It tastes like veal ...

A deliciously long and wonderful piece from Wired discussing the finer points of cannibalism, points out the advantages of being old, sick and lazy in trying circumstances vs being young, vigorous and hard working, is both a hoot and a teaching tool, not only in terms of learning more about the Donner Party but also about cannibalism and how it became a taboo. Thank Polyphemus and Odysseus for that one. :)

The Donner Party saga

LET’S SAY YOU want to strike it rich. The year is 1846 and you’re somewhere in the Midwest pulling potatoes out of the ground. But you’re tired of pulling potatoes. You want to pull gold. And maybe you’ve heard the rumors: People are finding fortunes in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. 1 So you hitch up your Conestoga wagon and head west, joining that year’s convoy of California-bound immigrants. And on July 20, you and the rest of these early pioneers find yourselves staring at a crossroads in what is today southwest Wyoming. Like them, you’ll face a choice: Turn right or turn left?

Both trails lead to California, but the trail to the right detours far north. It meanders deep into Idaho before it reverses course and turns back south into eastern Nevada. The left trail eschews the northern deviation. It takes a straight shot across Utah, and by doing so removes almost 350 miles from your journey. So let’s say you look at a map, note the faster route, and decide to turn left.

ILLUSTRATION: CODY CASSIDY; KEVIN PLOTNER

At the time, this seems like the wise choice. Andrew Hastings, an adventurer and respected guide, had just scouted this shortcut on horseback the winter before and advertised his new cutoff in guidebooks and postings along the trail. Most of the convoy, fearful of the unknown and unwilling to trust one person’s word, turn right. But you’re not the only one keen to arrive early in California. When you turn left on that July day, 20 other wagons do the same. After a few uneventful days, you and the rest of these previously unconnected pioneers will caravan together for safety and, following some debate, you’ll elect a nice, older, wealthy fellow as the leader of your party. His name is George Donner.

Winter bites ...  and the lack of knowledge will kill you

Unfortunately, the winter of 1846 starts early. Two weeks of snow has buried the top of the Sierras by the time you arrive, and the weather’s terrible turn is as unlucky as it is decisive. Oxen always struggle to haul wagons up the steep granite walls protecting Truckee Pass (now Donner Pass), but when you attempt it on November 1, you’ll find it buried in five feet of powder. Less than three miles from the summit, you will face two terrible options: one, abandon your wagons and cattle, fashion snowshoes, and trek for Sacramento and your life; or two, retreat to a few cabins by Truckee Lake that previous pioneers constructed a few years prior. The Donners chose to retreat.

Food will soon become a problem. A few try to hunt, but this is largely hopeless, since the large animals either evacuate the mountains or hibernate in winter. The only animals that remain are too small to shoot, Bowness tells me, though you could possibly trap them. 

Unfortunately, while the Donners are strong, smart, hardworking, entrepreneurial, and industrious, they’re Midwestern farmers. Not mountain men. They don’t have traps, nor the fishing gear to catch trout from the lake, and may not have known how to use either if they did. If you’re going to eat, it’s going to have to be the oxen and the food that came with you in the wagons.

Best be old & sick and do nothing ...

The gender roles of 1800s pioneers were clear: “It was the expectation of the men at the time that they would perform the heavy labor, and that’s exactly what happened,” Grayson says. Hard work increases your metabolism, so in a cruel twist, the more you helped with carving the trail over the Wasatch, the faster you’ll die.

Instead, not only should you skip the arduous hike—you should do nothing at all. You need to flatline your metabolism. If you reduce your movement, you can reduce your caloric requirements by some 50 to 80 percent. Rather than working to survive, you want to be in the worst shape of your life. “On the Donner Party, you absolutely want to be a couch potato, not a marathoner,” Grayson says. As proof he points to the example of George Donner, who had a hand infection that kept him bedridden throughout the winter. He survived well into March, long after most men around his age had already starved.

Regarding cannibalism ...

Archeologists have found butchered human bones far too frequently for it to have been a sporadic, starvation-only practice. And before Western culture washed over the globe, ritualistic cannibalism was not uncommon.

Blame it on the ancient Greeks ...

“The Greeks used cannibalism as a way to define the worst behavior possible in another group,” Schutt tells me. The probable explanation for why they chose cannibalism to represent the act of a monster is fairly straightforward: It’s what their northern European enemies, the Androphagi (Greek for “man-eaters”), did. For the Greeks, human flesh was the food of foreigners—and thus eating it the lowest one could stoop. From there, the stigma only grew.

If you're gonna ...

When practicing cannibalism, there are a few safety precautions one must take. First, cook your meat thoroughly to avoid diseases. No tartars or carpaccios. Also, avoid the brain. 

Lastly ...

Finally, if you’re considering best prep methods or pairings, then according to the journalist William Seabrook, who claimed to have partaken in ritual cannibalization in the 1920s, you can expect for it to taste like veal.