In the 21st century, stocking the fridge often means nothing other than a visit to a brightly-lit supermarket, where everything will be neatly prepared and packaged, along with a vast amount of information on provenance, nutrition and hygiene standards. Against this opposition, local speciality stores often struggle, though thankfully there is a significant movement towards supporting your local butcher, baker, and – if not candlestick maker – greengrocer or fishmonger.

 

But in years gone by – and in some isolated, rural communities now – food had to be grown,
foraged or hunted. Nothing could go to waste. And a tasty hedgehog supper might very well go
down a treat.

 

If you are reading this website, you are obviously a hedgehog lover, and that idea might sound
very sad, or even very sinister. But no more so, when you think about it, than any other
animal product we might eat. (Vegetarians or vegans might consider reading another article
at this stage. This one is not for the faint hearted.)

 

The concept of eating hedgehogs is most commonly associated with Romany gypsies. Possibly
in some areas of Europe this tradition continues, but it doesn’t seem to happen in the
UK nowadays.

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Farm labourers were also known to enjoy roast hedgehog, in the days before they could have a pizza delivered, or send someone out for burgers and chips.

 

In his book The Wild Foods of Great Britain, first published in 1917, the author T. Cameron described the flesh of a hedgehog as “… white, of a delicate flavour, faintly gamey, with a suggestion of pork about it.” He offered two methods of cooking:

1.  Clean, but do not skin, wrap the hedgehog in a ball of clay and roast in the ashes of a wood or peat fire. …. When done the ball is broken and the skin comes away with the clay.

2. Clean and skin (wearing gloves…), disjoint, and cook in a stewpan with small crusts of bread, pepper, salt and a bay leaf, or some wild sorrel.

T. Cameron adds that “Thin bread-and-butter and watercress go well with hedgehog.”

 

 Republishing the book in 1977, Prism Press sensibly added some commonsense remarks about how things have changed since 1917, and how some of the plants and animals T. Cameron suggested eating are now much reduced in numbers, and some even endangered.

 

This could not really be said to apply to another of T. Cameron’s recommendations: the brown rat.

“The young of this common rodent has been highly recommended as a toothsome article of diet.”

 

Commenting that country-bred rats are thought to be preferable to town rats, the author describes his initial scepticism about this dish, until he tried “a specimen of about a month or six weeks old. Stuffed with a simple stuffing made of bread-crumbs, a sprinkling of sweet-herbs, and a little pepper and salt, mixed with the liver and heart of the rat, and roasted for a few minutes in a quick oven, it proved to be a delicate dish not unlike a snipe in flavour.”

 

Mmmm, yummy!

 

How could anyone resist?