.
The inhabitants of the high table-lands of Abyssinia, are also
accustomed to eat raw flesh--the climate being as cold as that of
the northern parts of Scotland. My friend, Mr. C. Johnston, in his
travels in that country, thus puts in a plea for the practice by the
Abyssinians.
In a country but poorly wooded, the chief supply of fuel being the dung
of cattle, an instinctive feeling, dependent upon the pleasures of a
state of warmth, has taught the Abyssinians that the flesh of animals
eaten raw, is a source of great physical enjoyment, by the cordial and
warming effects upon the system produced by its digestion, and to which
I am convinced bon vivants more civilized than the Abyssinians would
resort, if placed in their situation.
Travellers who have witnessed their _brunde_ feasts, can attest
the intoxicating effects of this kind of food, and they must have
been astonished at the immense quantities that can be eaten in the
raw state, compared to that when the meat is cooked, and at the
insensibility which it sometimes produces.
Eating raw meat, which among the Esquimaux is for the most part an
absolute necessity, by the Abyssinians is considered a luxury, or in
fact, as a kind of dissipation; for eating it in that state is only
indulged in by them at festivals, and it is then taken as a means of
enjoyment, and is not more barbarous or disgusting than getting tipsy
upon strong drinks.[4]
Another writer on ‘Life in Abyssinia,’ thus describes the native mode
of eating meat.--‘There is usually a piece of meat to every five or
six persons, among whom arises some show of ceremony as to which of
them shall first help himself; this being at length decided, the person
chosen takes hold of the meat with his left hand, and with his sword
or knife cuts a strip a foot or fifteen inches long, from the part
which appears the nicest and tenderest. The others then help themselves
in like manner. If I should fail in describing the scene which now
follows, I must request the aid of the reader’s imagination. Let him
picture to himself thirty or forty Abyssinians, stripped to their
waists, squatting round the low tables, each with his sword, knife, or
‘shotel’ in his hand, some eating, some helping themselves, and some
waiting their turn, but all bearing in their features the expression of
that fierce gluttony which one attributes more to the lion or leopard
than to the race of Adam. The imagination may be much assisted by the
idea of the lumps of raw pink and blue flesh they are gloating over.
But I have yet to describe how they eat the strip of meat which I
have just made one of the party cut off. A quantity of ‘dillikh’ or
‘aou-a-zé’ being laid on his bread, he dips one end of the meat into
it, and then, seizing it between his teeth, while he holds the other
end in his left hand, he cuts a bit off close to his lips by an upward
stroke of his sword, only just avoiding the tip of his nose, and so on
till he has finished the whole strip.’
Australian delicacies are somewhat different to our own. The flying-fox
(_Pteropus_), an animal of the bat family, which makes sad havoc at
night among the fruit trees of the colonists, is in return shot down
without mercy. Their flesh is delicate, and they are almost invariably
very fat, but owing to the demoniac appearance of their black leathery
wings, and to the prejudice which this appearance excites, they are
seldom eaten by the settlers. Travellers in the wilderness, however,
are frequently indebted for a hearty meal to their success in bringing
down these creatures.
The burrowing wombat, or native pig, which feeds chiefly on roots,
is not deemed bad food. When divested of its fur and tough skin, its
flesh, although red and coarse in appearance, resembles that of a pig
in flavour, and is usually cooked by the colonists like fresh pork
would be. The flesh of the porcupine ant-eater somewhat resembles that
of a young sucking pig, and is highly esteemed.
There are several other small quadrupeds, including a burrowing or
prairie-rat, which, at particular seasons, and in certain localities in
Australia, constitute the chief animal food of the natives. The flesh
of the little short-legged bandicoot is very white and delicate. Cooked
like a rabbit, it furnishes the sportsman’s table with a splendid dish.
Among quadrupeds, besides the ordinary domestic fed or wild animals
commonly eaten as food, we find apes and monkeys, the spider monkey,
the marmozet, bats, hedgehogs, bears, racoons, badgers, and dogs; many
of the carnivorous animals, as foxes, lions and tigers, the puma, &c.,
are also eaten. Then again we have the seal and the walrus.