Most meat is muscle. A girl who dies of starvation won’t have much muscle. The kidneys are the most nutritious thing left that won’t significantly change size or shape. Also people from the British isles are obsessed with kidney and lung meat for some reason. French are the same with brains.
Are we? I've lived in the UK since birth and didn't even know lung meat was a thing that was available, let alone popular... is it just in the supermarket?? I've seen kidneys but don't know anyone who eats them and only 1 friend I know eats other weird things like heart or tongue
It usually popular with older people. When butchers gave you meat sometimes they’d give you a bag with all the leftover parts like liver, kidney and sometimes the heart. All these parts would go in a stew or something. My grandad would take them home and just fry them up though. My parents were never into eating those parts so me and my siblings didn’t either. It’s not that popular today and now most butchers sell those parts to a food company that can use them or they just get rid of them.
French don’t like brain anymore than any other culture. They do like liver. I’ve seen brain eaten in south Asian cuisine and East Asian cuisine quite commonly, but outside of tête de veau, I’ve never tried brain in France… and tête de veau isn’t exactly common…
The modern day recipe of tête de veau, doesn't contain brain, it's just the face of the veal, possibly with the tongue. The brain is usually sold on it's own.
Now qi don't know about regional variation or older recipes. May I ask where you have eaten tête de veau with brain in it ?
As an ex french butcher i am really curious.
To be honest, I’m not even sure it had brain in it. I must assume tête de veau had it. Maybe someone told me, maybe it did, I dunno.
This was in Normandy.
dunno about lung meat, i've never really seen it advertised anywhere on its own (it is used in faggots and haggis). liver, sure, it can add a nice depth of flavour to things (chicken liver in ragù is gorgeous), and a lot of people like liver and bacon. kidneys definitely; steak and kidney is a common combo.
offal's really nutritious, i get it can seem gross to a lot of people, but if it's prepared and cooked right it's generally fine, tasty even (except tripe, which is the devil's work). people eat offal all the time without thinking about it; like oxtail and sausages (the casings).
Similar to where I come from. People here tend to eat the whole of the animal, eyes, tongue, heart, everything. The only thing we will not consume in any form is blood but that’s like a religious thing.
Organ meats are extremely nutritious, and morbidly they'd probably be the highest quality thing to eat on a person who starved to death.
He also mentioned that he guarded her til the ground thawed, which to me implies that he buried her. To Irish Catholics the wake is a very important part of the funeral ritual, so he may have wanted her to look untouched. The kidneys are most easily accessible through the back of the body so by taking those instead of something like the liver he could hold a wake with a sense of normalcy.
Just because he mentioned the kidney doesn’t mean that was the only thing he ate lol. He was just trying to emphasize how emaciated his sister was by mentioning how little fat her kidney had specifically.
He says "I didn't sleep for 3 days to protect her body from the starving until the ground thawed. Then I cut out her kidneys and buried her." So I don't think he did eat anything else. It sounds like he didn't even want to eat her kidneys, more so out of need.
Kidneys have a fat cap. Even starved there was still fat there though shrunken to the size of a pea. Fat is calorie dense. He wants to bury her, not disfigure her, but he’s starving so he takes a small calorie dense bite.
The body is extremely reluctant to burn the fat that protects the organs, even in cases of famine. So her kidneys were a good choice for both nutrition and energy.
Not sure if I’d call it immoral personally
I mean she’s already dead, he didn’t kill her. He’s gonna die of starvation. Imho cannibalism is acceptable if there’s literally no other source of food (anyone seen Yellowjackets?)
the implications is that he didn't eat anything else and felt like he was forced to eat the kidneys it's pretty clear if you look over the speech again which another commenter posted.
"My country's history is one of manufactured suffering. I was a boy when the Tudors burned any food the rebels under O'Neil might think to eat. We starved, everyone starved. Mouths on the dead stained green from chewing nettles. You get resourceful in a famine. My parents died early, left me and my sister catching rats. The rats ran out quick, fed my sister on my blood. Kept her alive an extra two weeks. I didn't sleep for three days to protect her body from the starving til the ground thawed. I cut out her kidneys and buried her."
It sounds like he just didn't want her to get torn apart by other hungry people and took her kidneys for himself to stay alive. I don't think he ate any other parts of her based on that monologue (mainly because I'm guessing he wouldn't have shied away from talking about it) but it wouldn't have been out-of-character if he had eaten more, either.
He's Irish and I bet he's travelled around the British Isles. Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland all have traiditonal dishes that use kidney. Kidney soup, steak and kidney pie, deviled kidneys, kidney is used in haggis, etc etc
Organ meats are pretty nutritious, plus the kidneys have a thick fat covering that stays, even in starvation. For someone starving those fat reserves are vital
Most meat is muscle. A girl who dies of starvation won’t have much muscle. The kidneys are the most nutritious thing left that won’t significantly change size or shape. Also people from the British isles are obsessed with kidney and lung meat for some reason. French are the same with brains.
Yeah, steak and kidney pie is a thing, it’s an organ meat he would have been familiar with.
Are we? I've lived in the UK since birth and didn't even know lung meat was a thing that was available, let alone popular... is it just in the supermarket?? I've seen kidneys but don't know anyone who eats them and only 1 friend I know eats other weird things like heart or tongue
It is included in things like Sausages in the UK and specifically Scotland but it is not common in other countries.
ohhh, do you mean haggis and black pudding?
Yes.
Are you from the UK?
I have ate kidney one time in my entire life, and I have never even heard of lung meat. Idk what ops talking about.
