Subject: Re: Hangtown Fry

From: [email-masked] (Elise A. Fleming)
Date: 20 Feb 1995 12:03:49 GMT

Did anyone notice the names of the foods on the posting?

"Grimalkin steaks", "Bow wow soup", "Stew ratified"?  Am I the 
only one who thinks that maybe common animals were being served?
"Greymalkin" is a literary name for cats; bow wow is for dogs;
and "rat"ified can refer to rodents.  Cat was served in lower
class pubs during the Renaissance in England and elsewhere.  There
is a recipe for roast cat in a Spanish cookery book of the 1500s
and a footnote states that cat was served, with knowledge of the
master of the house and the guests, in some upper class homes.
Might these names be euphemisms for the meat involved?

Elise/Alys

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From: Philip Hurvitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 22:47:44 -0800

The Larousse Gastronomique also contains a detail about how to tell a 
cat's skeleton from that of a rabbit by examination of the bones of the 
legs.  Assuming. of course, that you've made it to the bone.

-P.