chiding the same practice in others. Northern Chinese satirize southern Chinese in sayings like: ‘They eat anything with legs but tables, and everything that flies, with or without wings.’ Pots calling kettles whatever?
Ben Johnson (1573-1637) satirized human omnivores in his Volpone:
The head of parrots, tongues of nightingales,
The brains of peacocks, and of ostriches,
Shall be our food; and could we get the phoenix,
Though nature lost her kind, she were our dish.
It’s true that we humans are masterful omnivores. That status calls to mind an historical menu that gives substance to Johnson’s poetry, although it satirized a period of actual starvation and necessity, rather than mere human perversity. It exemplifies a genuine albeit sad historical crazy feast.
During persistent French battle sieges in the winter of 1870, starving Parisians first slaughtered their horses for food; next sold and butchered their zoo animals (there was nothing to feed them anyway); and then moved on to devour the fish in the ornamental pools of the Tuileries. Finally, only bizarre comestibles were left to assuage their hunger. Being French, a few citizens celebrated that terrible situation with – you guessed it – a perversely crazy feast. On December 4, the journal Les Nouvelles announced the following menu for a ‘grand feast’ to be attended by the mayor and select Parisian notables:
Horsemeat consommé with millet
Brochettes of dog livers à la maître d’Hotel
Minced cat meat with mayonnaise
Shoulder roast of dog in tomato sauce
Cat stew with mushrooms
Dog cutlets with peas
Rat salamis à la Robert
Roast Leg of dog flanked by rat
Wild escarole salad
Sautéed begonias
Plum pudding with horse marrow sauce
Desserts and wine.
Generated by genuine hunger, this ‘crazy’ menu satirized the traditional French preoccupation with food. No recommendation for emulation is suggested (see Colin Clair, 166-7, menu translation by the author).
Lest we think such crazy feast menus occurred only historically or in foreign societies, think again. The New York Entomological Society celebrated its 100th Anniversary in 1992, at the Explorers Club in New York. The menu was as exotic as some of the guests. Club members were served starters featuring crickets and larvae to stimulate the appetite. They moved on to feast on mealy worm ghanouj, waxworm fritters in plum sauce, cricket and vegetable tempura, roasted Australian grubs with roast beef, and chocolate cricket torte as dessert. And they weren’t even starving! One wonders what bestial venom they chose to drink. At least their menu was cosmopolitan.
Since commensality has atavistic roots grounded in hunting, gathering and sharing adaptations, eating together has been often transformed into a symbolic sacrament, a metaphor for religious rituals of sharing or thanksgiving. Important High Holiday meals often feature vocalized sacred liturgy while serving dishes or ingredients with symbolic meaning. Most religious holiday feasts include symbolic dishes such as bitter herbs, turkeys, figgy puddings, special ornamental breads, certain drinks from ancestral recipes and so on.
From the outré dishes and wild extravagances already noted, you might already have gained a better understanding of other factors that can render feasts crazy. Normal feasts are meant to send positive and unambiguous social signals to guests; however, if these signals are poorly conceived, misunderstood or abrogated, crazy feasts result. Thus, in spite of good intentions, some of the exemplary feasts presented in this book surpass cultural norms in scope, purpose or unanticipated results. In short, they became crazy in one or another way through behaviors such as bad taste, cross-cultural contempt, or simply through profound ignorance, or a soupçon of chance.
Enough history! We more or less defined ‘feast’ before, and now should summarily define what is meant by the word crazy in Crazy Feasts. Crazy here does not refer to its primary meaning of insane or mentally unsound, but rather to its secondary and more informal meanings as impractical, over-enthusiastic or over-excited. This informal popular sense of crazy (commemorated in jazz slang as ‘like crazy, man’) designates that which departs greatly from normal proportion or moderation. Behaviors that depart from cultural norms typically suggest intentional satire, being immoderate, or purposefully abrogating societal rules.
The feasts described in Crazy Feasts are exemplary of different historical periods and types of craziness. In each case, a brief historical description introduces the cultural context of the feast, and recipes from the era are appended for consideration. Some feasts were genuinely historical, but presented with perhaps a dash of interpretation. Others were selected from literature, and some are only imagined, but based on enough actual history to smack of veracity. In each scenario, the level of historicity or fiction is stated. Should you, dear readers, decide to host a crazy feast, the included recipes can be used, or others can be chosen from cookbooks and the internet. I once found an obscure eleventh century Arabic recipe I needed for a novel through Google, and was introduced to an entire cadre of food history buffs who translate obscure historical recipes from dead or semi-dead languages. They gladdened my heart, mind, and several subsequent menus.
By the by, if you use fresh citrus fruits, now is a good time to start saving and drying their peelings. You will see how many recipes, especially from past centuries, use citrus flavors in their dishes. Regularly dried citrus peel kept in closed containers adds flavor to everything from rice to meat and fish. It can be used to enhance teas, olives and pickles. Less known ingredients are noted and appropriate substitutions are suggested in recipes when necessary.
If you plan a crazy feast, emphasize craziness in clever ways which don’t require a huge outlay of resources – unless you’re a rock star or CEO. Use your own imagination to satirize or celebrate your life and time. The essential rule is: do not be timid. Remember, you have a unique opportunity for experimentation and every excuse in the world to embrace the unusual. Fashion be damned, and opt for exuberant fun! This does not mean that good taste is irrelevant, but rather that its boundaries can be explored, stretched or satirized.
For now, bon appétit, and laissez les bons temps rouler! But also remember Dorothy Parker’s wry reminder from her The Flaw in Paganism:
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
But alas, we never do.
(online Dorothy Parker Citation)
2. ANOTHER ROMAN HOLIDAY: TRIMALCHIO’S FEAST
In spite of humble origins, Roman cuisine became enormously elaborate through time. A history of trade and conquests stimulated the use of increasingly varied ingredients, and wealthy hosts became increasingly addicted to sponsoring sumptuous feasts with unusual entertainments. These feasts, quite naturally, were prepared and served by small armies of servants and slaves. By the imperial Roman period, competition among feast-givers was the rule not the exception, and political and military careers were known to hang in the balance between banqueting successes and failures. Much depended upon a
