Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.18 #107 (Apr 1859).
Though man is all but omnivorous, nothing is more difficult than to induce any given man, civilized or barbarous, to taste and like a new dish. He was certainly a bold man who first ate an oyster. When Captain Cook first visited the Sandwich Islands, he invited the King of Owyhee to dine with him, and his Majesty was induced to inaugurate the repast with a mouthful of bread, a viand entirely novel to him. No sooner had he got a taste than he spat it out with every symptom of disgust; and declining farther prandial ventures, returned ashore to his customary roast dog and decayed fish. The Japanese refuse beef and milk, but eat rats. The New Hollanders surfeit themselves with stale shark, rancid whale blubber, and earth worm, but regard with horror the white man's simple breakfast of bread and butter. The negroes of the West Indies revel in the luxuries of baked snakes and finger-long palm worms, fried in their own fat; but their delicate stomachs revolt at the thought of a rabbit stew. A recent traveler heard a Barbadian negro thus vent his indignation upon an unlucky market-woman who had offered him a rabbit: "I should jest like to know war you take me for, ma'am? You tink me go buy rabbit? No, ma'am. Me no cum to dat yet; for me always did say, and me always will say, dat dem who eats rabbit eats pussy, and dem who eats pussy eats rabbit." A delicate stomach indeed! A Frenchman would doubtless agree with the Barbadian in theory, reversing the practice, however, by eating both cat and rabbit. The Russian eats tallow-candles, the Greenlander drinks train oil, Dr. Livingstone's favorites, the Barotse, affect crocodile steaks; and one of his African friends, so the Doctor states, made a contented supper one evening from a blue mole and two mice. These dainties the Frenchman righteously turns up his nose at, preferring a lively frog, a few snails, and—when he can afford it—a tart of the diseased livers of geese, which favorite esculents John Bull in turn dislikes; preferring solid beef and mutton, wherein at least Brother Jonathan agrees with him; though it is to be hoped that he enjoys these and their attendant luxuries with greater moderation than does the "Britisher," if Sydney Smith's account is to be believed. That worthy clergyman, having ascertained the weight of food he could live upon and preserve health and strength, acknowledged to Lord Murray that, between the ages of ten and seventy, he had consumed forty-four one-horse wagon loads of meat and drink more than would have sustained him, the value of which mass of nourishment was about thirty-five thousand dollars.
Sir John Ross states that an Esquimaux will eat twenty pounds of meat and oil per day. A Tongouse allowance is forty pounds of rein-deer meat; and a Russian Admiral saw three Yakutes eat a rein-deer at a sitting. A visitor to New Zealand relates that two natives of that cannibal isle went out to the shore, after a hearty supper, and finished the half-putrid carcass of a shark at one moonlight sitting; and Captain Sturt, the Australian explorer, saw a New Hollander eat over one hundred jerboas (a vaulting rat) at a sitting. He placed a number for a few seconds under the ashes, then, with the hair only partially burned off, took them by the tail, and bit off the bodies, one after another. When he had eaten a dozen bodies, he stuffed the dozen tails into his mouth, to chew up leisurely. It is a notable fact that the most civilized nations are the most liberal in their gastronomic taste. Next to the Chinese, whose ultra civilization has betrayed them into the toleration of half-hatched eggs, shark's fins, and bird's-nest soups, comes the Frenchman; and to him follows the American. Seriously, is it not an evidence of genuine civilization, this tolerance which refuses not any thing which is clean and wholesome? What unwarrantable prejudices have not modern travelers exploded? Dr. Shaw enjoyed lion, which he found to taste like veal; Dr. Darwin had a passion for puma, the South American lion; Dr. Brooke found melted bear's grease not only palatable but delicious; Hippocrates, Captain Cook, and the writer of this, vouch for the excellence of dog, though the Philosopher of Cos recommends it boiled, when every body who has tried knows the superiority of roast dog. Mr. Buckland tasted boa constrictor, and found the flesh exceedingly white and firm, and much like veal in taste; Sir Robert Schomburgk found monkey very palatable, though, before dissection, it looked disagreeably like roast child; and Gordon Cumming is loud in the praise of baked elephant's trunk and feet. To cook these a pit is dug, stones are heated in it, and when all is ready, two men shoulder a foot and dump it in. When the hole is full (the four feet, and a few slices of the trunk, fill a good-sized pit), heated stones are put on the mess, leaves over the stones, earth over the leaves, and the hungry hunter impatiently awaits the unearthing of his savory mess.
