In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food

by Stewart Lee Allen

  The various vegetarian cults, however, are the most egregious hairsplitters. The Buddha himself put a “don’t ask/don’t tell” clause in his ban on meat, essentially stating that believers may enjoy osso bucco every day of the week if they had no direct and immediate knowledge—preferably typed and notarized— that the meat dish was prepared specifically for them. It’s a loophole thousands of hungry Buddhists have driven through. The Tibetans used it to create a caste of Untouchable Muslim butchers, apparently reasoning that a Buddhist is simply incapable of truly understanding what goes on in the mind of a nonbeliever. Others used the precedent to semisanctify top sirloin, arguing that since a chicken and a cow have equal souls, it is better to slaughter a cow, and feed forty, than to slaughter a chicken and feed, at best, four. Pound per soul, the reasoning goes, it’s a karmic bargain. The real legal eagles are the Buddhist monks of Thailand, some of whom have decided they can eat fish because they do not kill the creature so much as “remove it from the water.”

  Perhaps the earliest example of this comes to us in a bit of dialogue from Greece around 500 B.C.

  FIRST MAN The Pythagoreans eat no living thing.

  SECOND MAN But Epicharides the Pythagorean eats dog.

  FIRST MAN Only after he’s killed it.

  Lent Egg

  Lent is the only notable Christian dietary law, a forty-day regime leading up to Easter, during which one is supposed to forgo strong food like meat and eggs and even milk. Pretty mild stuff, despite which the counterfeiting of food for Lent became a minor art form in the Middle Ages. There was fake bacon in which salmon was made into a kind of pâté laced with pureed pike fish and almond milk to replicate the pork fat. The following curiosity comes from A Noble Boke of Cookry: For a Prynch [Prince] Houssolde or Another Estately Houssolde, a fifteenth-century cookbook largely devoted to this counterfeit cuisine. The translation, done by a Mrs. Alexander Napier in 1882, leaves much of the original medieval spelling intact, as have I (with some clarifications).

  To roft egs in Lent take and blowe out the mete [meat, i.e., yolk and white] at the end of the egg and washe the shelles with warme water. Then take thick milk of almond and set it to the fyere till it be at the boiling. Then put it in a canvas and let the water run out and keep all that hangeth in the clothe and gadur it to gedure [gather it together] in a dyshe. Then put it to white sugar and colour one half with saffron and [add to flavor] poudered ginger and cinnamon. Then put some of the white [unflavored] in the eggshell and in the middle put in of the yellow to be the yolk and fill it up with white. Then sit it in the fire to roast. To fifteen eggs take a pound of almond milk and a quarter of ginger and cinnamon.

  A Well-Risen Messiah

  Jewish cooks weren’t the only ones persecuted for heretic cooking. Christian Europe actually tore itself in two because of a squabble over a cookie recipe. A wafer, actually—or would that be biscuit?—the one representing Jesus and served at the High Mass. The Orthodox wing of the church, which dominates Eastern Europe, Russia, and Greece, had always served a well-risen, chewy Son of God at their Mass. The Romans preferred a flat, crackerlike treat. In A.D. 1054 two leaders finally got together to create a unified recipe. There was plenty of room for compromise, but judging from the two men’s preconfab correspondence, the impending disaster was probably unavoidable. “Unleavened bread is dead and lifeless,” went one letter from the Orthodox side, represented by Michael Cerularius, “because it lacks leaven, which is the soul, and salt, which is the mind of the Messiah.” Nonsense, had been the reply from the Catholics’ Cardinal Humbert. “If you do not with stubborn mind stand in opposition to the plain truth,” he wrote to Cerularius, “you will have to think as we do and confess that during the meal (the Last Supper) it was unleavened bread Jesus Christ distributed.”

  The exact reasons for these different recipes are rather complex. The Orthodox Church believes that the leavening that makes bread rise represents the life force of Christ. Greek housewives still claim their breads rise by the will of Christ, in recollection of his ascension from the dead, and they lace special loaves with dried flowers from the altar. The Roman Catholic recipe comes from the matzoh bread Hebrews serve at Passover, a flat, crackerish fellow that was left unleavened because the Jews were in such a rush to get out of Egypt that there was no time to let the bread rise. Not that the Vatican was going to cop to “Jewish tendencies”—one of Humbert’s main kvetches was that Orthodox leaders were “persecuting [Catholics] by calling them Matzists” because they used matzoh bread at Mass.

