The Amè-ya

Further to Blossoms from a Japanese Garden (5 June 2015), I just had to check the context on this one. What exactly was an Amè-ya, the vendor celebrated in the first poem in Mary Fenollosa's 1913 illustrated collection of poems for children, Blossoms from a Japanese garden: A Book of Child-Verses? I'll quote first.

Brinjal dumbdown!

I don't normally peeve about such things, but I'm a trifle disappointed at the decision of Patak's to rebadge their veteran brand of Brinjal Pickle as Aubergine Pickle. I take it they've always assumed that aficionados of Indian cuisine know what a brinjal is, and find resonances in the traditional name. But ...

Prickly ash revisited

An elaboration further to my March review of Mitch Cullin's Sherlock Holmes novel A Slight Trick of the Mind: the linguistics weblog Language Log has a very good post and discussion of the "prickly ash" that's central to one of the main threads of the book.

Saloop

Further to Ticky: fine satirical fantasy (21 March 2015), I was ready to write off  "saloop" ... an old-fashioned beverage decocted from the root of the red-handed orchis. It comforted the waiters' stomachs because it was greasy and warm" as a Stella Gibbons invention. But no.

"Oystericus"

Still-Life with Oysters (detail)
Alexander Adriaenssen

Pursuing a loose end from our 2014 walk at Whippingham, Isle of Wight - see On the Medina - I've occasionally wondered about the origin of the local "Folly" names: Folly Lane, the Folly Works, and the Folly Inn. There are no obvious follies in the vicinity, unless you count the weird Whippingham Church. A bit of research finds the answer, with a lot of digression involving oysters.

Isle of Wight Cracknel

Isle of Wight Cracknel finally springs to mind as the distinctively "Isle of Wight cake" I must have been dreaming of, even if Bentley's Miscellany likens it to a "cicatrized mass".
Making a plaster in a hurry, and shrivelling up your last heartshaped bit of white leather, with an over-heated spatula, into a cicatrized mass, something in shape like an Isle of Wight cracknel.
- Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 19, 1846

1873 ads: a selection from Shaw's

A nice crop of adverts from the 1873 Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight. Unlike the locally-targeted ads in Shanklin Spa: A Guide to the Town and the Isle of Wight, these are general-purpose ones that must have appeared in the whole UK stable of Graphotype-illustrated Shaw's guides.

Confectionery clones

We shop regularly at Aldi  - an excellent store - where I'm always mildly amused by the thinly-veiled clone products in its Dairyfine confectionery range, which have echoes of similarity in both typography and naming.

Toast

I crashed out with a rotten cold last week, and took up Clare's recommendation to read Toast: the story of a boy's hunger - food writer Nigel Slater's acclaimed autobiographical memoir telling of his development as a food aficionado against the background of his childhood in 1960s Wolverhampton.

Railway cake

One of my early memories is going with my grandparents to visit their friends at a small Scottish village called Ballinluig. I don't recall much more than a road, a bridge over a river (I now know it to be the Tummel) that braided between banks of pebbles that sparkled with mica (being a geeky child, I knew that detail even then), and a railway line with a little overhanging kiosk that sold cellophane-wrapped squares of yellow cherry Genoa cake - it might have been made by McVitie's - that Clare and I have come to call Railway Cake.

I don't wildly like cake in general, but Railway Cake still exists, not much changed, although the makers vary. It may not be terribly wholesome; I suspect its intensely sweet stickiness derives from glucose syrup. But it's so distinctive. The trolley vendor always sells it on the Exeter-Salisbury train, about half an hour into the journey, when we're going down to visit my Dad - at this instant of writing, we're somewhere between Honiton and Axminster. It has become one of the rituals of our trips to the Isle of Wight, and is always a bit of a Proustian moment.

- Ray

Green Man sighting

I rather like beer pump logos. They're an excellent little artform, and on occasion they completely transcend what they are - fairly throwaway advertising artwork - and become truly inspired miniatures. This is an example worth of Arcimboldo.

