Adventures in Food: The Victorians and Insect Cookery
On Sunday I watched the first episode of an excellent cooking program, Heston’s Feasts, presented by the famous chef, Heston Blumenthal. The series covers four culinary time periods to produce adventurous dishes from unusual, forgotten and innovative ingredients and recipes.
The time period for the first episode was Victorian Britain and Blumenthal used Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ as the inspiration behind his dishes. The Victorian feast started with a deceptive uniformly pink drink, composed of different layers of flavour-infused milk (cherry pie, custard, hot buttered toast, pineapple, toffee and turkey). This was followed by mock turtle soup (made from the head of a calf) and an entirely edible garden, before culminating with a giant and suggestively wobbling absinthe jelly.
The garden was particularly impressive and contained edible rocks, soil, plants and insects. As part of his research for using insects as food, Blumenthal consulted a Victorian book, ‘Why Not Eat Insects?’ by Vincent Holt. He followed this up with a visit to a famous British entomologist, Dr George McGavin.
McGavin talked to Blumenthal about edible insects and offered him a variety of insect-based foods, including fried crickets and meal worms. Blumenthal then used fried locusts and meal worms, filled with a tomato paste, as part of his edible garden. Even the apprehensive guests tried the cooked insects and seemed surprised that they were not disgusting.
You can watch the episode on the Channel 4 website and read a post-recording interview with Dr George McGavin.
If you are interested in getting a copy of ‘Why Not Eat Insects’ you can find it on Amazon.
Tags: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Entomophagy, Food, Heston Blumenthal, Victorians
[...] watching Heston Blumenthal’s Victorian Feast, I decided to get a book he referred to, ‘Why Not Eat Insects?‘ by Vincent [...]
You may like another new book about insects, published in the UK & US by Yale University Press, it’s called ‘Bugs & the Victorians’ and is by John F. McDiarmid Clark:
‘Clark highlights the role of insects in the making of modern Britain and maintains that the legacy of Victorian entomologists continues to this day.’