Of course a line must be drawn somewhere. The baked missionary of the New Zealand cuisine, the under-done human thigh of the Feejee Islander, and the broiled fingers, which are thought "a dainty dish to set before the King" of Sumatra, are not to be recommended. Nor would a man be thought illiberal who should fail to appreciate a stew of red ants in Birmah (though ants are said to have an agreeable acidity when properly prepared), parrot pie in Rio de Janeiro, roast bat in Malabar, or a cuttle-fish fry in the Mauritius. But the eminent and lamented Soyer used to assert that civilization and cookery advanced hand in hand; and we may rely on it that, as the reasoning powers of man are developed, so will his stomach become less squeamish. "A nice man," said Dean Swift, prophetically, "is a man with nasty ideas;" and though, as Montesquieu asserts, there may be valid reasons for not eating pork, surely there may be reasons quite as unimpeachable for eating giraffe, alpaca, bustard, anaconda, horse? Let man, at any rate, aim at consistency. The French of the Antilles delight in the guana—a hideous lizard—but they refuse the delicate and pork-like meat of the young alligator. We laugh at the South Sea Islander's use of buckskin breeches, who stuffed a pair with sea-weed and boiled them for dinner; but at the time of the great London Exhibition, in 1851, it is known that so extensively were buffalo hides and sheep and calf-skins boiled down into jellies that the price of those staple articles rose considerably in all the English ports. Eels are a favorite dish with epicures; but rattlesnake would not go down even under the euphonious name of "Musical Jack." During the famine the Irish, even when reduced to the most desperate pitch of hunger, refused corn meal. All civilized nations reject dog and cat as culinary articles, though those animals are clean feeders, but make a staple of swine, the most foul feeding of beasts. Chickens and pigeons are table luxuries; but nobody "hankers after" crow, which is a cleaner bird than either. John Bull will not taste squirrel, though every American mouth waters at the mention of savory squirrel stew. Such alimentary inconsistencies are endless, and often most seriously interfere with the comfort of prejudiced travelers.
It is curious to notice the different parts of animals that are eaten. Sheep's head, pig's head, calf's head and brains, ox head, in England the heads of ducks and geese, ox tongue, rein-deer tongue, walrus tongue, crane's tongue, and in America sheep and pigs' tongues. In China the tongues of fowls and ducks are a high-priced dainty. John Chinaman relishes also the maw and fins of the shark; while in Siam the
dried sinews of various animals are a prime luxury. Feet are generally liked, from the webfeet of ducks and geese in Europe, the trotters of sheep and pettitoes of pig, which are a popular edible in London, and the bear's paws, loved of North American hunters, down to the elephant's feet, much desiderated by the Caffre and Bushmen. Ox tail, sheep's tail, pig's tail are in common use. The Australian rejoices in Kangaroo tail; the North American trapper in beaver tail; the South African Boer in the fat tails of his sheep, which, during life, are dragged about in a hand-cart, and after death are melted into butter, or make a delicious stew. In Honduras the tail of the manatee, or sea-cow, is a staple dish for the table, though new settlers do not stomach any part of the animal on account of its vivid resemblance to man. The female has hands, and holds its young up to its breast precisely as a human mother would. In Juan Fernandez many thousand lobsters are annually taken, whose tails are dried and served on the dinner tables of Valparaiso. The tongue of the sea-lion has been found palatable by travelers. It is rather an extensive affair. A visitor to the Falkland Islands reports: "For a trial we cut off the tip of the tongue hanging out of the mouth of a sea-lion just killed. About sixteen or eighteen of us ate each a pretty large piece, and we all thought it so good that we regretted we could not eat more of it." Shark fins are in such demand for soups in China that from ten to fifteen thousand hundred-weight are annually imported from various parts of India. Forty thousand sharks are taken annually off Kurrachee, near Bombay, for their back fins, which are the only ones used. They are caught there chiefly in nets; but, according to Dr. Ruschenberger, the natives of the Bonin Islands have trained their dogs to catch fish, and he saw two of these animals rush into the water, seize each the side fin of a shark, and bring it ashore in spite of resistance.