Mysterious superwhatevers #4

Yahoo! advertising has showcased another rich crop of biological oddities, this time drawn from a mix of plant and animal kingdoms. I say "oddities", but they're not - eggs and seeds are commonplace biologically - but they're certainly odd when used irrelevantly in advertising something completely different. The ads all have the slogan "Eat THIS, Never Diet Again" and lead to the blurb for the latest fad weight-loss nostrums: "Garcinia Cambogia" (which has mysteriously changed its name almost overnight from the same advertiser's "Garcinia Gambogia") and "Green Coffee Bean".

This first one appears to be the eggs of some species of Apple Snail, probably the invasive Pomacea canaliculata. I haven't been able to identify the source image, but there are plenty of images of its distinctive pink eggs online.

This, as I described at Mysterious superfruit #2, is a Finger Lime (Citrus australasica), the fruit of a thorny shrub native to Australia; it has lately acquired a reputation as a gourmet "lime caviar".

Google Images didn't find this one (I wonder if the advertisers are getting sneaky and trying to avoid identifiable images). But I'm pretty sure it's Alaska Salmon roe - see the image at Alaska Fish Radio.

This one: I don't know. It might be more roe.

I couldn't identify this one ... but (24th November update) Emily at Ephemeral Curios has a likely identification that it's a salp (or, I think, two of them). See the comments section below.

These are slug eggs: image cropped from a Dutch Flickr photo by "Jolle" (eitjes van 'n naaktslak).

More fish eggs: these are eggs of Arctic grayling, an image from a series by the brilliant photographer Paul Vecsei showing the developing embryos. See Inside the egg at the blog Way Upstream.

One I recognise: these are the edible fruit of the longan (Dimocarpus longan), a tree of the soapberry (Sapindus) family, closely related to the lychee. They're rather nice - while very similar to the lychee, they have a pleasant aromatic muskiness - and our local greengrocer occasionally has them in.

These I recognised too. They're wasabi peas,  a hot (spice-hot, not temperature-hot) snack made by dusting dried cooked peas with a seasoning powder containing the very pungent brassica, wasabi (aka Japanese horseradish). The image seems to come from this Romanian online food magazine.

More salmon roe, I think

A third I recognise: a raw cocoa pod (the fruit of Theobroma cacao). The image tracks to a stock photo from Visuals Unlimited.

No luck, but it looks like some kind of fish eggs on seaweed.

Most likely slug or snail eggs again ...









... and finally, more slug or snail eggs, the image cropped from this Flickr photo - teeny tiny eggs - by "Luckybon".






Whatever the dubious merits of the advertised products, these guys certainly provide interesting biological quizzes ...

- Ray

Mysterious superwhatevers #3

Emily at the excellent Ephemeral Curios, which largely focuses on biological curios, just commented in response to Mysterious superfruit #2 with another good example of advertising using weird biological images completely unrelated to the product advertised:

Possibly even weirder are these ads for a "weird food" that "kills blood pressure." It's a Glaucus nudibranch! I think they're actually toxic.

Actually, these advertisers don't seem to be very picky about what marine organism they use. A quick Google image search for "weird food" "blood pressure" finds these.

Glaucus atlanticus

"Glaucus atlanticus (commonly known as the sea swallow, blue angel, blue glaucus, blue dragon, blue sea slug and blue ocean slug) is a species of small-sized blue sea slug, a pelagic aeolid nudibranch, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Glaucidae." - Wikipedia

Google images of it: "Glaucus atlanticus".  It's an absolutely amazing little creature.

Squid

This one is just some species of squid.

Nine-tentacled octopus

This one you're unlikely to find; it's a well-circulated image of a mutant nine-tentacled octopus that "was spotted at the Marusan Seafood Shop in Marugame, Japan (Kagawa prefecture) on October 26, one day after it was caught in the Seto Inland Sea. Masa Koita, the 60-year-old shop manager, noticed the abnormal Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) after he had boiled it in preparation for market."

