CHIPS.
Reading edition
NICE WHITE VEAL.
We shudder at the cruelties practised upon Strasbourg geese to produce the celebrated pâtés de foie ǧras; but remorse would assuredly afflict the amateurs of veal with indigestion, if they reflected on the tortures to which calves are subjected to cause the very unnatural colour of the meat which they so much prize. The natural and wholesome tint of veal is not white, but pink. An ancient French traveller in England (1690) 468says that the English veal has not the “beautiful red colour of the French.” Dr. Smollett, in “Peregrine Pickle,” upbraids epicures, on the scores both of cruelty and unwholesomeness, saying that our best veal is like a “fricassee of kid gloves,” and the sauce of “melted butter” is rendered necessary only by the absence of the juices drained out of the unfortunate animal before death.
The process of killing a calf is a refinement of cruelty worthy of a Grand Inquisitor. The beast is, while alive, bled several times; in summer, during several hours of the night, and frequently till it faints; when a plug is put into the orifice till “next time.” But the lengthened punishment of the most unoffending of animals is at the actual “killing.” It is tied together, neck and heels, much as a dead animal when packed in a basket and slung up by a rope, with the head downwards. A vein is then opened, till it lingeringly bleeds to death. Two or three “knocks” are given to it with the pole-axe whilst it hangs loose in the air, and the flesh is beaten with sticks, technically termed “dressing” it, some time before feeling has ceased to exist. All this may be verified by those who insist on seeing the penetralia of the slaughter-houses; or the poor animal may be seen moaning and writhing—by a mere glance—on many days of the week, in Warwick Lane, Newgate Street.
This mode of bleaching veal is not only a crime, but a blunder. The flesh would be more palatable and nutritious killed speedily and mercifully. But were it otherwise, and had it been twenty times more a luxury, who, professing to honour the common Creator, would, for the sensual gratification of the palate, cause the calf to be thus tortured?