  The two sides could easily have split the difference and opted for pita: delicious, easily stuffed, and only partially risen. But the negotiations didn’t really get off on the right foot. In fact, it’s not clear they ever got off at all. The Catholic Humbert, renowned for his unpleasant disposition, arrived in Istanbul after a long journey and was already furious over a letter he thought Cerularius had written condemning the Catholic wafer. Cerularius, however, had never even seen the letter, much less penned it—a Bulgarian archbishop was the author—and when some foreigner showed up at his house unannounced, shrieking about crackers and a mysterious letter, Cerularius failed to extend his fullest hospitality. It seems the Catholic Humbert had forgotten to write he was dropping by to discuss some theological disputes, and Cerularius came to the conclusion that Humbert was a spy posing as a papal ambassador. After a few days of cooling his heels in the Patriarch’s reception room, Humbert packed his bags and headed back to Rome. On his way out he declared Cerularius, who was the head of the Orthodox Church, a blasphemer and emphasized his displeasure by nailing the order of excommunication to the Orthodox Church’s holiest spot, the altar of St. Sophia in Istanbul. “Mad Michael [Cerularius], inappropriately named Patriarch,” began the letter, and that was the nicest part. Cerularius returned the favor by declaring the Romans heretics for their matzist tendencies. He also banned shared meals between Orthodox and Catholic clergy.

  This dispute split the world’s most powerful organization in half and set in motion events that would divide Europe for centuries. It was this dispute that the Crusaders cited when they defiled the Orthodox Church by setting a prostitute on Cerularius’s throne in 1204. The division between the two churches also sufficiently weakened the Christian empire to allow the Ottoman Turks to conquer Eastern Europe. This, in turn, laid the groundwork for Russian domination of Eastern Europe and set the boundaries of the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain. Even the recent Serbian conflict was affected—the Russians were reluctant to bomb Serbia because they both belonged to the Orthodox Church and shared a long history of being dressed down by self-righteous hypocrites from the West. The two churches finally made up nine-hundred-plus years later in 1965.

  For What We Are About to Receive

  We all know the routine of thanking Him before we break bread. “Oh, Lord, on this day/We Thank Ye for our daily bread… .” It’s only good manners: God created the world that we feed upon and so as good guests we have to thank him. But not everyone views the situation that way. The Sherpa people of Nepal consider the gods as the guests, and moreover ones who had better behave Themselves. “They make the explicit analogy between the offering ritual and social hospitality,” writes anthropologist Sherry Ortner. “The people are hosts, the gods their guests … who they make happy so they will want to help humanity.” These Sherpa ceremonies start off a bit like a frat party. Incense is burned, loud music is played, and beer is poured out the window so “the guys” (normally local entities) will know there’s a happening. When the supernatural guests arrive, they are invited to seat themselves in bread-and-butter sculptures that are up to seven feet high called tormas. To make sure there’re no gate-crashers, similar bread-and-butter sculptures, gyeks, are baked for the demons and then tossed out the temple door as far as they can be thrown. Then an appetizer, usually seared fat from a goat’s heart, is served to the guests, followed by a smorgasbord of tso (cooked) dishes. This party, however, is not about buttering up the deities and e
arning goodwill. The Sherpas are putting their guests under an obligation. “I am offering you the things which you eat,” their prayer goes, “now You must do whatever I demand.” Lest the gods think this thinly veiled coercion presumptuous, the Sherpas remind them it is the sacred duty of all guests not to offend their hosts, saying “that is not my order, but you have promised to work for me in the beginning of time… .”

  O, Dog

  “No one’s eating dogs anymore,” said Don Climent, head of San Francisco’s International Rescue Committee. “My Laotian clients just needed information on what’s acceptable to Americans in relationship to dogs. Besides, I think they were more interested in the squirrels.”