This one is just calamari salad (Insalata di calamari) from the Angela's Italian Organic Oregano website.

This one is amiyaki surume: a Japanese seasons and dried squid snack. The image appears to have been ripped off from the Snack Attack blog.

This one is a California sea hare (Aplysia californica). The image comes from the Gray Whales of San Ignacio Lagoon weblog (text by Tom O’Brien, photos by Karen Capp).

Go figure...

Edit: Dan Schwab of Keytoons explains at Weird Food (for yout heart!). There is a partial pertinence, in that the ads are for a new supplement in vogue, partially based on calamari oil; that at least explains the squid.

- Ray

Mysterious superfruit #2

More on the peculiar phenomenon of marketing dubious health products with images that have nothing to do with the product.

The mysterious superfruit turned out to be a malformed hen's egg. Now it's this thing, that comes with the promise "Eat THIS, Never Diet Again ... Dr OZ:"The Holy Grail of weight loss".

The site links to an advert for extract of "Garcinia gambogia" - a fruit native to Indonesia that goes under various names such as Malabar tamarind. Its scientific name is Garcinia gummi-gutta, but slimming product vendors have latched on to the former scientific name Garcinia gambogia. There's little or no evidence of its claimed weight loss properties, and one trial had to be abandoned because of liver toxicity.
Garcinia gummi-gutta, however, looks like a small pumpkin (above left).

A Google Images search finds that the fruit in the advert link picture comes from an entirely different plant, the Finger Lime (Citrus australasica - depicted right). A thorny shrub native to Australia, it has lately acquired a reputation as a gourmet "lime caviar".

- Ray

Taiblet's awfu' guid

I can never see the word "tablet" without it raising somewhere in my mind this kind of tablet, the traditional Scottish confection - a buttery semi-crystalline fudge - that probably sprang from the same national sweet high-calorie tooth that gave the world the deep-fried Mars Bar. I first ran into it decades back, visiting Scottish relatives-by-marriage, and about that time found the accolade ...

Taiblet's awfu' guid — Wee Macgreegor

... in a reprint of Florence Marian McNeill's 1929 The Scots Kitchen: its traditions and lore, with old-time recipes.

I only recently tracked the quotation down to a story by the Scottish journalist and author John Joy Bell, who wrote for the Glasgow Evening Times a series of dialect stories about a working-class Glasgow family. The central character is a young boy called Mcgregor Robinson ("Wee Mcgreegor"), and the quotation about tablet comes from the introductory story of the series, in which "Mcgreegor" and his father, against his mother's wishes, conspire to share a secret stash of almond tablet in a paper bag in his father's pocket: .

"Ha'e ye ett yer baurley sugar?" asked his father, during a pause in the childish queries.
"Ay; I've ett it...It's no' as nice as taiblet, Paw."
"But ye'll no' be carin' fur taiblet noo?"
"Taiblet's awfu' guid," returned Macgregor guardedly, with a glance upwards at his parent's face. "Thomson's paw gi'es him taiblet whiles."
"Aweel, Macgreegor, I'm no' gaun to gi'e ye taiblet...But if ye wis pittin' yer haun' in ma pooch ye micht—Ye're no' to let on to yer Maw, mind!"
The enraptured Macgregor's hand was already busy, and a moment later his jaws were likewise.
"Ye've burst the poke, ye rogue," said John, feeling in his pocket. "Noo, ye're to get nae mair till the morn. Yer Maw wud gi'e 't to me if she kent ye wis eatin' awmonds."

The compilation book of the first series is online: see Wee Mcgreegor (JJ Bell, pub. New York and London, Harper & Bro, 1903, Internet Archive ID weemcgreegor00belliala); the Project Gutenberg Australia copy (1100201.html) has an introduction by Bell explaining the origin of the stories. Unlike many fictional child characters, Wee Mcgreegor aged as the cycle of stories continued, and we find him somewhat older in Later Adventures of Wee Mcgreegor (1904) and, topically, at 19 and joining the army in Wee Mcgreegor Enlists (c.1915). By this time, Macgreegor's adventures have taken a far darker flavour than worrying about sweets; his fiancée breaks off their engagement, and he kills a German and is wounded in battle, before things turn for the better.

