They Sewed A Pig To A Capon And Called It Dinner
Medieval cooks made grotesque banquet showpieces by stitching two animals together, roasting them, and pretending this was perfectly normal.Read More 
They Put Fish Bladders In Your Beer (Honestly)
Brewsters and winemakers quietly use dried fish swim bladders called isinglass to make booze look respectable - and most of us drink it without a clue.Read More 
They Eat Fish Sperm And Call It Shirako
They serve fish milt in Japan - shirako - creamy, custardy, sometimes from cod or fugu, and people queue for it like it's haute cuisine.Read More 
When Doctors Sold Tomato Pills and Took Ourselves Seriously
In the 1830s a respectable American physician rebranded tomatoes as cure-alls, bottled them into pills and sauces, and the nation politely believed him.Read More 
cochineal confessions
Your neon red candy might actually be dusted with crushed cochineal insects and yes, I have feelings about this.Read More 
Escamoles: Mexico's Ant Caviar, Deal With It
They harvest ant larvae, butter them up, and call it escamoles, Mexico's century-old ant caviar that somehow became gourmet.Read More 
They Built Palaces Out of Sugar and Called It Dinner
In old Europe they staged tiny edible dramas made of sugar to show off, confuse guests, and make the dessert course do politics.Read More 
Ortolan: The Tiny Bird They Ate Whole
They fattened a songbird, drowned it in Armagnac, roasted it whole and ate the lot under a napkin like tiny conspirators - and it was deliciously scandalous.Read More 
They Put Beaver Castoreum In Your Food
Turns out some posh 'natural' vanilla and raspberry flavour comes from a beaver's little gland and nobody thought to make it sound less daft.Read More 
Surstromming: The Can That Opens Like A Crime Scene
A Swedish tin of fermented herring will make your kitchen evacuate itself and everyone's dignity follow politely behind.Read More 