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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Pixel, Goddess and Queen:
>  > Hullo, the list!
>>
>[snip]
>>
>>  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
>
>My German grandparents (well, ok, German and Swedish and Austrian) ate
>headcheese and blood sausage, and my grandfather used to reminisce about
>goose fat smeared on rye bread, but I don't remember any eating of any raw
>meat.
>
>The PA side of the family is in part, AFAIK, descended from some
>Hessians who came to fight and stayed (thus they are also German), and I
>don't remember any of them eating raw meat either.

Okay. My point was only that the people I know who did, were all of 
German ancestry, and then there's the fact that delicatessens were 
probably, in the 1930's, more ethnically German shops than the 
generic-charcuterie-and-accoutrements-shops that they tend to be 
today.

I looked up the Luchow's recipe for "Raw Meat Lucullus", BTW, and 
find that their German name for this dish, which is nearly identical 
to a typical presentation of Steak Tartare (basically, anchovies 
instead of capers), is "Schlemmerschnitte", which, I gather, is 
simply a word meaning "chopped meat".

While you may not have experienced it, I think it's pretty hard to 
deny that some German people (and others) did (and possibly still do) 
this. What I'm really wondering is if this was ever, at any time, a 
culture-crossing phenomenon, or regarded as an American thing.

Adamantius