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Show ODD THINGS TO EAT. Strange Delicacies Which Have Been Served to Famous Gourmets. (London Globe.) The meat of one man is notoriously the poison of another, an axiom that should lie borne in mind during the perusal of this article, for there are mentioned in it ? divers articles of diet as strange as the Helladotherium steaks, that it was sug-' sug-' gested when Sir Henry Johnston's dis- ;' covery of a stranee animal was first I moted, might yet figure upon our dining room tables, which some worthy gour-! gour-! mets may consider, and rightly so, could l only be regarded as "dainties' by diners possessing distinctly depraved tastes. : j Bearing this axiom in mind, the delicacies . daily billed by a certain Frenchman run- ii ning a restaurant in New Orleans, which Ej I consisted of alligator soup, rattlesnake 3 stew, and baked shark, ought not per- s i haps to .be pilloried as an example of i culinary bad taste, for the items specified jj may to connoisseurs be extremely tooth- 1 some, though some diners in their fgno- ;v ranee would look forward to a dinner of l jaguar steak, such as was partaken ot. E by the late Frank Buckland, or the insect I diet proposed by M. Dagin, with far less Is apprehension than a meal comprising any U of the aforementioned "dainties." Apro-pos Apro-pos of insects, cockroach soup is said by the real connoisseur to be nreferable to bisque: coupling this fact with the general rise in the price of foodstuffs, " we can only suppose that the patriotic wish of all Britons to render this country self-supporting will lead them to seize i; the obvious opportunity of converting to ft culinary purposes the most prolific class '. of livestock reared in this country. It may be mentioned that M. Dagin's recipe I for this delicious and doubtless nutrf- ' l tlous plat is simplicity itself: "Pound your, cockroaches in a mortar; put in a t stock "nd PO"r boll,ns wate" or beef P About three years ago the wayfarer in Leadenhall market had his steps inv.lui" -tartly arrested by the appearance of we2 f four, Sib?rian bears hanging" by T the heels, and dead-a very unusual light I l010?' , !Bear hams have been a I recognized dainty for some time nast in I Great Britain, but the other choice cut" I fh binLnofaVe but,J Tarely f'rod in Brit! I nossesifn tll th.e lucky individuals L possessing the requisite d gestion tn tn n0oVhten Jhint Pi-fferring thf home-grown taJik t?.lhe,best specimens of bear- the taste of the latter, though inferior totha? of the succulent pig, is said toVsembll it. e are unable to say whet W it I? r n account of the entente CoicPale evilt-nS ioevraenmFnlnce and that brain in! joys a much greater popularity in Paria than in London, but Tt :s an undVibtifl fact that the Parisian epicure reearris the approach of the close season for ?n HH,nce br ll, considered to be game 1th considerable more forebodimr th?n Uis. London confrere t i. ln" ner given a few years' since by Mme, Emma-Eames at the Hotel Marie Antoinette Antoin-ette In New York. When the fruit nss ' about to be served a waiter placed on the table a silver salver bearing what . appeared to be a chocolate representation of the juvenile deity in whose honor the feast was held. Luckily, however, before any adventurous guest plunged a fork into the supposed dainty it was recognized recog-nized that the ambassador of Cupid was very much alive, and was. indeed, a living liv-ing pickaninny. Those present win, were disappointed of their sweet had their reward, re-ward, for M. Jean de Reszke, who was present, sang a French lullaby, after which the "dish-' wa; removed. A meaile meal hors d'oeuvre mid n nickanirny dish of deceit are comparatively easy to provide, but a luncheon such as was given to twelve members of a certain London club about the second week in May, 1900. Is a repast of a lifetime, and one most difficult to reproduco. . K'JnsaroD tails a 1'Australian, though a novelty to many, are not so to all, since a certain merchant of Leadenhall, recognizing that they furnished, fur-nished, a gelatinous soup containing more nourishment than either ox tail or turtle, imported several thousands, The saddle of reindeer that followed, with its peculiar pe-culiar but natural and delicious salty flavor, was pronounced by epicures present pres-ent to be superior to any other form of j venison. The gathering, however, met to i eat neither kangaroo nor reindeer, though both dishes were welcomed. That which . they had come to discuss consisted of an j emu's egg omelet presented