Against prison-birds: Peter Singer and Mrs. Beeton

The theme of this week's The New York Times Book Review is food. There is a review of Peter Singer and Jim Mason's book, The Way We Eat, and Marion Nestle's What to Eat. While one book explores factory farming and the accompanying suffering of animals and degradation of the environment, the author of the other book takes on processed food and the accompanying degradation of public health.

In an interesting juxtaposition, the issue also contains a review of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton, a biography of the Victorian version of Martha Stewart and author of the best-selling Beeton's Book of Household Management, published in 1861. The reviewer mentions that Mrs. Beeton was a proponent of free-range chickens. In her recipe for boiled chicken in white sauce, she wrote:

You may pluck a fowl's wing-joints as bare as a pumpkin, but you will not erase from his memory that he is a fowl, and that his proper sphere is the open air. If he likewise reflects that he is an ill-used fowl—a prison-bird—he will then come to the conclusion, that there is not the least use, under such circumstances, for his existence; and you must admit that the decision is only logical and natural.

Although most meat-eaters today probably wouldn't find her boiled chicken in white sauce particularly appetizing, it sounds as though it was a far more humane and nutritious meal than what most Americans eat.