[Sca-cooks] An Tir May Crown

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On May 14, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:

> My Mongolian friend Kerjie and I keep talking about how if we could  
> get
> USDA approved horsemeat, we'd give it a shot. Much to the dismay of
> other equestriennes ;). But then Kerjies persona is supposed to eat
> marmots too ;)
>
> Hrm. Now that I think on it, do we have any documented recipes for
> horsemeat? I'm sure they ate it, there are still chevaline butchers in
> france (I saw a sign for one with the same last name as me :)) but I
> don't recall any recipes in any of the sources?
>
> -_AM

I don't have any primary documentation, but the claim has been made  
that horse-eating in England was discouraged after the Norman  
conquest, probably partly because an equestrian aristocracy found it  
shocking, and because claims were made that the practice was  
apparently part of pre-Christian worship. The impression I get is  
that Norman knights thought it an abomination and used the spread off  
Christianity and the discouraging of paganism as a convenient excuse.  
This probably an over-simplification, though, and not something I can  
prove.

As I recall, Yorkshire was one of the last places in England to  
accept Christianity more or less fully, and by sheer coincidence, one  
derogatory term for a Yorkshireman still used in England until fairly  
recently is "kicker" or "kicker-eater", supposedly a reference to  
horsemeat consumption.

I think there's a little bit more about this in Schwabe's  
"Unmentionable Cuisine".

Adamantius



"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04