While the JJ Bell stories have been pretty well forgotten, a look through Google Books shows the fallout that probably still continues: generations of people, animals and things called Macgregor being saddled with the prefix "Wee".

Tablet digression aside, I finally made the jump to tablet computing. A Samsung Internet-capable phone has proven far more useful than I'd imagined, but the small screen size, multi-tap input and poor bandwidth are impediments that had set me thinking about better options. A couple of weeks back I was discussing this with Felix Grant (of The Growlery), and he recommended the Android Allwinner. At only £50 for the 7" screen option, it seemed not a great risk to try out, so I got one a week ago.

It's brilliant. I won't go into vast technical detail, as I'm sure tablets are familiar territory to many readers, but it's just what I wanted for note-taking on the move, along with web browsing and e-mail if I'm in range of a  BT wi-fi hotspot. The package I got didn't include a word processor, but it was easy to find a free app, Kingsoft Office, for creating Word documents, and the pop-up keyboard is fine for two-fingered typing. I tried the voice input, but I think it might need a deal of adjustment on my part to what accent it expects (maybe I'm not RP enough). Even when configured for British English, it persistently hears "six" as "sex", and it produced this ...

will there be a bit forward into the future are you still ask puggles become such will heidi's week old is a pickle roman computer code

... when I tried it on a bit of text handy, the blurb to RA Lafferty's Space Chantey:

'Will there be a mythology in the future, they used to ask, after all has become science? Will high deeds be told in epic or only in computer code?'

The instructions, a tiny flyer in Engrish ("Use headphones shoulds not be too big volume, If feel tinnitus, Lower the volume or stop using it"), are pretty minimal, but there's plenty of generic guidance on Android operating systems online. It has to be said that this is an enthusiast's device: in a lot of areas, you may be on your own in unfamiliar areas, and need to be comfortable with working out how things work; for instance, this is my first introduction to the possibility of cloud storage, as well as a lot of the protocols of wi-fi connection.

I found only one major problem: the so far inexplicable failure to be able to see some files and directories via the USB connection to my PC. However, there proved to be a simple workaround: to e-mail Word files as attachments to myself, from inside Kingsoft Office, using the built-in Gmail connection and another free add-on app, Android Attach, that over-rides Android Gmail's limitation to photos and videos.

All in all, taiblet's awfu' guid value for fifty quid.

Addendum: even better. Felix just drew my attention to the availabilty of another app, Graffiti for Android. Graffiti is a stroke-based input method using stylised alphanumeric gestures. Since I'm thoroughly familiar with the stylus-based version on my old Palm M100 organiser, I just gave it a try, and was sold on it instantly; for me at least, it's far superior to the touch-screen keyboard.

- Ray

Chieftain o' the pudding-race

I completely forgot Friday was Burns Night; I like haggis a lot, and it's the one solid excuse in the year to eat it. As luck would have it, however - presumably down to the recent cold weather - I managed to bag a wild one perching in next door's fig tree.

A couple of haggis snippets. Firstly, it's worth reposting the haggis section from Ronald Wright's excellent A Scientific Romance, in the archaeologist protagonist David Lambert, via the HG Wells time machine, travels to 2500AD, and finds the only remaining occupants of a post-apocalyptic Britain to be a tribe of feudal and devoutly religious black Scots, who have an annual mystery play that conflates Christ's passion with Scottish tradition. Their iconography contains a white blond Jesus, whose role Lambert is conscripted to play.

On stage was a table spread with bread, jugs of palm toddy (a new one on me; antique Scotch wasn't the only tipple), and a central plate containing a dark trussed object like a Christmas pudding in bondage. The crowd swarmed at the edge of the platform: wild, eager, fanatical faces, a dark flood from the streets.

