The Opelousas courier., 1891-09-19
HORSE FLESH FOR FOOD.
HlPPoFHAGY rs PRAcTTcED IN
VARIOUS PLACES.
Convert Horse Flesh Into
a saVory Dish-Eating Equine
Meat in South America.

Meat in South America.
AIRED Trumble says in the Epoch that
his first impression of horse flesh as an
article OF diet was that it would have
suffered no harm had it been fatter. 1t is
OF a darker color than beef, and of a
tougher hbre. coming nearer to game in
quality. In fact, at a dinner given by
an enthusiastic hippophogist in London,
at which all the meats were horse of var
1ous dressings, / sampled it as veuisou
and as bear-meat, and found the decep-
ton plausible; and I have been credibly
Informed that at many Paris restaurants,
horse flesh is actually served as venison;
SO my experience with it may be even
wider than am aware.
1t is a curious fact, by the way, that
the French, who cannot cook a real beef
steak to the Anglo-saxon palate, can
convert the horse into a sayory dish.
The opportunity for deception puts their
culinary art upon its mettle, I suppose,
just as if you give them the primest
gr~een-turtle out of the West Indies, they
will spoil it in the pot, while from a
calf's head, some veal scraps and the
stock kettle, they will make you a mock
turtle soup to delude anyone but a Lon
don alderman.
Every day, at early morning, noon and
evening, in Paris, you will see poor peo-
pie gathering at certain shabby cookshops
in the quarters of Belleville, Montmartre,
the Batignolles and others of the sections
outside the Boulevards, where poverty
houses thickest each armed with a tin
pail, a pitcher or something else calcu-
lated to carry liquid. These receptacles
are duly filed with thin but savory broth,
ladled from huge, steaming cauldrons,
and which costs only a cent or two a
quart. | have drunk this bouillon, and
found it nourishing and good. 1t is
made OF the bones and scraps of horse
meat after the choicer pieces are sold to
the cheap restaurants, and the very es-
senee and marrow of the meat are in it,
for the boiling is kept up until the bones
are fairly honeycombed and the meat re.
dueed to shreds like bits of Irvine. This
broth provides the principal animal
nourishment for the average laborer in
the gay city. He adds to it a few yegeta-
bles, thickens it with bread, and it, hav-
ing as the cookbook might say, been
seasoned to ~taste," makes a palatable
and hearty meal.
Once upon a time, before the Argen-
tine was gridironed with railroads, a lit
tie party of us set off in the saddle to
cross the Pampas to the fertile planta-
lions of Bolivia. Coming to the end of
a long days %canter, we also came upon a
camp of curious half savages of whom
VT had heard, but whom |, at least, had
never made acquaintance before. A
couple of them were carving yeritable
chunks out of the carcass of a horse,
whose hide was pegged out on the grass
to dry. These great morsels of meat,
half roasted, without salt, in the embers
of a fire of tWigs and turf, constituted
the feast to which the Guaehos welcomed
us. It was hearty eating, though the
cookery could not compare with thai of
Paris, and it was the only meat our rude
hosts knew. They lived by the horse and
off the horse as well as on his back, His
hide went to the traders to clothe them,
and his flesh went into their bodies to
render them worth clothing; and no one
who has seen them running down their
game, with their long lariats tipped with
leaden balls. will doubt that it was
healthy feeding, however deficient in
epicurean charm.
/ do not wish to be understood as dis
daining the roast beef of Old England,
which, as we all know, mostly ome
from the United States nowadays: nor
even as preferring the product Of the
stall to the product of the pasture; but
I can affirm, with a good conscience to-
wards my digestion, that there are less
aEE dishes served at nobler boards
Inan tnosohieh nourished US at The
Honest Man. As for ot.~-aayo.- doth NOT
our old friend Brillat- savaria ten a~-ss,t
is all a matter of the cook and the appe.
tite2'