THE TRIANGLE
589
If
boiling is superior to roasting, notes Aristotle, it is because it
takes away the rawness of meat, "roast meats being rawer and drier than
boiled meats" (quoted by Reinach,
lac. cit.).
As for the boiled, its affinity with the rotted is attested in numerous
European languages by such locutions as
pot pourri, oUa podrida,
denot–
ing different sorts of meat seasoned and cooked together with vegetables;
and in German,
zu Brei zerkochetes Fleisch,
"meat rotted from cooking."
American Indian languages emphasize the same affinity, and it is signi–
ficant that this should be so especially in those tribes that show a strong
taste for gamy meat, to the point of preferring, for example, the flesh of
a dead animal whose carcass has been washed down by the stream to that
of a freshly-killed buffalo.
In
the Dakota language, the same stem con–
notes putrefaction and the fact of boiling pieces of meat together with
some additive.
These distinctions are far from exhausting the richness and complex–
ity of the contrast between roasted and boiled. The boiled is cooked
within a receptacle, while the roasted is cooked from without: the former
thus evokes the concave, the latter the convex. Also the boiled can most
often be ascribed to what might be called an "endo-cuisine," prepared
for domestic use, destined to a small closed group, while the roasted
belongs to "exo-cuisine," that which one offers to guests. Formerly in
France, boiled chicken was for the family meal, while roasted meat was
for the banquet (and marked its culminating point, served as it was
after the boiled meats and vegetables of the first course, and accompanied
by "extraordinary fruits" such as melons, oranges, olives and capers).
The same opposition is found, differently formulated, in exotic soci–
eties. The extremely primitive Guayaki of Paraguay roast all their game,
except when they prepare the meat destined for the rites which determine
the name of a new child : this meat must be boiled. The Caingang of
Brazil prohibit boiled meat for the widow and widower, and also for
anyone who has murdered an enemy.
In
all these cases, prescription of
the boiled accompanies a tightening, prescription of the roasted a loosen–
ing of familial or social ties.
Following this line of argument, one could infer that cannibalism
(which by definition is an endo-cuisine in respect to the human race)
ordinarily employs boiling rather than roasting, and that the cases where
bodies are roasted-cases vouched for by ethnographic literature-must
be more frequent in exo-cannibalism (eating the body of an enemy) than
in endo-cannibalism (eating a relative).
It
would be interesting to carry
out statistical research on this point.
Sometimes, too, as is often the case in America, and doubtless else–
where, the roasted and the boiled will have respective affinities with life
