Curious menus of world history: donkey's head with elephant soup

Raclette or fondue? This Gretchen question did not turn up at Christmas 1870 in the Parisian "Café Voisin". Instead, there was stuffed donkey's head and elephant soup as an appetizer, then: roast camel, bear chop, kangaroo ragout.

In the next course, they handed wolf-leg, antelope terrine with truffles and - culinary highlight - cat on a bed of rats. Those who were still not full could, for dessert, guaranteed meatless, could eat rice cake with jam and Gruyère cheese. Bon Appetit!

Alexandre-Étienne Choron, head chef of the prestigious restaurant on rue Saint-Honoré, presented a whole zoo to his guests on 25 December 1870. At any rate, this suggests a menu obtained from the holiday. Reason for the bizarre six-course meal: the siege of Paris by Prussian troops in the German-French War.

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From September 19, 1870, the megacity was included, after only two months there was no fresh meat. In their misery, the starving Parisians consumed everything they could get. 65,000 horses, 5,000 cats and 1,200 dogs were slaughtered during the 132-day siege in Paris, according to British historian Allistair Horne.

How does elephant taste? "Tough, coarse, oily"

When all the available quadrupeds had eaten, the zoo animals had to die: Chef Choron had bought the exotic ingredients for his Christmas treat from the "Jardin d'Acclimatation" amusement and zoo. Monkeys, predators and hippos were not spoiled - but even the popular elephants Castor and Pollux had to believe it. They were slaughtered on 29 and 30 November 1870 and landed on New Year's Eve in the "Café Voisin" on the plates. "It was tough, coarse and oily," said the Englishman Henry Labouchère about the pachyderm meat.

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Tobias Roth, Moritz Rauchhaus:
Well, it got!

In a hundred menus through world history

Publisher The Cultural Memory; 352 pages; 28.00 euros.

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Romance doctoral student Moritz Rauchhaus, 25, explains the 1870 Paris Zoo-Allerlei to his personal favorite menu. "Because even the bitterest siege can not stop the will to a festive, sociable feast," he says in a one-day conversation. With his colleague Tobias Roth, Rauchhaus has now published the book "Wohl got's in 100 Menus through World History".

500 gazelles, 10,000 springbugs

With great attention to detail, the two scientists have reconstructed backgrounds, food sequence and ingredients of extraordinary meals of the last three millennia. Beginning with the feast of the Assyrian king Assurnasirpal II in 879 BC (14,000 sheep, 500 gazelles, 10,000 gulls) on the first menu in space 1961 (meat puree and chocolate sauce in tubes) until the last State Dinner of US President Barack Obama 2016 (crabscannoli with redcurrant tomatoes, silky pillow of pasta, blackberry tart).

The stop-off of the culinary journey through time can make the reader's mouth water or stomach upset. The wealthy passengers of the "Titanic" sipped oysters on April 14, 1912, enjoyed roast chick on cress, pies with foie gras and two éclairs.

For most of the 2200 travelers, however, it was the last dinner of their lives: About 1,500 people drowned after the culinary delights in the Atlantic Ocean.

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"Titanic" dining room: feasting until sunset

A similar scarf tastes on the tongue, considering what Princess Diana ate on the evening of 31 August 1997. For dinner with her lover Dodi Al-Fayed at the Ritz Carlton in Paris, there was sole, vegetable tempura and omelette with mushroom and asparagus. Barely two hours later, Lady Di was dead.

Knowing what they fed before their tragic death does not revive either the "Titanic" passengers or the Queen of Hearts. Through the individual menus, however, "you get in touch with historical persons and events," emphasize Rauchhaus and Roth, "you see the possibilities and constraints, the preferences and quirks."

Chicken liver à la Elvis

The idea for the book came to the authors when they rummaged for their doctoral theses in the Berlin State Library, which has a collection of 3000 menu cards - "that blew us away".

From then on, they rummaged through the collections of other libraries as well as a load of historical cookbooks, diaries, correspondence, newspapers and blogs. "We wanted to know what connects us with the people of the Baroque or the Napoleonic era, very directly, directly," says Moritz Rauchhaus.

DDP / interTOPICS / Globe Photos

What am I cooking? Elvis informs himself before the Beatles visit

Among the many menu finds in the book include the delicacies that served the Beatles on August 27, 1965 in Elvis Presley home. The atmosphere at the first and only meeting of the musical giants was initially rather frosty. Hurriedly brought in guitars, but also various snacks made sure that the mood brightened up in the course of the evening.

The spontaneous Jamsession was not recorded, but thanks to Elvis' housekeeper we know at least what the King served to his illustrious guests: Russian eggs, meatballs, chicken liver and crabmeat. Sounds delicious - and certainly wholesome than the "black banquet" of 1519, one of the most bizarre menu that Rauchhaus and Roth discovered.

Pheasant among skulls

On the occasion of the carnival, the Florentine banker, poet and diplomat Lorenzo Strozzi invited 14 guests to his Roman domicile, including four cardinals and three prostitutes. Strozzi had transformed the dining room into a ghost train: spooky paintings adorned the black walls, and guests' doppelgangers startled the guests at the dimly lit table.

Because some of the food (boiled pheasant under skulls, sausages under bones) were seasoned with purgatives or laxatives, the food ended after three courses. And yet it was "one of the most beautiful ever organized in Rome," wrote contemporary Marino Sanuto in his diary.

The Gern-Esser Rauchhaus and Roth preferred to do away with this hard-to-digest Renaissance menu, but they also put some other scurrility on the table. Only recently they conjured the sweets from the menu of the Italian Futurists of 1931: puffs filled with a screaming colorful cream, on top of each a piece of plum.

Contrary to expectations, the Futurists did not upset Italy's culture with this dessert - Rauchhaus and Roth found the cream puffs delicious anyway.

Dinner is served! From the antelope terrine to the ball-bearing primal chicken - get started with one-day suggestions for the slightly different Christmas menu!