SOME STRANGE FOODS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 2

SOME STRANGE FOODS

A 'FANTASTIC SUPER-GROCERY.

•Within sight of Picadilly Circus is a super-grocery shop that specialises in fantastic foods from far away (says a writer in the Westminster Gazette). Just now edible birds' nests from 'China are being offered, at 10s an ounce, and the chefs of millionaire epicures count this soup-making delicacy, sold finely shredded, cheap at 'the price. Though nominally Chinese, the' nests really come from the great limestone caves of North Borneo, in the China Sea. The swift is the species of bird that builds them, and they are mostly a glutinous substance produced from the large salivary glands of the birds themselves. Grass and feathers do get woven into many thousands of swifts' nests, but such, known among the Chinese traders as black nests, fetch considerably less at auction than do the pure white ones, and are never exported, to England. Perhaps only on a dinner menu of the Royal Geographic Society would one find caviare from Russia, soup made from sea slugs harvested round about Korea, sharks' fin s from the Pacific, and Chinese rice birds that have been fed on the paddy fields in the valley of the Yangese. But all these strange foods are regularly imported into England, and are available for the enterprising British housewife if she is prepared to pay their price. True, the caviare at 30s the pound would be pressed and. done in olive oil, for the real stuff straight from the fish, as sold in Astrachan. is not to- be had in this country; but the sharks' fins, done up in cartons for the English market and sold here at 7s 6d a pound, are in just the same condition as those bought by epicures in the heart of Asia. Of late Englishwomen have become keenly interested in yaghourt, the sour milk in solid form, which is shipped here from Bulgaria on the shores of the Black Sea. Years ago, when Professor Metchnikoff first boomed! it as an energiser and a certain cure for obesity, men mostly bought it and ate it with their meals, but nowadays yaghourt has quired a new virtue, the high-born dames in Mayfair having taken to eating it as a complexion beautifier.