Delicious for some, simply inedible for others.
Would you consider poisonous snakes or a sheep’s eye as an ingredient in a recipe?
Habushu is an alcoholic rice drink from Japan.
The ingredient that sets it apart from other – more mainstream – rice wines is the habu snake, a poisonous viper.
The snake is most often gutted and put on ice before being submerged in the wine.
When it thaws, it wakes up briefly and starts spewing poison in the bottle.
The drink is then stored until the alcohol has neutralized the poison. It’s enjoyed by Habushu aficionados around the world.
One place where it’s probably not drunk often though is in Mongolia, some there are more partial to enjoying a tomato soup with a sheep’s eye floating on top, staring back at you as you put the cup to your lips.
A Berlin Museum is dedicated to showing cultural differences when it comes to cuisine and explores the idea of taste and cultural preferences.
“There are six different basic emotions and disgust is one of them,” Alexandra Bernsteiner, head of Disgusting Food Museum Berlin says.
“It is said that it is the first instance of the immune system, because the brain will let you know when something could contain a disease or when it is something that you shouldn’t think is a food, then you feel disgust. That is for you to avoid compromising your health. So, in that way, disgust is an important feeling.”
“We look at this in a culinary way, to break down prejudice,” says Bernsteiner.