In the Arctic regions eating is carried on under various serious difficulties; and to drink even water is an unusual luxury, presupposing a fire. The cheerful glass is often frozen to the lip, and the too ardent reveler may splinter a tooth in attempting to gnaw through a lump of soup. You eat your daily allowance of ship's rum, and ask your intimate friend for a chew of brandy and water. The Greenlander finds it necessary not only to "first catch his fish," but also to thaw it, before he can prepare it. How grateful, then, to the Esquimaux palate must be the yielding tallow candle, which, having eaten, he carefully draws the wick between his teeth to save the remaining morsels of fat! The greatest luxury of the Greenlander is half-putrid whale's tail; and next to this comes the gum of the right whale, which the Tuski call their sugar, and which a British officer reports to be delicious, tasting as much as possible like cream cheese. Dr. Kane was enthusiastic about the liver of walrus, declaring that Charles Lamb's roast pig could not compare with this uncooked awuktanuk. But the Doctor also wondered why people at home did not eat raw beef; and this throws some doubt over his recommendation of the Esquimaux dainty. Whale meat is dark-red and coarse. It is very commonly eaten by old whalemen, but has a rank flavor, which makes it unpleasant to a nice palate, as the writer of this can testify. On board American whalemen it is usually made into force-meat-balls, when pepper and other spices disguise somewhat the unpleasant flavor. Porpoise used to be a favorite dainty of the old English nobility. It was eaten with a sauce composed of sugar, vinegar, and crumbs of fine bread. Porpoise liver is, even now, very toothsome to the sea appetite, being dry and much like pig's liver.
To return to more temperate regions: the dog is a favorite dish riot only among the Sandwich Islanders, but with the Chinese, who regularly fatten it for the table; the Africans of Zanzibar, to whom a stew of puppies is a dainty meal; the Australian natives, who assiduously hunt the wild and never-barking dingo; and the Canadian voyageurs. In Canton, the hind-quarters of a dog are hung up in butchers' shops next to the hind-quarters of lamb, but bear a higher price. A traveler in the Sandwich Islands says, "Near every place at table was a fine young dog, the flesh of which, to my palate, was what I can imagine would result from mingling the flavor of pig and lamb." They are fed chiefly on taro, a fine species of potato, and are thought fit for market at the age of two years. The mode of cooking dogs and pigs in these islands doubtless contributes to make them a gastronomic success. A hole is dug in the ground sufficiently large to contain the animal, which is carefully cleaned. A fire is built in the hole and stones thrown in, which are made red-hot. When all is ready, the sides and bottom are lined with the red-hot stones, fragrant leaves are thrown in, and the dog (or pig) laid on these on its back. The body is then covered with more leaves, with stones, and finally with earth, which makes the oven tight. After a proper time, the savory mess is taken out, cooked to a turn, and in a style which not even the great Soyer could excel. The interior is full of the finest juices of the animal, which makes a delicious gravy. Epicures, who have tasted sucking pig roasted in this manner, declare that it is inimitable. How Lamb would have delighted in this succulent dish!
As for rats, the Chinese, the negroes of the West Indies and Brazil, the New Hollanders, the Esquimaux, and many other people, esteem them most fit food. In Canton rat soup is thought equal to ox-tail soup; and a dozen fat rats are worth two dollars. A Yankee speculator is about—according to recent Calcutta papers—to make a good thing of salted rats! The British Indian province of Scinde has been for several years so infested with grain-eating rats that the price of grain has risen twenty-five per cent. Government has proclaimed a head-money on all rats and mice killed in the province, of six cents per dozen; the slayer having the privilege of keeping the body, and presenting only the tail. Putting this fact together with the high price got for rats in the Chinese markets, the epeculiator has made his arrangements for a monopoly of what he considers a very lucrative business; and declares his intention to export to China, as a first venture, 120,000 rats. "I have to pay one pice [about half a cent] a dozen [in Scinde], and the gutting, salting, pressing, and packing in casks, raises the price to six pice per dozen. If I succeed in obtaining any thing like the price that rules in Whampoa and Canton for corn-grown rats my fortune is made—or, rather, I will be on the fair road to it, and will open a fine field of enterprise to Scinde."