In my nervousness, suppressed but not banished by draughts of usquebaugh, my lines deserted me. My eyes flew around in panic, alighted on the crowning ornament of the board. Not a Christmas pud. Nor, exactly, a paschal lamb. It was a haggis - the first - the first I'd seen in Nessie - and Burns came to my rescue. I got to my feet, beamed on the crowd with what I hoped was an expression of
Christly gemütlichkeit, summoned the best stage Scots I could, and stretched out my hand to the blob of dubious meat:

Fair fa' your honest sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak' your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

This verse leads me to QI, and a nice translation anecdote.



The first stanza of Address to a Haggis is very well-known, but the poem's not often quoted in its entirety. Here it is:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o'a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin was help to mend a mill
In time o'need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch; And then,
O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin', rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
Bethankit! hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad make her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckles as wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash;
His nieve a nit;
Thro' blody flood or field to dash,
 how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' hands will sned,
Like taps o' trissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer
Gie her a haggis!

In case anyone's still unclear what goes into haggis, a classic recipe (the first known to appear in print) is in Susanna MacIver's 1787 Cookery and Pastry.

A Good Scotch Haggies.

Make the haggies-bag perfectly clean; parboil the draught; boil the liver very well, so as it will grate; dry the meal before before the fire; mince the draught and a pretty large piece of beef very small; grate about half of the liver; mince plenty of the suet and some onions small; mix all these materials very well together, with a handful or two of the dried meal: spread them on the table, and season them properly with salt and mixed spices; take any of the scrapes of beef that is left from mincing, and some of the water that boiled the draught, and make about a choppen of good stock of it; then put all the haggies-meat into the bag, and that broath in it: then sew up the bag; but be fare to- put out all the wind before you sew it quite close. If you think the bag is thin, you may put it in a cloth. If it is a large haggies, it will take at least two hours boiling.

- pages 72-73, Cookery and Pastry, 1787

The "haggies-bag" is the stomach, the "draught" offal - typically heart and lungs. Some modern haggis doesn't follow Mrs MacIver's use of beef meat, and uses offal alone, but the MacSween one, which I prefer and recommend, does.

Contrary to many claims, the origin of the name "haggis" is unknown. The OED says:

Etymology:  Derivation unknown. The analogy of most terms of cookery suggests a French source; but no corresp. French word or form has been found. The conjecture that it represents French hachis ‘hash’, with assimilation to hag, hack, to chop, has apparently no basis of fact; French hachis is not known so early, and the earlier forms of the English word are more remote from it. Whether the word is connected with hag vb. [to cut, hew, chop], evidence does not show.

It's never even been especially Scottish a concept, except in recent tradition. Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds contains an account of an accident Strepsiades, the elderly Athenian protagonist, has with a haggis-like pudding that burst because he hasn't left a steam vent.

Streps. The devil they do! why now the murder's out:
So was I serv'd with a damn'd paunch, I broil'd
On Jove's day last, just such a scurvy trick;
Because, forsooth, not dreaming of your thunder,
I never thought to give the rascal vent,
Bounce! goes the bag, and covers me all over
With filth and ordure till my eyes struck fire.

- Ray

Blue pill - wrong Kingsley

extract, Nelson's Column, page 15,
East Devon Coast & Country, Dec 2012

One for Misattribution Corner. I was just reading East Devon Coast & Country, one of our glossy regional magazines. I recommend it: it's an exception to the usual run of advertorial magazines in actually having good articles, and paying contributors for them. What's more, it puts its issues online.

I did, however, catch one of its regulars in an error in the December 2012 edition, with a reference to a quotation concerning dyspepsia:

Lime milkshake and Kunzle cake

I just had a Proustian moment, as in Proust's account of the vivid memories evoked by the taste of petites madeleines dipped in lime-flower tea (see the relevant section of À la recherche du temps perdu).

It arose from a conversation on Wednesday, when I was working at the bookshop. A lady came in to shelter from a torrential shower, and during a very pleasant chat - it turned out she was from Portsmouth, and had lived in the Isle of Wight - the name Verrecchia came to mind. In the very early 1960s, my grandmother sometimes took me on shopping trips to Portsmouth, and as a treat we'd go and look at the budgerigars in the aviary in Victoria Park, then go to Verrecchia's.

