In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food by Stewart Lee Allen Page B

the most significant conflict in Roman history.
    The abrupt disappearance of Etruscan culture around the fourth century B.C. has long baffled some historians, but some now think that when their priests divined their culture’s demise in a sheep’s liver, the race simply merged with the Romans rather than fight the inevitable. Tuscany’s love of chopped-liver, however, seems to have lived on in Europe. The ancient Irish
Vision of Mac Conglinne
tells in great detail how the king could be satisfied only with “son of fat, son of kidney, son of slender tripe,” and how the tribute to the royal ladies consisted of sweetbreads and pig hearts. Organ meats fetched significantly higher prices than chops in the markets of seventeenth-century Paris. The French called these delicacies
parties nobles
, and every hunter carried a ritual set of knives with which to remove them. He would then present them, on a forked stick, called
la fourchie
, to the most powerful person present and they would be grilled on the spot in a little ceremony meant to honor the nobleman’s bravery. We still say a brave man has “guts” or “pluck” (a kind of intestine). Cowards, of course, are “gutless” or “lily-livered.”
    In fact, the entire world seems to be riddled with a perverse reverence for variety meats. The Scottish have made entrails wrapped in entrails (stomach), called haggis, a national dish, which they eat in a ceremony filled with pomp and bagpipes. The Tongans believed the liver was the finest part of the meal because it was where the animal’s courage resided, which is why they gave it to the chief. The heads of the African Masai eat nothing but milk, honey, and roasted livers, for similar reasons. The Turkish high holiday Kurban Bayrami, the Day of Sacrifice, culminates in the ritual eating of a bowl of tripe stew called
iskembe corbasi
. The ancient Greeks claimed Achilles’ courage came from a diet of lion intestines. The nomad tribes of Sudan make a delicious dish from giraffe innards that they claim allows them to communicate telepathically with their revered giraffe.
    And then, of course, there was the Inca empire of Peru and their sacred guinea pigs.
    Señora Villanova was waiting for me when I returned to the
curanderno’s
house the next day. She was about four feet tall, a hundred years old, and wearing a massive pleated skirt and foot-tall white top hat. Braids to her waist. Now here, I thought, was a witch doctor who knew how to dress the part! She should give her husband some tips. We began the session with some prayers to a pile of coca leaves (the base for cocaine, and considered sacred). These were then laid on a piece of gift-wrapping paper and covered with dried moss, pink cookies, a couple of marbles, the hand off of a Barbie doll, mattress stuffing, and some confetti. This was my symbolic “body.” My mind began to wander. I was already feeling rather spacy from the three days I’d spent sitting in Husao’s single dirt street begging the Villanovas to see me. They actually had quite a following, and I often found myself in a crowd of patients outside—men shaking with palsy, ominously limp infants, boys with purple mold covering their faces. Serious stuff. And not just dirt-poor peasants. Some of these suckers were rich. One even arrived in a BMW. You would think with that kind of money coming in, the Villanovas would spruce up their operation, but no. Roosters wandered in during my séance. A hunchbacked boy stuck his head in the door for a stare. By the single naked lightbulb I could make out some decorative touches. A pink-and-yellow plastic reindeer head. Donald Duck statues covered in muck. Not as grand as the gory altars of the Roman haruspex but an Etruscan priestess would probably find a Day-Glo pink reindeer pretty damn impressive. Only a truly powerful deity, they might reason, would possess such an otherworldly color. That strangely dressed duck was obviously a lesser wood spirit.
    I