Kangaroo Stew and Elephant Consommé

On Christmas day 1870 Paris had been under siege by the Prussian army for 99 days. Food shortages led Parisians to expand their usual larder of ingredients and even the inhabitants of Paris zoo were not spared. A Christmas menu from a Paris restaurant included exotic dishes such as Elephant consommé, Bear chops in a pepper sauce and Camel roasted English style. Amongst the dishes served that day by chef Alexandre Étienne Choron was a Kangaroo stew. This was not the first time kangaroo had been served far from Australian shores. In 1862 the Acclimatisation Society of Great Britain held a banquet in London which featured a dish called Kangaroo Steamer.

Kangaroo Steamer had long been a feature of the Australian colonial culinary landscape. In his account of his rambles through the colonies in the late 1840s, the aristocratic military officer Godfrey Mundy devoted considerable space, and a gourmet's eye, to food. Mundy described, amongst other things, a high society dinner party, bush recipes, the dearth of good cooks and the over-abundance of meat. He showed a keen appreciation for kangaroo meat and provided his readers with a glowing report on the various ways of preparing this marsupial, including one for skewered kangaroo ‘kabaubs’ (sic) and for the slow cooked kangaroo 'steamer'. He described the steamer as 'very popular with those who have time and patience ' and pronounced the dish to be very tasty.