Invariably called by the misnomer "Vereeshee's", Verrecchia's was a long thin cafe by the Guildhall, adjacent to the bridge where Commercial Road, Porstmouth's main shopping street, went under the railway. It was all wood and glass, with a central aisle and marble-tabled snugs where you pressed a bell for service. The foyer had tea and coffee machines, and a row of optics containing prettily-coloured milk shake syrups. I just found a description:

VERRECCHIA'S CAFE
c. 1910
Guildhall Square, Portsmouth
Externally this is a shabby, two-storey building sited uneasily on the north side of the Guildhall. The interior of 1933 is a delight; within a complex section, entered through a shop at the east end, the sitting area is raised half a floor over the kitchen forming a tall space in which the extraordinary furnishings are intact. The tip-up seating and marble tables are in bays enclosed by tall timber screens with inset decorated glass panels. The walls are panelled to a height of eight feet, each bay having an elliptical mirror centrally placed. This produces an effect of continuous visual change, glimpsed through the ranges of screens and reflections from the mirrors.
- Portsmouth, Alan Balfour, City Buildings series, London : Studio Vista, 1970

The News, Portsmouth, as a nice external picture (here), whose caption explains that it was demolished for 1970s developments; see Google Maps for what the location looks like now. There are a couple of pictures of the glasses and internal decor, from Portsmouth Museum, at the foot of this post - Vintage Ice Cream - at the Come Step Back in Time weblog.

I'd invariably have a lime milkshake float, a beatiful pale green and white swirl drunk with a straw from a fluted glass, and it was made with real ice-cream, not the aerated palm-oil shaving foam that generally passed for ice-cream in those days. I'd also have a Kunzle cake, a now-defunct brand of cake: pre-wrapped in brown cellophane, it comprised a chocolate shell containing cake topped with some kind of fondant mousse and a further topping of candied fruit or chocolate decoration.

This recollection gave me a hankering to try lime milkshake again - I haven't tasted it for perhaps forty years - and pursuing the experience proved mildly difficult: no-one seemed to make the syrup. But Googling found that our local Waitrose stocked a "special edition Crusha Mixa Lime". The packaging is all very "yoof" and aggressive - a long-standing brand of milkshake syrup, Crusha has revamped its marketing image for the modern age. The taste, however, is just as I remembered it. I didn't have a Kunzle cake, but as I drank an ice-cold glass of lime milkshake, I shut my eyes and was back in Verrecchia's.

- Ray

Bismarck fears the wurst

I seem to have known forever the apocryphal story about a proposed duel with sausages between the conservative German statesman Otto von Bismarck and his liberal/radical political antagonist (and groundbreaking biologist) Rudolph Virchow. The current edit of the Wikipedia article on Virchow (06:16, 16 July 2012) summarises it as follows ...

The Sausage Duel
As a co-founder and member of the liberal party (Deutschen Fortschrittspartei) he was a leading political antagonist of Bismarck. He was opposed to Bismarck’s excessive military budget, which angered Bismarck sufficiently to challenge Virchow to a duel in 1865. There are two versions of this anecdote: in one version, Virchow declined because he considered dueling an uncivilized way to solve a conflict. The second has passed into legend but was well documented in the contemporary scientific literature. It states that Virchow, having been the challenged and therefore entitled to choose the weapons, selected two pork sausages: a cooked sausage for himself and an uncooked one, loaded with Trichinella larvae for Bismark. His challenger declined the proposition as too risky.

... and at least the existence of the story is well-cited to an article in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (Rudolph Virchow, Myron Schulz, Emerg Infect Dis. 2008 September; 14(9): 1480–1481. doi: 10.3201/eid1409.086672).

I'll cut straight to the chase on this one. It needs going back to German primary sources, and Hella Machetanz did exactly that in 1978.

