What makes a food a delicacy in one culture yet meets firm refusal from others? In Britain, we can be pretty squeamish around a lot of foods happily eaten elsewhere on the globe. And it’s not always entirely rational. Why, for instance, would we happily eat cows, pigs and sheep, but not horses? You’ll find rabbit on restaurant menus, but not guinea pigs. And why do we eat crabs and clams but snails are rarely on offer?
Offal is another example. Liver has fallen out of fashion as a ‘cook at home’ meat, but steak and kidney pies are still relatively popular and viewed as a bit of a British classic. However, when have you ever seen heart or brains on a pub menu? Yet, across the rest of Europe, it’s frequently found in local restaurants. Take andouillette from Lyon, eastern France: a sausage made from slow-cooked, seasoned pork intestines, well known for its aroma of, well, pork intestines. Tete de veau, from the same region, literally translates as veal’s head. Oreja a la plancha, meanwhile, is ‘grilled ear’ – usually pigs’ – popular in Madrid.
According to Fuchsia Dunlop, a food writer who specialises in Chinese cuisine, one of the main barriers to foreigners enjoying traditional Chinese dishes is a lack of appreciation of the different textures that the Chinese tend to love: “The slimy, slithery, bouncy and rubbery; the wet crispness of gristle; the brisk snappiness of goose intestines; the sticky voluptuousness of that reconstituted dried sea cucumber.”
She has a point; how did reading that sentence make you feel?
And yet we are delighted with the aroma and flavour of blue cheese, the texture of wobbly nursery puddings like jelly and custard, and chewy, confrontationally flavoured sweets. We also celebrate ‘nose to tail’ eating, eschewing food waste, but how many of us actually live this ideal?
The animals (or their parts) chosen for the Bushtucker Trials on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here are based around this idea of alien textures, creatures we’re stereotypically fearful of, plus body parts that tend to make us feel queasy. Thus eyeballs, insects and scrotums have the desired effect on both the audience and the contestants. It should be noted that these are often eaten raw on the show, you’d likely find them cooked elsewhere.
The Good Food team will rarely turn down a gastronomic dish of interest; in fact we actively choose them. How else do we educate ourselves?
Find out what our Food Team ate on their holidays…
“I saw insect skewers for sale in Koh Samui, and thought ‘When in Thailand…’ They were a combination of things with wings, like crickets, and rather juicy grubs with just a little seasoning. The bugs were crunchy and nutty; the grubs were creamy and, from memory, tasted a bit like over-ripe gorgonzola. The worst thing was the wings and insect legs got stuck in my teeth.” – Keith Kendrick, editor – Watch the video
“I ate chicken feet and cow’s tongue a couple of years ago when I was in China. I wasn’t sure about the mouthfeel with the chicken’s feet, but the black bean paste and superb soy sauce gave a real depth of flavour. The cow’s tongue was very good!” – Kaian Mason, content and nutrition intern
“Fermented shark in Iceland. They ferment the flesh for months then hang to dry to make it edible (otherwise it’s toxic). The smell is pure ammonia. You have it in tiny pieces with a shot of brennevin (‘black death’) Icelandic schnapps. I needed two shots to get it down.” – Janine Ratcliffe, deputy magazines editor
“We ordered a set menu at a yakiniku bar in Japan that included standard wagyu cuts but also had a course of organ meats, which featured aorta, heart and tongue. My husband would NOT try the aorta but I thought at least one of us should, so as to not be rude! Texturally it was very rubbery, and I didn’t find it very flavourful either. The beef tongue was the best meat I had there though!” – Sarah Nittinger, content and production manager
“My favourite childhood dish, and a delicacy in the region of Germany where I grew up, was stuffed pig’s stomach – known as saumagen.” – Zazie Atkinson, multimedia sub editor
“Ducks’ tongues. For some reason a slice of ox tongue feels fine, but a bowl of whole tongues seems an entirely different thing…” – Anna Glover, head of Food Group video
“I chose something called milt from the specials board in a Japanese restaurant in London, as I thought I’d try something I’d never had before. The waiter did ask if I knew what it was, so I lied and said yes. It was flavoured with yuzu and tasted OK, a little bland and I wasn’t sure about the texture. Then I googled it: the male genitalia of fish when they contain sperm, used as food.” – Samuel Goldsmith, senior food editor and podcast editor
“I was served a pint of tiny snails as a tapas to go with my drink in a Jerez bar. I took it as a challenge (I’m sure that was the barman’s intention!), but couldn’t manage the whole pint.” – Emma Hartfield, health editor
More foodie travel guides…
Top 8 foods to try in Chiang Mai
Tokyo travel: the facts
Top 10 foodie things to try in Paris
Top 10 foodie things to try in New York
Top 10 foodie things to try in Rome
The top foods to try in Lisbon
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