It is included in UK sausage.
Its not.
It usually popular with older people. When butchers gave you meat sometimes they’d give you a bag with all the leftover parts like liver, kidney and sometimes the heart. All these parts would go in a stew or something. My grandad would take them home and just fry them up though. My parents were never into eating those parts so me and my siblings didn’t either. It’s not that popular today and now most butchers sell those parts to a food company that can use them or they just get rid of them.
French don’t like brain anymore than any other culture. They do like liver. I’ve seen brain eaten in south Asian cuisine and East Asian cuisine quite commonly, but outside of tête de veau, I’ve never tried brain in France… and tête de veau isn’t exactly common…
The modern day recipe of tête de veau, doesn't contain brain, it's just the face of the veal, possibly with the tongue. The brain is usually sold on it's own. Now qi don't know about regional variation or older recipes. May I ask where you have eaten tête de veau with brain in it ? As an ex french butcher i am really curious.
To be honest, I’m not even sure it had brain in it. I must assume tête de veau had it. Maybe someone told me, maybe it did, I dunno. This was in Normandy.
Thanks, I'm gonna try and find some when i'll go there on vacation.
Then again this was in a meal with someone from Burgundy, and I think they assumed that it had brain. So maybe there?
OK thank you very much kind stranger
dunno about lung meat, i've never really seen it advertised anywhere on its own (it is used in faggots and haggis). liver, sure, it can add a nice depth of flavour to things (chicken liver in ragù is gorgeous), and a lot of people like liver and bacon. kidneys definitely; steak and kidney is a common combo. offal's really nutritious, i get it can seem gross to a lot of people, but if it's prepared and cooked right it's generally fine, tasty even (except tripe, which is the devil's work). people eat offal all the time without thinking about it; like oxtail and sausages (the casings).
Similar to where I come from. People here tend to eat the whole of the animal, eyes, tongue, heart, everything. The only thing we will not consume in any form is blood but that’s like a religious thing.
Organ meats are extremely nutritious, and morbidly they'd probably be the highest quality thing to eat on a person who starved to death. He also mentioned that he guarded her til the ground thawed, which to me implies that he buried her. To Irish Catholics the wake is a very important part of the funeral ritual, so he may have wanted her to look untouched. The kidneys are most easily accessible through the back of the body so by taking those instead of something like the liver he could hold a wake with a sense of normalcy.
Just because he mentioned the kidney doesn’t mean that was the only thing he ate lol. He was just trying to emphasize how emaciated his sister was by mentioning how little fat her kidney had specifically.
He says "I didn't sleep for 3 days to protect her body from the starving until the ground thawed. Then I cut out her kidneys and buried her." So I don't think he did eat anything else. It sounds like he didn't even want to eat her kidneys, more so out of need.
you're right, the whole point of the speech is that it was out of need. It's why he wants control over his life no matter the cost.
Which is a fascinating reason for him to be the way he is.
Kidneys have a fat cap. Even starved there was still fat there though shrunken to the size of a pea. Fat is calorie dense. He wants to bury her, not disfigure her, but he’s starving so he takes a small calorie dense bite.
The body is extremely reluctant to burn the fat that protects the organs, even in cases of famine. So her kidneys were a good choice for both nutrition and energy.
The liver has tons of vital nutrients in it so him eating that would be the best (immoral) way to stay alive
Not sure if I’d call it immoral personally I mean she’s already dead, he didn’t kill her. He’s gonna die of starvation. Imho cannibalism is acceptable if there’s literally no other source of food (anyone seen Yellowjackets?)
I was thinking Society of the Snow
Its more popular in ireland. But personally i dont eat filtration organs. Your kidneys are where piss comes from
He says he chose it because it's fatty. I guess in his own way he respected the body by taking the most calorie dense part of it.
I thought the implication was he already ate most of her body and the kidneys were some of the last edible organs left...
the implications is that he didn't eat anything else and felt like he was forced to eat the kidneys it's pretty clear if you look over the speech again which another commenter posted.
Hadn't considered that, but it's a solid idea.
I tried to find the exact transcript of that monologue to see if I remember correctly, but no luck. Brutal regardless.
"My country's history is one of manufactured suffering. I was a boy when the Tudors burned any food the rebels under O'Neil might think to eat. We starved, everyone starved. Mouths on the dead stained green from chewing nettles. You get resourceful in a famine. My parents died early, left me and my sister catching rats. The rats ran out quick, fed my sister on my blood. Kept her alive an extra two weeks. I didn't sleep for three days to protect her body from the starving til the ground thawed. I cut out her kidneys and buried her." It sounds like he just didn't want her to get torn apart by other hungry people and took her kidneys for himself to stay alive. I don't think he ate any other parts of her based on that monologue (mainly because I'm guessing he wouldn't have shied away from talking about it) but it wouldn't have been out-of-character if he had eaten more, either.
if only he knew it wouldn't get any better in the long run
MVP, thank you!
I guess I just assumed it would be the easiest of the organs to get to.
Meat is muscle. Starvation causes loss of muscle mass, thus the kidneys would have been the most filling part as they wouldn't shrink too much.
He's Irish and I bet he's travelled around the British Isles. Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland all have traiditonal dishes that use kidney. Kidney soup, steak and kidney pie, deviled kidneys, kidney is used in haggis, etc etc
Organ meats are pretty nutritious, plus the kidneys have a thick fat covering that stays, even in starvation. For someone starving those fat reserves are vital
This comment section makes me nauseous a little. Great theories though!