SC - Re: my favorite dessert was horse recipe 1581

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Thomas wrote:
>Someone asked whether horsemeat was period. At least there is a recipe
>for wild horse in the German cookbook of Marx Rumpolt 1581 [see:
>http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_Rumpolt1.htm]. Gwen-Cat, Lord Ras and
>myself had some discussion about this recipe in march.


Very interesting, but would eating horsemeat not have been strictly
prohibited at this time by the Church? It was here in Iceland, probably
until the beginning of the 19th century, and in France until 1811 (I think
the ban was lifted partly because eating horsemeat had frequently saved the
lives of French soldiers during the Napoleonic wars). Anyone who ate
horsemeat here during the Middle Ages would have been excommunicated, and
treated as an outcast. Which makes me wonder: Was this not the case also in
other countries? Was the reason horseflesh wasn´t eaten not originally a
religious taboo, rather than a cultural thing?

Assuming that eating horsemeat was actually forbidden all over Europe at one
time, one has to wonder why it came to be accepted in some cultures, not in
others. Here, it probably was because destitute people gradually saw how
foolish it was not to use the only free or inexpensive source of meat
readily available to them (as I already said, Icelandic horses mostly fend
for themselves and are often virtually wild, so they don´t cost much to
raise). There are stories of people that abhorred the eating of horsemeat
but overcame their feelings when they saw that the children of their
horse-eating neighbors were thriving while their own children starved. It
took two or three generations to make horsemeat accepted by all layers of
society.

As Harriet said, it is largely a cultural thing. Children learn a lot of
prejudice from us. But they may find an animal cute or fuzzy or whatever and
still see nothing wrong with eating it. When I was a kid, I loved the cute
little calves but I also looked very much forward to their being slaughtered
(at around 3 weeks) because that meant we would get my favorite dessert,
made from their blood. And a few days ago, I took my 5-year old
granddaughter to feed the ducks at the city pond. She thought them extremely
cute but also wanted to know what they tasted like and made me promise to
cook some duck soon.

Nanna
(leaving for vacation in the kingdom of the Icelandic horse tomorrow but
very reluctant to leave this interesting hippogastronomy thread (yes, there
really is such a word))




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