Die tödlichen Trichinen als von Virchow gewählte Waffen sind aber in keiner der zahlreichen deutschen Veröffentlichungen uber dieses Thema zu finden, auch nicht in den Briefen an seine Eltern noch in der Biographie von Ackerknecht. Die Duell-Förderung ist dagegen als gesichert anzusehen, wie aus den Stenographischen Berichten des Preußischen Landtags hervorgeht.

(The deadly Trichinella selected as weapon by Virchow is however to be found in none of the numerous German publications about this topic, nor in the letters to his parents still in the biography by Ackerknecht. The duelling challenge, to the contrary, is deemed to be verified, as appearing in the stenographic records of the Prussian Landtag.)

- Trichinen und die Duell-Forderung Bismarcks an Virchow im Jahre 1865, Hella Machetanz Medizinhistorisches Journal Bd. 13, H. 3/4 (1978), pp. 297-306 Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag

There's an English account of the Landtag dispute between Bismarck and Virchow in the foreign section of the Sydney Morning Herald for August 15th 1865: see the Germany section, columns 3/4, page 3. The duel challenge is there, but no sausages.

As to the English incarnation of the sausage variant, Google Books finds a particular crop of variously embroidered English repetitions of this story in the early 1900s, and tracking a litte back finds the first English citations in American medical journals in 1893. For example:

It is said that Bismarck once sent a challenge to Virchow because of some frank speaking on the part of the great pathologist. The latter instantly remarked that as the challenged party he had the choice of weapons, and held up two sausages apparently exactly alike, saying: "One of these is filled with deadly trichinae, and the other is perfectly healthy. Let Bismarck choose which of these he will eat, and eat it, and I will eat the other." The duel was not fought.
- uncredited anecdote, The American Lancet, p494, Volume 17, 1893

However, it goes back further, and at least one US newspaper carries this version of the story:

A Berlin journal relates that the famous Bismarck once challenged Dr. Virchow for offensive language used in parliamentary debate. The learned doctor was at that time engaged in investigations relating to trichinosis. He is said to have thus replied to the messenger who bore Bismarck’s challenge: “My arms; there they are—those two sausages. One of them is full of trichinae; the other is pure. Let his Excellency breakfast with me. We will eat the sausages; and he shall take his choice of them.
- The Hawaiian Gazette, August 5th, 1868.

A pity we're not told what "Berlin journal" this allegedly came from. The whole anecdote seems to be a cross-fertilisation between the real story of his political conflict with Bismarck leading to a duel challenge, and another real story arising Virchow's activism concerning trichinosis (in particular its association with raw sausages - i.e. not precisely raw, but ones for uncooked consumption made with very lightly cured pork). In Germany in the mid-1800s, this was highly controversial, as Virchow was challenging the safety of a highly-established food industry.

This circumstance seems to be the prototype for the sausage duel story.  The Lancet of February 1866 reports:

At Berlin, a meeting of town-councillors, butchers, doctors, and a sprinkling of the general public, was held shortly before Christmas. Professor Virchow addressed the meeting, and urged the necessity of instituting a microscopical examination of all pork. At the conclusion of his speech, he handed to the president a piece of smoked sausage, and a piece of meat from a pig which had been recognised as tricniuous. Thereupon a veterinary practitioner, of the name of Urban, rose and combated all that science has acquired during the last five years as an unfounded illusion. "Trichinae, he said, "are the most harmless animals in the world. It is only doctors without practice who make a noise about them, in order to create some occupation for themselves," &c. (Great interruption; the president is obliged to stop the veterinarian.) Drs. Virchow and Mason demand an apology from M. Urban. Dr. Mason challenges Urban to eat some of the sausage on the president's table. (Great applause.) Urban wishes to explain. The meeting calls upon him to eat. "He had not spoken of Berlin doctors (' Eat, eat!'); but of those at Hedersleben. ('Eat!') He would first see whether the sausage contained trichinae." (Great laughter, and continued shouts of "Eat! eat! eat!") Whereupon M. Urban suddenly seizes the sausage on the president's table, bites off a piece, eats it, and leaves the ball forthwith, amidst the applause and laughter of the assembly.

