What Does Human Flesh Taste Like?

Veal⁴. In his 1931 book Jungle Ways, American adventurer and journalist William Buehler Seabrook provided the world’s most detailed⁵ written description of the taste of human flesh. Seabrook noted⁶ that, in raw form, human meat looks like beef, but slightly less red, with pale yellow fat. When roasted, the meat turned grayish, as would lamb or veal, and smelled like cooked beef. As for the taste, Seabrook wrote, “It was so nearly like good, fully⁷ developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.”

There are reasons to question Seabrook’s account. He traveled to West Africa to get the inside scoop⁸ on cannibalism from the Guero people, but he later confessed that the distrustful tribesmen never allowed him to partake in their traditions. In his autobiography⁹, Seabrook claims to have obtained the body of a recently deceased hospital patient in France and then cooked it on a spit. His description of man-eating in Jungle Ways came not from his experiences in West Africa, he said, but in Paris.

Despite this credibility issue, Seabrook’s description remains¹⁰ the most useful. Many commentaries on the taste of human flesh come from madmen—serial killer¹¹ Karl Denke, for example, or the German murderer Armin Meiwes—and are therefore patently unreliable. Most of the others are vague and contradictory¹². Most consistent is the unsurprising fact that young children are more tender than adults, because of the development of collagen that advances with age. Some have suggested that human infant meat is so tender that it resembles fish in texture¹³. Beyond that, cannibals have told anthropologists that human meat is sweet, bitter, tender, tough, and fatty. The variation may result from disparate styles of cookery. Many tribes eat the meat of deceased humans only after it has rotted slightly. Roasting and stewing¹⁵ seem to predominate, with many tribes throwing in hot peppers or other seasonings¹⁷. The Azande people of Central Africa reportedly used to skim the fat off the top of a human stew¹⁴ for later use as a seasoning¹⁶ or torch fuel. Cannibals in the South Pacific wrapped human cuts in leaves and cooked them in a pit. Sumatran cannibals once served criminals with salt and lemon.

Perpetrators of the recent spate¹⁸ of cannibalism have each gone for different body parts. Rudy Eugene, the attacker in Florida, ate his victim’s face. The Swedish cannibal went for only the lips, while a Tokyo man reportedly cooked and served his genitals to the highest bidders¹⁹. Cannibalistic tribes show a similar diversity. Seabrook’s West African cannibals preferred the loin, rump, ribs²⁰, and palms, which were considered especially tender. They ate organs, he wrote, but found them indistinguishable from those of other animals. Cannibals in 19th-century Fiji reportedly preferred the heart, thigh²¹, and upper arm. Other tribes apparently²² held the breasts of young women in high esteem²³. (Ritualistic cannibals are sometimes more interested in the symbolic²⁴ significance of parts than taste. Eating the heart of a brave warrior²⁵ or the arm muscles of a powerful fighter is thought by some to imbue²⁶ the eater with the deceased’s desirable qualities.)

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