The nest of the Hirundo esculenta, which is thought so delicious a morsel by the Chinese and Cambojans that the finest white nests are worth, in Canton, nearly twice their own weight in silver, is found chiefly in caves on the shores of Java and the neighboring isles. It resembles, externally, ill-concocted, fibrous isinglass, and should be white in color, with a red tinge. It is nearly the size of a goose egg, about the thickness of a silver table-spoon, and weighs from a quarter to half an ounce. Those that are dry, white, and clean are the most valuable. They are packed in bundles, with split rattans run through them to preserve the shape. They are procured from the caves, at much peril to the takers, twice every year; and the opening of the caves on these occasions is performed with many singular superstitious ceremonies. The best are sent to Pekin, for the use of the Celestial Court, and bring in Canton no less than four thousand dollars per picul of 133⅓ pounds; about 250,000 pounds are brought to Canton every year. To prepare them for the table is a most tedious and laborious performance. Every feather, stick, and other impurity, is first carefully removed; and then, after undergoing countless washings, the nest is made into a jelly, which serves to thicken soups.
From birds'-nests we turn to eggs, which form an important article of food among all known races. The English, who are great egg eaters, receive from France annually 130,000,000 of eggs, and from Ireland 150,000,000; a fact which recently caused serious alarm to Mr. Punch, who called upon his countrymen to "turn their barns into hen-houses, and throw off the yolk of the foreigners." The great object of egg buyers is to get them fresh, and many modes are resorted to to determine this point; some dealers placing the eggs in water, when, it is said, if they are good they will lie on their sides—if bad, stand on their ends. In Fulton and Washington markets, New York, the egg-dealer places a lighted candle under his counter, and, taking up the eggs, three in each hand, passes them rapidly before the light. If the egg is fresh the light will shine through it with a reddish glow, while a stale egg is opaque. So quickly can this process be conducted, that eggs are inspected thoroughly by our dealers at the rate of from one to two hundred per minute. In China duck eggs are a great article of consumption. They are preserved in a mixture of salt and a red ochrous earth. But the Chinaman and the Dyak of Borneo trouble themselves very little on the point of freshness. The Celestial hen's nest is robbed indiscriminately, and half-hatched eggs are thought a very palatable dish.
The most convenient of eggs should be that of the ostrich. Its contents are equal to those of twenty-four common hen's eggs; and the nest, a mere hole in the sand, contains, generally, twenty-four eggs—quite a prize to an African sportsman, who generally takes off his shirt on coming to such a find, ties up the sleeves and neck, and places the contents of the nest in this impromptu bag, with which he totters back to the camp. The best way to cook an ostrich egg is to place it on end in the hot ashes, break a hole in the upper end, and with a small stick stir the contents till your omelette is done.
San Francisco has an inexhaustible supply of eggs in the immediate vicinity of its bay. The islets known as the Farallones de las Grayles, lying about twenty miles from the Golden Gate, are visited, at regular periods, by men who procure there immense quantities of the eggs of a kind of gull which frequents the islands. From a part of the Great Farallone, called the-Rookery, there were taken, in less than two months (part of July-and August), more than five hundred thousand eggs. Several such bird islets were formerly to be found on the Californian coast. On one, off the harbor of San Pedro, which the writer of this has visited, the number of the birds was prodigious, and the noise, the filth, and the wings of the parent birds made the collection of eggs an undertaking of no little labor. On Ichaboe, and other rocks where penguins, gulls, cormorants, and albatrosses resort to breed their young, the birds are found so closely wedged together that it is almost impossible to find foot-room between ; and these otherwise untamable creatures grow as tame as barn-yard fowl. Sailors are accustomed to lift them off their nests to get at the eggs, and where the ruthless spirit of destruction prevails thousands of harmless and useless animals are needlessly slain. From a little islet, a mile and a half long by a mile broad, near Cape Town, twenty-four thousand eggs are taken every fortnight to supply the Cape Town market. The penguins stand in pairs by their nests, and defend them very stoutly against robbers ; so that seamen find it necessary to wear high, stout boots to prevent the bites of the birds.