About five days later (on 23rd December) the Oelkszeitung [sic] reported that the veterinarian, Urban, was ill. He was confined to his bed, and his arms and legs were paralysed. A hope was expressed that the illness was not caused by trichinae contained in the sausage of which he had been badgered to swallow a piece. Vain hope!

- The Trichina Disease, Dr Thudichum, The Lancet, February 1866, reprinted as pp18-19, The half-yearly abstract of the medical sciences, Volume 43, 1867

This has an urban myth flavour - the poetic justice is just a little too apt. A more reliable summary of events is contained in this dissertation by Lars Harald Feddersen: Die Darstellung Rudolf Virchows in der Vossischen Zeitung im Zeitraum vom 1. Januar 1844 bis zum 31. Dezember 1865 (The Representation of Rudolf Virchow in the "Vossische Zeitung" during the Period of 1st of January 1844 until the 31st of December 1865).

Mr Feddersen's detailed examination of Virchow coverage in the Vossische Zeitung (a prestigious liberal Berlin-published newspaper) confirms that there was a heated meeting at which the veterinary surgeon Urban - a trichina denier - was heckled into eating a suspect sausage. However, there was no report of his subsequently getting ill. The follow-up was that Virchow issued a statement saying the sausage, being four weeks old and heavily smoked, contained only dead trichinae. The newspaper shortly after denied this, saying it was contaminated, but not with trichinae.

Nach diesen Ausführungen sah sich V[irchow] groben Anschuldigungen des ebenfalls anwesenden Tierarztes Dr. Urban ausgesetzt: Dieser warf V neben Oberflächlichkeit und Schwindel vor, er würde die Angst vor den Trichinen schüren. Urban verleugnete, dass eine Trichinenproblematik existierte. Das aufgebrachte Publikum strafte den Tierarzt mit beleidigenden Zwischenrufen.  Dieses veranlasste Urban schließlich, von der mitgebrachten Wurst zu essen. Es kam zum Eklat. V erklärte enttäuscht, dass er die Versammlung nicht ein zweites Mal besuchen wolle. (vgl. VZ 17.12.1865-Nr. 296)

Wenige Tage darauf ging V anlässlich eines Vortrags im „Berliner Handwerkerverein“ erneut auf die Trichinenfrage ein: Er erklärte, dass die Wurst, von der Tierarzt Urban in der „Schlächterversammlung“ gegessen hatte, nur bereits tote Trichinen enthielt. Die Wurst, so V, war bereits vier Wochen alt und stark geräuchert. (vgl. VZ 21.12.1865-Nr. 299)

Zwei Tage später dementierte die VZ diesen Bericht: Die Wurst, von welcher Urban in der Versammlung gegessen hatte, sollte zuverlässigen Meldungen zufolge bei der Untersuchung durch V nun doch nicht trichinös verseucht gewesen sein. (vgl. VZ 23.12.1865-Nr. 301) 

If any fluent German readers can confirm/correct my reading of this, I'd be grateful.

Ray

Ratatouille

This is ultimately going to be a bit of a nepotistic post, but Clare and I finally watched - and then almost immediately rewatched - Ratatouille, the Disney/Pixar animated movie about a rat who becomes a great Paris chef.

It's a brilliant film, an example of how Disney have long since moved on from the safe and trite. It works at both a simple level - it's thoroughly heartwarming - but also at a deeper one, with many visual references to classic French movie actors, and even an unmistakable allusion to Proust's classic "Madeleines and Lime Blossom Tea" moment. If you haven't seen it, do check it out.

But this post is just an addendum to one on my wife Clare's blog. One of the central motifs in the film is the creation of a gourmet version, confit byaldi, of the French peasant vegetable dish ratatouille. The film and subsequent Googling made it look so tempting that we just had to try it, and it was ... well, see Clare's blog post Ratatouille.

- Ray