September 08, 2004

Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany. "It is gratifying to learn that humble pie is no mere expression. There really was such a thing, a dish made with venison offal, or humbles, a word that derived from the French word for deer entrails, nombles. Mr. Schott thoughtfully includes a 17th-century recipe, which sounds delicious, much more appealing than a restaurant's roast camel 'English style,' one of several dishes served on Christmas at Voisin in 1870, when Paris was under siege.

"The zoo at the Jardin des Plantes sold off the animals it could no longer feed, and enterprising chefs rose to the challenge. At Voisin, diners feasted on stuffed ass's head, elephant soup, wolf haunch in venison sauce and a truffled antelope terrine. The wines were appropriate."

posted by languagehat 20 years ago
  • I bought the original Miscellany, and it resided on my toilet tank for over a year. Hoping I'm not sharing too much there. Point is, I love this man.
  • A valuable footnote explains why Portuguese settlers in Africa were allowed to eat hippopotamus (tastes like beef) during Lent. Because it spends so much time in the water, the hippo was judged to be a fish. This book is going on my list. Thanks, Languagehat.
  • Mmm, stuffed ass's head... but elephant soup? Noooo!
  • received this for christmas Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany not much better, might be worse
  • Stuffed ass's head...Zell Miller?
  • Browsed the original in a book store and was originally interested in purchasing it, but ran across a section on famous deaths which listed " Jerry Garcia gratefully dead of a heroin overdose" and the date. Now, regardless of the fact that I find this to be an embarassingly lame attempt at "cleverness" or "wit", I could've gotten past that. But to have incorrect information, on top of poor taste, called the entire book into question for me. HM
  • MFK Fisher wrote about an ancient condiment (am paraphrasing, tho the original is pretty close): pour the entrails of dead fish into a vase, bury it, and a month later disinter the rotted remains, pour off the liquid, and it is the sauce Garum.
  • You can view the whole menu here (do a page search for "Voisin").
  • The "appropriate" wines ... First service : X
  • Goofyfoot - you're actually supposed to leave it to ferment on a hot rock for a little while before you bury it, so it develops the full flavour. I did a year of archaeology in my BA, and the word is that apparently if you distinter an amphorae or bits of an amphorae used to store garum, then you can often still smell it. Lovely stuff.
  • Horsemuth: I also found a couple of comments in that section a bit tasteless, but it's not indicitive of the rest of the book at all. The rest of it his funny, interesting and completely and utterly irrelevant.
  • MonkeyFilter: funny, interesting and completely and utterly irrelevant. Sorry, couldn't resist.