PREJUDICES OF THE TABLE.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "Sracuroa."] Sin,—There are not a few prejudices of the table enumerated in your recent interesting and amusing article on the subject to which I must confess myself a stranger, though not without opportunities of meeting with them if they were in existence. For instance, I learn that " even in Ireland " hares and rabbits go free from the cook, but learn it now for the first time. I have lived in this country, man and boy, for fifty years or so, and that, too, chiefly among the peasantry, to which class of our population indeed I belong, but never yet met the man or woman who would turn up their nose at either, especially the latter. There is not a pot in an Irish cottage which has not helped to cook a rabbit at one time or another. This dish is popular with the humbler classes in all parts of the country, though the hare may not be in general quite so well "understood." Snails, as you say, may pos- sibly " find their way into English kitchens," but they are certainly never cooked there, except now and then when they manage to conceal themselves in badly washed cabbage. I have come across them in such conditions occasionally myself, and have horrified people by not rejecting my whole vegetable helping in consequence. The tongue of fowls has more to recommend it as a bonne bouche than any possible association with song, and the tongues of other birds as well as those of nightingales have their intrinsic merits as a dish. Some years ago when Li Hung Chang was visiting this country he happened to be my neighbour for a day or two in Glasgow, where he was putting up at the Windsor Hotel. One day, noticing a consignment of a score or so of turkeys which were for the great Chinaman's dinner, I naturally expressed my amazement at the Gargantuan repast that was toward, but was at once informed that only the tongues of the fowls were required. Even the Oriental ear, I should say, would find little sweetness in the song of the turkey. As for birds'-nest soup, I am sure a German would enjoy it just as much as a Chinaman, for it is excellent stuff, and if any of our own birds made their nests of the same material as the Chinese birds do, birds'-nest soup would probably not be an unknown dish with ourselves. "After eels there would be snails and frogs; . . . a Scotsman might decline them in con- templation of a haggis "; no doubt, but it seems to be overlooked by you that while a Scotsman would decline the latter two with disgust, like the rest of us, he would turn from the eels with horror. There is no other "prejudice" of the table to be compared for a moment with that felt by the humbler classes north of the Tweed towards the eel, and but few in any class in that country are altogether free from it. Why the Scots fail to appreciate such a good thing as an eel is something I could never understand. When living in Scot- land I had to cook my own eels, and that surreptitiously too. The presence of one of these fish in a house was enough to make the inmates clear out. It would be interesting to learn something about the origin of this superstition. Of the other "strange flesh" on your "index" I should like to offer a word in favour of just one—the hedgehog. This is an exquisite morsel, its only defect being that there is so little of it. Hedgehog soup is simply a dish for the gods, but unfor- tunately there are difficulties in the preparing of the hedgehog for cooking which must always militate against its popularity
for the table.—I am, Sir, &c., W. F.
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