About vegans

[Rev. Rye]

I have heard that human flesh tastes like salty pork.

I want to know if vegans taste like broccoli or tofu?

Actually, William Seabrook was a travel writer who once happened upon a tribe of cannibals. They did not eat him, but he did ask them what it was like. They could not adequately describe it, and did not permit him to take part in a cannibal ritual. Later, however, he got samples from a hospital in Paris. He cooked it up and had this to say about it.

It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.

I can remember once, inspired by that passage, deciding to buy some veal, cook it, and call it "menschenschnitzel." It was okay. That said, I suspect the actual taste would vary wildly depending on what parts it was cut from and, to a lesser extent, how it was cooked. I do not have the full book "Jungle Ways" where Seabrook explained it, though it seems his sample was cooked over a spit, and was a "rump steak."