  Climent was explaining to me how it was that a group of dog lovers from Laos caused a national panic in the early 1980s. It started one day in August when some cops found five headless dogs lying in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. As the officers stood puzzling over the situation (now if I were a dog, where would I hide my head?), they noticed a number of Asians armed with bows and arrows wandering about. The dogs, it seemed, belonged to the Laotians in the gustatory sense. The incident appeared in the papers, and overnight Californians realized that a tribe of quasi-cannibals had invaded their state. Filipino sailors were accused of sneaking into suburbs for nocturnal dog hunts. A lady in Sacramento discovered her children’s favorite pooch hanging by its tail at a neighborhood barbecue, skinned, flayed, and waiting for the kiss of the smoking grill. A San Francisco man found his spaniel in a Chinese neighbor’s garage under suspicious circumstances. A law protecting pets was immediately proposed. Politicians fumed, immigrant groups rationalized, and a brown-and-white springer spaniel named Ringo appeared before the California Assembly wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “I’m for Loving NOT for EATING!” It all went to prove that there are two distinct species of dog in the world. There’s the Western dog, hair flying in the wind as he rushes to the rescue, a pampered, petted deity Europeans revered so much they used dog blood in early transfusions. The other kind of dog is also loved, preferably roasted, sometimes sautéed. The Chinese call them “hornless goats” or “fragrant meat,” and in some restaurants you can pick out which puppy you want cooked for dinner. Connoisseurs recommend red-haired mutts with sprightly ears and black tongues for their veal-like flesh. Dog is an honorary dish, and the Vietnamese say, “It’s going ill for the dogs,” if a legal dispute is dragging on, because it was the custom to serve roast pup at all negotiations.

  The Asian cultures are the only modern dog eaters, but the most developed canine cuisine belongs to the people of the Pacific Isles and the New World. The Aztecs had huge puppy farms in which they bred a stocky chocolate-brown pooch related to the hairless Chihuahua. “There were four hundred large and small dogs tied up in crates, some already sold, some still for sale,” wrote Spanish missionary Fray Diego Duran in the early 1500s. “And there were such piles of ordure that I was overwhelmed! When a Spaniard who was totally familiar with that region saw my amazement he asked ‘But why are you astonished, my friend? I have never seen such a meager supply of dogs as today!’ There was a tremendous shortage of them!” The Polynesians and Hawaiians had similar ranches where they raised poi dogs so toothsome that they were largely reserved for the king. The now-extinct poi was a curious creature: bug-eyed and unnaturally plump, it was a strict vegetarian that lived on nothing but sweet potatoes and soup. European visitors described them as semi-amphibious and so lacking in energy they eschewed barking in favor of listless little yelps. They were not, however, mere livestock. Dogs were often spiritually tied to a specific child, like a pet, and were breast-fed with the child at the mother’s breast (a courtesy still offered to young piglets in some areas). If a child died, his or her puppy was killed and buried alongside to guard the infant during its journey in the afterlife. If it was the dog that passed away first, its teeth became a necklace the child wore to ward off sorcery. Dinner, however, was the more common fate. The puppy was usually suffocated by blocking its mouth and nostrils for fifteen minutes. Its delicious blood was made into a pudding by adding hot stones to the liquid, but the body was roasted luau-style in a pit covered with banana leaves and earth. “Few there were of the nicest of us,” wrote Sir Joseph Banks of his time with Captain Cook’s eighteenth-century expedition “but allowed a South Sea dog was next to an English lamb.”

  The when, where, how, and why of this split in humanity’s feelings for the species is still hotly debated. Dogs are thought to have initially accepted humans as near-equals about 12,000 years ago, although some put the date as early as 125,000 years ago. The first alliance was over hunting, with humans relying on the wild dogs’ keen sense of smell, while the dogs benefited from our weapons and flexible fingers. Canine historian Mary Thurston reports that as late as 1870 Native American hunters were followed by wolves for weeks, “at a distance of half a mile or so and at night, when he [the Indian] lies down to sleep, they will also crouch at a respectful distance.” This business relationship turned personal when people adopted pups left orphaned by the packs that had begun to hang about the human tribes, a phenomenon which still occurs between Australia’s Aborigines and the wild dingo dogs that loiter near their settlements.

  The first dog worshipers were the followers of the Egyptian god Anubis who, 3,500 years ago, preached that their dog-headed deity walked humans to the afterlife. At one point they had a religious city populated by canine “priests” that humans petted to improve their karma, and archaeologists have found thousands of mummified puppies that were used in much the same way as Christians use crosses. The Romans later morphed this idea into “dog hospitals,” where the ailing were given a healing lick. The thirteenth-century Italian St. Roch became famous for a “miracle dog” that kept him alive by feeding him with stolen bread. It is still the custom during the saint’s mid-August festival to let all the village dogs into the church, where they are fed pastries.

