MDMD(6): Eating at the Vroom house.

[Michel Ryckx]

The weirdest part of searching for information preparing MDMD, was the
look on my regular butcher's face when I asked him about Mutton-Tail and
Mutton-fat.  Then he burst out laughing.  He's convinced now I'm crazy.
There was no-one else in his shop.

He said those two products are never used in a kitchen.  The fat because
it has such a strong flavour and it cannot stand heat very well, as
butter does (when you know how to use it) or olive oil (which get burnt
only at 160 ° Celsius, sometimes even higher).  Slaughterhouses sell
it.  And it's a fine ingredient, he said,  for candles, and in earlier
times it was used in soap.  The tail contains hardly some flesh; and is
hardly fat and it would take a long time to have it ready. (ox's tail
can be used to make a bouillon for a very fine soup; but that's a
different matter).

But back to the text.  When we talk about food, there's a minor tabu at
work: from the moment an animal is cut op into pieces, we quite often
change the way we describe it.  In English, usually, the descriptions
change from anglo-saxon words into (originally) French: you never eat a
'cow-steak' or 'roasted cow', no, it becomes 'beef'.  It is also not
done to refer to the functions the meat had.  'Kidney' comes immediately
to mind. (in French, when talking about an oxen's tail, remarkably
enough, the English word is used)

Mr. Pynchon transgresses this by referring to the 'ovine Flatulence '
(79.22), which adds to the already rather revulsive description of the
settler's food.

There's a bit I cannot trace: the 'strange Dinner-ware' at 82.36 makes
it even harder for the Astronomers to enjoy the dinner.  Anyone?

This was another post without Breaking News about a Certain Nice Novel.

Michel.