by one of the members. With great solemnity and care, for the shell was required for the purpose of being mounted in silver, and used as a cup, one end was sawed off, 1 and the contents, which weighed a couple of pounds, were handed over to the club , chef to exercise his art on. Other , savories, including crocodile eggs and ul-ligator ul-ligator eggs, were to be found on the adjacent ad-jacent sideboard, but the plat du jour was undoubtedly the omelet, which, to most tastes, would be distinctly preferable prefer-able to a similar confection as made in Africa, in which the ingredients are i white ants or. termites beaten up with j eggs. Adventurous individuals who have tasted the latter dainty assert that it is I not unsavory. 1 Culinary Jokes. In days of yore practical culinary jokes were frequently practiced at the tables of the wealthy; on one festive occasion a stag made in paste, but hollow and transfixed with a broad arrow, was filled with wine, which gushed forth when the arrow was withdrawn, to the amazement of the guest who undertook the task. A ship of paste at one end of the table discharged dis-charged a broadside at a castle of paste placed at the other on the same occasion. and finally the gathering dispersed in confusion con-fusion when the lid of one large pasty was removed and out jumped a number of healthy frogs, while from another pie several live birds flew out and promptly snuffed, out the candles.. Today the culinary cu-linary practical joke is not frequently practiced, but a few years ago at a dinner party given by Professor Elihu Thompson at Philadelphia, the electrician revived it scientifically with the aid of a small concealed con-cealed bottle of liquid air. He thoroughly mystified his puests. who were not cognizant cog-nizant of the properties of the fluid, and who could not understand how the piping hot soup was instantaneously converted into a block of ice in the tureen, the seemingly boiling salmon became fossilized, fossil-ized, and the wine refused to run out of the bottles. The professor finally enlightened en-lightened his friends -with regard to the trick he had practiced upon them, and notwithstanding the fact that a frozen dinner was seriously proposed on another occasion, in which frozen boned ehicken served with tomatoes filled with shaved ice figured, he had pity upon their digestions diges-tions and regaled them with food at a comfortable temperature. ft is alleged that Celestial gourmets esteem es-teem young mice dipped in a pot of honey -f-ftiinty that cannot be eclipsed, though did not figure on the menu -of that OeTUHiial banquet given in New York last February. That meal included chickens that had been fed exclusively on pineapples pine-apples and mushrooms and lotus lily seed soup. To western diners the mice idea approaches the horrible, but so probably to the people of China would appear tros eating, in which, it is asserted. New York J during the season from about the 1st of June to the end of August stands preeminent. pre-eminent. It is a long way ahead of Paris so far as quantity is concerned. If this sort of thing goes on and some continental bon vivant.s are even now extolling ex-tolling the locust as a delicate article of diet Great Britain will have to look to her laurels. That she is already going into tiaining for that peculiar species of vegetable is proved by the fact that as far back as 1S99 the nutritious and wholesome whole-some properties of cooked nettle shoots were recognized by a West End vegetable dealer, who arranged for a regular supply sup-ply of the same upon finding that there existed a ready sdle for his wares, while a gentleman of Bognor when eating a sandwich on the Sussex downs last year rMsrovcred that the leaves of the tiny shoots of the beech tree made a most succulent salad. Some curious and even beautiful pictures, pic-tures, showing what may be done with the camera aiUr vlark, accompany Arthur Ar-thur Hewitt's article called "When the Lamps are Lighted," in the March magazine number of the Onlook. In one is presented a view of the New York City hall, taken at 6:30 in winter, with a five-minute exposure; the square appears absolutely deserted, although al-though in point of fact hundreds of people were passing through it while the photograph was being taken. In pictures of the famous Flatiron building build-ing and the Brooklyn bridge, the trolley trol-ley ca- - nppear only as a long line of light, while a motor car which passed -hile the exposure of the first , was being made, shows only as a spider-thread line. |