In some of the Pacific Islands the eggs of lizards are highly esteemed; and in the West Indies the eggs of the guana, which is after all but a lizard, are thought a delicacy. The eggs of the alligator are eaten in the Antilles; and Mr. Joseph states, in his "History of Trinidad," that he found them to taste very much like hen's eggs, which they also resemble in shape. Turtle's eggs are in great esteem wherever they are found, as well by Europeans as others. They are about the size of a pigeon's egg, and have a soft shell. The mother turtle deposits them by night, one hundred at a laying, in the dry sand, and leaves the sun to hatch them. She lays thrice » year, at intervals of two or three weeks. It requires an experienced hand to detect the eggs, which are always ingeniously covered up; but where they are hunted but few escape. The Indians of the Orinoco obtain from these eggs a kind of clear and sweet oil, which they use instead of butter. In February, when the high waters of the river recede, millions of turtles come on shore to deposit their eggs. So sure is this harvest, and so abundant, that it is estimated by the acre—this space often yielding one hundred jars. The total yearly gathering of the region about the mouth of the Orinoco is about five thousand jars of oil; and it takes five thousand eggs to make a jar.
The turtle, that beast so intimately connected with the welfare of city governments, is a delicacy of quite modern repute. At the beginning of the last century it was only eaten by the poor in Jamaica. At present calipash, calipee, and green fat are luxuries known only to the stomach of Dives and his compeers. Both the turtle and the guana are hunted with considerable cunning. The first named is watched, when it comes on shore at night, and tumbled over on its back, where it lies helpless until its captors have time to carry it off. The guana, luckless lizard! is hunted with dogs; and when taken alive, has its mouth sewed up to prevent it biting. It lives for a month or six weeks without food. A soft-shelled turtle abounds in the bayous of Louisiana, and is much prized as a table delicacy. It is particularly hard to catch; but when lying on a log at the water-side, sunning itself, is often a fair shot for the rifle. When shot, however, it is unluckily prone to tumble into the water and make its escape, even in death. To prevent this, it is related that an ingenious epicure devised the following satisfactory plan: He cut a piece of wood one inch long, and so rounded as easily to fit into his rifle. To this "toggle" he secured a piece of stout twine, seven or eight inches long, the other end of which was run through a rifle-ball. The ball was then inserted in its place, the string and toggle followed, and he was ready for his turtle. Getting a fair shot, the ball pierced the turtle and entered the log on which it was lying, where it stuck. But the string and toggle held the astonished beast firmly until his enemy could come in a canoe to make good his capture.
The Isle of Ascension, in the South Atlantic, is an extensive breeding-place for turtle. Dr. W.M. Wood, in his just published work, "Fankwei: a Cruise in the United States Steamer San Jacinto," says that the turtle of Ascension are a government monopoly, and that large basins have been erected for the accommodation of the breeding turtle and their newly-hatched young. A singular fact is, that from the time the young turtle become of the size of a dollar they disappear, and are seen no more until they return four or five hundred pounds in weight. Where they spend the interval has not been discovered.
Lobster is a favorite dainty with Americans and Englishmen, but no one thinks of eating locusts. Yet these last form a welcome meal to many tribes and nations, and all travelers who have tasted them bear witness that they make a toothsome dish. We do not propose to advocate their introduction to American tables; but it is worth while to remark that the chief difference between lobster and locust, considered as an article of diet, is that the first is the foulest feeder known, while the locust, though not dainty, lives chiefly on fresh vegetable substances. Let us not reproach the locust-eaters.
Ants are eaten in many countries. In Brazil the largest species are prepared with a sauce of resin. In Africa they stew them with butter. In the East Indies they are caught in pits, carefully roasted, like coffee, and eaten by mouthfuls afterward, as our children eat candies or raisins. Mr. Smeathman says: "I have eaten them several times, dressed in this way, and think them delicate, nourishing, and wholesome. They are something sweeter, though not so fat and clogging as the caterpillar or maggot of the palm-tree snout-beetle, which is served up at all the luxurious tables of the West Indian epicures, particularly the French, as the greatest dainty of the Western world." A curry of ants' eggs is a very costly luxury in Siam; and in Mexico the people have, from time immemorial, eaten the eggs of a water insect which prevails in the lagunes of that city.
