2) Frog legs
“Sacre bleu!” I hear you say; frog legs isn’t a weird delicacy from history, it’s a weird delicacy from now. And from France! Well yes, and no. While frog legs are indeed enjoyed nationwide across one of the foremost culinary countries in the world, they’ve only been a popular part of their national cuisine for the last 200 years or so. As a group of archaeologists recently discovered when they found cooked frog leg bones while excavating an ancient English site in Wiltshire near Stonehenge, the Brits had been tucking into this delicacy as far back as 7596 – 6250 BC.
This predates the first written attestation of the French eating frogs (12th century) by a fair few millennia. And it also makes it slightly awkward. Since the eighteenth century, “frog” or “frog eater” have been insults the Brits have thrown at their French counterparts across the narrow channel; insults to which the French habitually responded by calling us “the roast-beef” or les rosbifs. Indeed, frogs and frog legs used to be synonymous with the hated French and were therefore hated themselves; so much so that in the 19th century when the French chef Auguste Escoffier tried to sell frog legs to a London clientele, he resorted to trying to call them “nymphs”.
There is one important thing to bear in mind regarding these prehistoric Britons’ consumption of frog legs. Until around 5,500 BC, Britain was still physically connected to mainland Europe, somewhat blurring the lines between our prehistoric ancestors’ national consumption. Frog legs are still considered a delicacy, exported widely in the East especially from countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. But when it comes to creating national stereotypes, they are at their most powerful in France.
