ADVENTURES IN FOOD—MARTYR’S BLOOD. I posted here about ways of cooking cicadas, including cicada pizza. I consider myself to be a somewhat adventurous eater, but cicadas are probably out of my range. John J Ross had a review in the Wall Street Journal (May 31) of a book which tells the story of a 19th century Oxford professor’s “project to eat everything”. The book is ANATOMIES: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, and the Oxford professor was William Buckland. Among the unusual things that Buckland ate were crocodiles, hedgehogs, moles, snails and bluebottle flies.
Buckland’s triumph came when his guide in an Italian cathedral told him that spots of liquid on the floor were martyr’s blood, “ever-fresh and mysteriously replenished”. Buckley kneeled, tasted, and announced that the liquid was bat urine.