Consuming Interest
Porpoise Chef
By RAYMOND POSTGATE
E. F. BENSON, in the most amusing of all Vic- torian memoirs, As We Were, writes about a Lady Dorothy Nevill, who had been born in the reign of George IV, and whose conversation was entrancing in its pre-Victorian oddity: She told me once how she used to make ex- periments in food. There were a great many things that made good victuals which were sadly neglected. 'Guinea-pig,' she said, 'there's a tasty dish for you, but it was always a job to make your cook do it. They want bakin' same as the gipsies serve the hedgehogs. I tried eatin' donkey too, but I had to stop that, for it made me stink.'
1 only know of one other occasion on which donkey was served. Escoffier produced a menu for the Café Voisin on the ninety-ninth day of the siege of Paris in 1870, and the hors d'oeuvre included Stuffed Donkey's Head. The Paris Zoo had been raided, and there were also offered Jugged Kangaroo, Leg of Wolf and Camel a l'Anglaise, one of the roasts was 'Cat surrounded by Rats.' There is no record of what the Donkey's Head tasted like.
Before the war I belonged to a club which once ate a dinner provided from the London Zoo. We were disappointed of a promised snake soup (not enough middle-sized snakes needed thinning out), but we had bison's heart and silverside of nylghau. Both of them tasted like reindeer, which itself tastes like rather dull beef.
Mostly, these out-of-the-way meats are in the end comparable to the out-of-the-way wines which the wine merchants and wine critics are always discovering. These arc undoubtedly in- teresting. One tastes them and approves; one agrees with the importers that it is monstrously unfair that they have been disregarded just be- cause they don't come from France or Germany; one may even order some. But after a while, to one's surprise, one finds one has quietly gone back to drinking claret and hock, just as before.
Swan, for example; I have eaten swan, and cooked it, too, more than once. It has a taste midway between goose and beef, and a tendency to toughness. Its main defect is that there is so much of it; a very large family is needed to eat a roast swan without getting tired of it. True, it can be made delicious by partly stewing it in malmsey, with herbs, cinnamon, onions and fungi, stripping it from the bones, and finishing it off in a large raised pie, as was done for me once by the Cumberland Hotel; even so, the ex- quisiteness of the taste is largely due to the malmsey.
Perhaps more could be said for porpoise. I am the best—in fact, the only—porpoise chef in England. It should be jugged rather like hare—indeed, exactly like hare—which it greatly resembles in texture and taste. Remember, though, that no blubber whatever must be allowed to get in, or the taste will be ruined. Nor should you render the blubber down, as my wife economically tried to do. The smell was appalling, like an igloo at the end of the six months' night.
Not long ago I was at a tasting of vacuum- packed bacon. Vacuum-packing is likely to spread, because it is so convenient for the handlers. I am sorry, therefore, to report that it is not a good idea. Firstly, the bacon is more expensive; secondly, it doesn't taste so good. The reason for this latter is that the meat Is sliced at once and the natural evaporation which occurs when a side of bacon is hung up to mature is stopped, except for any sweating that may occur within the pack. 'All natural juices are retained,' said the propagandist. But they should not be. The rashers come out damp and flabby, and their taste is faint and faded. I don't see how this can be remedied; it would seem to be an inherent fault.
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