The Ceylonese, ungrateful wretches, eat the bees after robbmg them of their honey. The African Bushmen eat all the caterpillars they find. A Bushman would be a valuable acquisition for a New York market gardener's cabbage field. The Australians are notorious as maggot eaters; and the Chinese, who waste nothing, eat the chrysalis of the silk-worm after they have wound the silk from its cocoon. It is said that the North American Indians used to eat the seventeen-year locusts. The Diggers of California fatten themselves on grasshoppers; hogs are also fond of them; and it is related that, in New Jersey, an ingenious soap-boiler made excellent soap, of which a swarm of seventeen-year locusts formed a prominent ingredient.
The African Bushmen and the savages of New Caledonia are very fond of spiders roasted. This singular taste is not unknown even in Europe. Reaumur tells of a young lady who, when walking in her garden, used to eat all the spiders she could catch; and the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman ate them like nuts, which, she averred, they much resembled in taste. Lallande, the French astronomer, was equally fond of them; and a German, immortalized by Rosel, used to spread them on his bread instead of butter.
Among oyster-eating people the Americans take the lead; and New York is the greatest oyster market in the world. There are in the city nearly two hundred wholesale dealers, who have invested in the business over half a million of dollars. The trade in New York amounts to nearly seven million dollars per annum, and about fifty thousand people are engaged in it, directly and indirectly. Virginia furnishes from her bays about two-thirds of the oysters consumed in the Union. Fifteen hundred and twenty boats are engaged in their collection and transportation. Baltimore, on account of its vicinity to the Chesapeake Bay oyster beds, is the chief seat of the oyster transporting business. From here they are sent all over the Western and Southern States. One firm opens, in the season, 2500 bushels of oysters per day, and has paid the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company for freight no less than $35,000 in one year. Governor Wise estimates that Virginia possesses 1,680,000 acres of oyster beds, containing about 784,000,000 bushels of oysters. The lover of this bivalve who fears that the immense consumption will bring on a scarcity, may take comfort in the knowledge that the female oyster spawns per year a family of 8,000,000 young ones.
Snails are a prime luxury in Europe. The French are large consumers, but the Viennese are the principal snail-eaters of the world. At the town of Ulm, on the Danube, great quantities of snails are fed for the Vienna market, those which have been fattened upon strawberries bringing the highest price. Sixty thousand pounds of snails are annually exported from the Isle of Crete. At Cape Coast Castle the great African snail, which attains a length of eight inches, is made into soup. In England snail-soup is prescribed for consumptives.
But enough of outlandish dishes. So long as we stick to our homes and our good American beef, pork, and mutton—of which, by-the-way, according to recent statistics, every New-Yorker is supposed to consume half a pound per diem—we need not offend our stomachs with snail soups, ant, stews, or alligator steaks. We close our bill of fare with an anecdote which will furnish a useful hint to that respectable and popular class of men, the keepers of eating-houses. The scene is a city court-room; and the judge has taken it upon himself to cross-examine the chief witness in a case before him.
"You say you have confidence in the plaintiff, Mr. Smith?"
"Yes, Sir."
"State to the court, if you please, what causes this feeling of confidence."
"Why you see, Sir, there's allers reports 'bout eatin'-house men, and I used to kinder think—"
"Never mind what you thought—tell us what you know."
"Well, Sir, one day I goes down to Cooken's shop, an' sez to the waiter, 'Waiter,' sez I, 'give us a weal pie.'"
"Well, Sir, proceed."
"Well, Sir, just then Mr. Cooken comes up, and sez he, 'How du, Smith—what you goin' to hev?'
"'Weal pie!' sez I.
"'Good,' sez he, 'I'll take one tu;' so he sets down and eats one of his own weal pies, right afore me."
"Did that cause your confidence in him?"
"Yes, it did, Sir; when an eatin'-house keeper sits down afore his customers an' deliberately eats one of his own weal pies, no man can refuse to feel confidence—it shows him to be an honest man."
A word to the wise is sufficient.