[Sca-cooks] Late-period Caribbean food (was Asking a favor of Phlip]

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

On 8 Sep 2003, at 9:48, Dan Phelps wrote:

> Was written:

> > In the Windward Islands, which are Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica,
> > there is what they call manatee, a strange kind of fish, if one can call
> > "fish" an animal which bears live young, and has teats, and milk which it raises them
> > on, and grazes on grass in the field, though normally it lives in water,
> > and because of that, they eat it as fish, although when I ate some in Santo
> > Domingo on a Friday, I almost had scruples, not so much because of what I have
> > said, but because in color and flavor they resembled slices of veal from
> > the haunch, the slices of this fish; it is as big as a pike.
> >
> Is there any further information regards the cooking and eating of the "sea cow"
> in period either in the New World or the now extinct variety which lived in the
> Indian Ocean?  I have been told that manatee is still or until recently was
> ocasionally eaten in Cuba in rural areas.

The excerpt I quoted was the entirety of what Fr. Acosta had to say about 
manatees.  I don't know what information might be available in other sources.


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net