  The stronghold of the don’t-eat-the-damn-dog contingent seems to have been in Europe, perhaps because the colder climate killed off many edible plants and made hunting essential. My personal belief is that in this era humans and dogs actually ate and slept as equals, rubbing shoulders around the campfire, just as we do now. This hunting bond was so intense that until a few hundred years ago, European hunters still ritually gave their dogs the “soul” of any stag they’d hunted together by soaking bread in the prey’s blood (thought to contain its soul), and then rewrapping it in the stag’s skin. The dogs would then again tear the animal apart and devour its “soul” while the humans held the stag’s head over the feasting pack. For some reason this relationship faded as humans headed east from Europe and into the Americas, at least as indicated by the practices of people from Asia to Mexico. But who really knows why such radically different attitudes developed? Islamic disgust for the canine species apparently formed when they conquered the Persian Zoroastrians around the eighth century. The Persians, it seems, had worshiped dogs and considered killing or eating them a crime, and as part of their cultural subjugation of the area, the Muslims took the opposite stance. The Californians, however, chose neither to demonize nor deify. Torn between the desire to be two kinds of politically correct—culturally sensitive and kind to animals—the politicians simply returned the legislation outlawing dog meat to committee for further consideration. That was in 1982. It has yet to reemerge.

  Holy Cow

  The weekly market in the coastal village of Anjuna, India, can be quite the scene. Rajasthani women peddle ten-pound silver bracelets; Nepalese merchants offer carved human skulls; English junkies pawn their tennis shoes; neo-Eastern-synthotechno -house-acid-rave-hip-hop-didgeridoo sound tracks fill the air. And there are celebrities everywhere—Julia Cow, Harrison Cow and, yes, even Keanu Reeves Cow—wandering about and mooing at anyone who fails to show respect. My beloved Nina J. and I had our own booth in Anjuna once upon a time. She peddled a soothing balm made of sandalwood. I sold delicious little gâteaus of honey and coconut.
Business was rather slow until one day a cowlebrity swooped down on our humble little stall, and in one long, lascivious lick, inhaled every cake I possessed. It also blessed Nina’s perfumes with a liberal douse of spittle. Nina and I were ecstatic, and, just to be sure everyone remembered our celebrity clientele, we built a papier-mâché cow’s head, complete with a pair of glorious golden horns. The cakes looked splendid on its foot-long hot pink cardboard tongue the next market day. But not for long: our two-legged customers were soon lapping them up as quickly (if with less drool) as our Bollywood friend had the week before.

  Indian cows live in a realm above and beyond the ordinary travails of mere mortals. Each and every one of them is said to house 330 million deities: Shiva has the nose and his sons the nostrils, while the tail belongs to Sri Hanar, the goddess of cleanliness. This extreme overcrowding means cows drip sanctity. All their products are sacred. Food cooked in butter is called pacca, and it’s karmically delicious as a result of its submersion in a cow product. Lesser foods are called kacca. Some Hindus refuse to eat cauliflower because the Hindi word for it, gobi, is heretically close to that of cow, gopa. High-born Hindus returning from life abroad are often obliged to eat a pellet made of butter, yogurt, and urine, all bound up nicely with a bit of dung, to repurify themselves after life among the heathens.

  Needless to say, no dutiful Hindu would think of eating the beast. It’s a food taboo that has been widely criticized in the West; how can a country where millions of people die every year from malnutrition, wails the Texas Cattle Rearing Association, afford “cow retirement” homes so a useless animal can end its days in peace? What’s so special about a goddamn cow? The religious response is simple enough. In Hindu theosophy, it takes eighty-six reincarnations for a soul to climb up from a devil to a cow, but only one to leap the gap separating cattle from humankind. Hence, that steak on your dinner plate might have contained the soul of your newborn child. Historians prefer the idea that Hindu religious leaders became cow lovers two thousand years ago to prove that they were more compassionate than those upstart Buddhists. The ecological defense is that the cow’s enormously complicated digestive system, comprising four stomachs, can turn the most wretched of weeds into milk, people food that is both delicious and nutritious. Its dung, dried and molded into patties, provides crucial fuel in the deforested continent. Its piss, chilled, has the same tart flavors associated with Chablis. To wantonly murder such a resource would be ludicrous. Rather, it is the West’s steak fetish that is illogical, because the twenty-two pounds of grain needed to produce one pound of beef diverts human food resources to feed livestock.