Free In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food by Stewart Lee Allen Page B

“reborn,” one proceeds through a maze of odd-shaped rooms that wind their way up to the roof and then back down again. There were bright red rooms shaped like a tube. Others were covered in fake stalactites. There were painfully narrow hallways lined with pictures of the Red Lady and Hindu deities like Hanuman the Ape God, elephant-headed Ganesha, and the goddess Kali, her tongue lolling out bloodred and with a severed head in one hand. One room was covered floor to ceiling with beautiful orange and white flowers. The scent of incense was so strong it made one dizzy, and people were singing and praying in every corner. Children—reacting to the fun-house effect of the place—were screaming and running about in a frenzy. The last chamber was a pitch-black room full of water through which you waded in order to reach chanting priests, who led the faithful in a call-response routine before handing out magic coins guaranteed to make their real rupees multiply like jackrabbits.
    John explained all the details with a skeptical grin and continually reminded us that he, a former Untouchable who’d become Christian, did not believe in such stuff. He also cast some doubts on the Red Lady’s claims to absolute abstention. Like her Western sisters, who’d had a distinct weakness for communion wafers, the Red Lady had been rumored to enjoy an occasional cup of milk from the sacred cow.
    The Joy of Fat
    “You are so fat!” exclaims a member of Canada’s Ojibwa people, meaning “looking good”: healthy, wealthy, and oh so fine. Most of the world still thinks fat is beautiful, and as little as a century ago, B. Johnston, the American author of the famous
Eat and
Grow Fat
, was making a bundle by advising frantic maidens (and men) who “are prepared to go to any reasonable length to acquire a few extra layers of fat.” Books like these were by no means directed at anorexic types. “Every woman who is thin likes to be stouter,” wrote French dietician Brillat-Savarin. “It is a wish we have heard a thousand times.” Savarin’s remedy was to feast on sponge cakes, macaroni, and grapes, combined with hot baths and “lots of naps.” Those lacking the willpower to stick to the Savarin Regime cheated by padding their clothes. In fact, the word
diet
as we know it—referring to an interminable Hell on Earth—didn’t even exist. The closest thing were nineteenth-century cults like Fletcherism, whose American devotees prided themselves on chewing each morsel thirty times before swallowing.
    This passion for cellulite extended beyond the human form. Ancient Egyptians wore discs of scented animal fat on their heads that would create lovely perfumes as they melted during dinner. But the big demand was on the dinner table itself. “Some persons,” wrote John Trusler in his eighteenth-century
The Honors of the Table
, “prefer the soft, the other the firm, and each should be asked what [fat] he likes.” He advised that while pork had delicious marrowlike flab, there was also a “nice, gristly fat to be pared off about the ear” of a calf. Because venison fat was “very apt to cool,” Trusler urged thoughtful hosts to provide heated dishes to keep it nice and runny, “a sight which never fails to give pleasure to your company.” Carvers distributed these delicacies by holding the carcass aloft with one hand and artfully slicing with the other, so that the juicy translucent gems drifted down like rose petals to fall in perfectly overlapping patterns onto the guest’s waiting plate.
    Fat, in fact, is Jehovah’s preferred dish, and the Bible specifies that the “fat of the beast” should be burned in the temple for His consumption. We mere mortals had to make do with the lean cuts. It was often used as a kind of sauce, and every roast came with a side of grease. Roast lamb was best served with bits of quivering tail fat, which Trusler says “may be readily divided into several pieces” to accommodate the salivating