[Sca-cooks] OOP? Raw meat...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

I can see how magnificent my timing is, with all the mad cow 
discussion, but I happened to be reading Hammett's "The Thin Man", 
and there was a reference in it that got me thinking...

For those who've never read this or seen the movie, it's about a 
wealthy married couple, the male half of which has retired from his 
job as an agency detective (something like a Pinkerton agent, I 
guess), to manage his wife's railroad and mining interests. He's more 
or less forced by circumstances to investigate several murders, and 
also seems intent on drinking himself to death along the way, but 
then this was published the year Prohibition ended, so maybe that's 
not so surprising.

Anyway, at one point Nick and Nora Charles are a bit peckish late at 
night when their hotel kitchen is closed, and telephone an all-night 
delicatessen for sandwiches and coffee. Nora orders a chopped raw 
beef sandwich with lots of onion. (I _think_ the line appears in the 
movie, too.)

Now, for those of us who have never eaten steak tartare, and who have 
nightmares about sashimi and erroneously refer to it as sushi, this 
might come as a bit of a shock, but perhaps to food-types like us, 
more especially because, as far as I know, there's not a huge 
well-known tradition of eating raw meat, except for things like... 
let's see... you got yer steak tartare, you got carpaccio (invented 
by an American in Europe in the 20th century), you've got Korean and 
Japanese versions of beef sashimi, raw kibbe (lamb) in places like 
Lebanon, various tales of hunters eating deer and boar livers raw, in 
thin slices on bread, and one raw beef recipe that seems pretty close 
to steak tartare, but named differently, on the menu of Luchow's 
German restaurant in 1950's New York. I think Ethiopians have been 
known to eat raw beef.

As far as I know, that's pretty much it, but the Raw Beef Lucullus at 
Luchow's (pronounced "LOO-khov's", BTW) is probably the closest to 
the tradition of Nora Charles' 1933 raw beef sandwich. And if Hammett 
is to be believed, this is something you could get at a New York City 
deli (back when delicatessens were primarily German gourmet-food 
shops, I suspect) at 3AM. I've also heard of people (admittedly, 
mostly of German ancestry) speaking of eating raw, chopped meat 
(often pork, too!).

So the question now becomes, how much of a tradition in the Western 
World, outside of the wealthy  eating Steak Tartare at The Four 
Seasons or some such, existed? Does anybody remember a parent or 
grandparent, possibly one who would sneer at fancy presentations with 
egg yolks and capers, grossing out the kids by eating raw meat on rye 
with maybe a few pickles?

I'm just wondering if perhaps this kind of thing was more widespread 
fifty years ago than we'd like to believe now, or have been told. 
Comments? Info?

Adamantius