by Victoria Aurelia Ovensa on Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:49 am
Actually, it's often the poor folks who eat anything and everything. "Waste not, want not". Any part of an animal that's even vaguely edible will be made palateable and eaten. Just look at any traditional Chinese cookbook and you will find recipes using various animals' tails, feet, innards, heads, genitalia, almost anything you can think of. Look at even British foods such as blood pudding and haggis, or such charming dishes as "head-cheese" or fried pork rinds. All such dishes developed out of the necessity of the poor people to use as much of the animal as possible for their own nourishment. They could not afford to waste anything.
Novelty foods from other cultures or even other classes would be adopted with glee by the aristocracy, either out of boredom, curiosity or simply for the "shock" value of it all (in their eyes, of course). But, strangely enough, it's usually the upper classes who have the most conservative cuisine in terms of variety, albeit the most extravagant in terms of volume and presentation.
Victoria Aurelia Ovensa
Cave ab homine unius libri...