Smyrna times. [volume] (Smyrna, Del.) 1854-1987, 1933-10-18
COOK BOOKS IN
ESKIMO STYLE
Modern Recipes In Green
land To Inject Novelty
Into Diet
MENACES DIGESTION

Observation-Disclosures and fin
icky appetites are probably in store
for Greenland Eskimos. Late news
dispatches from Copenhagen state
that cook book of $50 recipes has
been compiled to inject novelty into
the simple Eskimo diet. The vol
ume will be translated into the ma
tive Greenland dialect.
'Igloo cookery presents few prob
lems," according to a bulletin from
the National Geographic society.
''The Eskimo wife has never known
the strivings of her white sister to
excel as a fancy cook Her hus-
band has never RECALLED her with
tales of the pies his mother used
to bake, for he has never tasted
pastry, or candy Of any sort in his
life. Meat is his almost unvarying
food. The meat of the polar bear,
seal, walrus, caribou, white whale
narwhal, and musk oxen, are all pal
atable to him.
Simple Equipment.
THE average Eskimo bride start
ing housekeeping in new igloo
needs only four things in the way
of furnishings: a meat knife, lamp,
cooking pot, and sewing kit. The
blubber burning lamp, which also
serves as a stove, is usually near
the entrance to the hut. Sus-
pended from the ceiling above it
hangs a large sOapstone cooking pot
from which comes the aroma Of
boiling seal meat. AT the sound
of the sleds returning from the
days hunting expedition, the Es-
kimo wife, crouching over the stove,
stirs the pot of simmering seal
meat for her husbands supper.
Dropping in for an evening meal
with an Eskimo family. one would
see old and young squatted on their
knees, and each ready with a knife.
Each member of the group takes a
piece of juicy, cooked seal or wal
rus meat in his left hand, shoyes it
into his mouth, and seizes a strip
between his teeth. With a deft
stroke of the knife, he cuts off
mouthful, just at the lips often
times liver and blubber are held
in each hand. and eaten alternately.
The meat is washed down with
draughts of ice-eold water.
No Fruit or Vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables are I'M
known items in the diet of the Es-
kimo. When the meat supply is
exhausted, the Greenland Eskimos
gather rockwell and kelp, and dig
the bark of willow bush out of the
frozen soil. This is cooked into a
jelly in the soapstone pot. This
food, however. is not pleasing to the
Eskimo palate. and is eaten only
to stave off starvation when more
desirable food is understandable. The
nearest approach to ordinary vege-
table matter consumed by the Eski-
mo is the semi-digesteG moss found /
in the stomachs of the caribou. This
becomes the Eskimo's /.
green's
Fish eaten either boiled or raw,
offer variety to the menu. CLANS
are also included In the seafood /
dishes of the Greenland Eskimo. He I
obtains them via the stomach of
some freshly killed walrus who has /
just Toasted upon the mollusks.
Stuffed head of walrus is undoubt-
edly the subject of at least one of
the new recipes designed for the I
They are fond of the
head, and could possibly
cultivate a taste for an elaborate
of it.
''In the Greenland spring, the
1oyekie. or little aux, appears. This
means another dietary change for
the natives. Through the summer
hundreds of these birds are netted
and stored for food during the long
winter months. The eggs of the
elder duck, the brant goose, and the
gull are the object of an intense
search near the end of June each
year. The family egg supply for
the coming winter is stored in stone
caches where the eggs become
chilled first, and then frozen. They
remain in this condition until eaten
N the winter. Not all of the eggs
collected are stored. however, for
he Eskimo wife prepares an egg
sausage, sometimes using as many
rs 300 eggs to one sausage. The
eggs are broken and poured into a
washed seal intestine, and in this
state are eaten from time to time
throughout the winter"