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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.

Following on from two earlier posts (first post, second post) I tried the three invertebrate snacks that I got from Selfridges and, using the correct binomial names (as two of the names were wrong on the packaging), here are my thoughts:

I was disappointed with the very mild curry taste of the thai green curry crickets (Acheta domesticus) which didn’t taste like thai green curry at all, more like mild curry powder, but had an inoffensive taste overall. This was an interesting species to try because it is commonly sold in pet shops as reptile/invertebrate food and will happily live on many things (including vegetable waste) making it a viable invertebrate to culture for human food.

Edible insect: chocolate covered scorpion

The chocolate covered scorpion (Mesobuthus martensii) was fairly pleasant; the crunchy texture of the scorpion went well with the chocolate, making it feel like a biscuit. There was a very subtle taste of something savoury but it was masked by the taste of the chocolate. I would eat these again and so would my girlfriend.

Edible insect: giant toasted ant

A number of my friends tried the giant toasted ants (Atta cephalotes) and none of them liked the taste or the smell. I was the only one that liked them but they do have a very strong and distinctive taste, so I can see why they didn’t get universal taste bud acclaim! I think the packet description is fairly accurate, “… similar to crispy bacon with an earthy taste”.

I had a good time trying these and I intend to pursue the topic of insects as a food in further posts. If you’re interested in reading a bit more about insects and food now, have a read of Bug Girl’s latest post on cochineal, an insect derived food colouring.

I shall add some photos to this post soon.

Earlier in December I wrote about a new range of snacks that Selfridges had started to sell, and during a Christmas trip to London I visited Selfridges to buy some. I (and some friends) will be eating them soon to provide you some more photos and to describe how they taste.

Tenebrio molitor lollypops: part of the Selfridges display of invertebrate snacks (Copyright Elizabeth Livermore)

All of the snacks were from edible, an alternative online food shop, and were a little cheaper to buy at Selfridges than from the edible website.

I checked the packaging and found that the species names did not follow the proper protocol for binomial nomenclature: all names were either entirely in lowercase or uppercase, and none were italicised. The class of the scorpion was listed incorrectly as ‘INSECTA’ when it should have been Arachnida.

From left to right: Giant toasted ants, £12.45; Thai green curry crickets, £2.44; and a chocolate covered scorpion, £4.64.

I also investigated the species names (Giant toasted ants: Atta cephalotes, Thai green curry crickets: Acheta domestica, and the chocolate covered scorpion: Buthus martensii) and from my brief searches, A. cephalotes seems correct but the other two are synonyms.

I checked A. domestica in the Orthoptera Species File and it is listed as an unjustified emendation of A. domesticus. I found an entry for Mesobuthus martensii on the UniProt Taxonomy database where it listed B. martensii as a synonym.

I guess edible are not quite as good biologists as you would hope.

Last Friday (5th December) the London Lite newspaper wrote an article on a new range of snacks being sold at Selfridges, including some quotes from people tasting them:

“If someone gave that to me for Christmas I’d run out of the room.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks, once you get past the thought of it and the funny texture.”

What were they talking about?

A range of invertebrate snacks! You get to choose from*:

Barbeque-flavoured Worm Crisps, £2.75 (Tenebrio molitor!)
Chocolate Covered Giant Ants, £4.95 (Atta laevigata)
Mopani Worms, £11.95 (Imbrasia belina)
Oven-baked Tarantula, £15.99 (Haplopelma sp.)
Scorpion Vodka, £12.95 (Buthus martensii)
Thai Green Curry Crickets, £2.55 (Acheta domestica)

I think I’ll be making a trip with my girlfriend to Selfridges over Christmas to try some. Would you try any?

I think entomophagy is quite an interesting concept/topic because I remember reading (sorry, no citation at the moment) that the energy/protein conversion of insects is fairly good compared to most farmed animals. Are they tasty enough to eat as a regular dietary component? I shall report back…

*I found another site that listed more details about what I think are the same products as I couldn’t find them on the Selfridges website.