The Christmas Dinner That Included Elephant Consommé, Roast Camel, And Kangaroo Stew.
- Daniel Holland
- 21 hours ago
- 7 min read
It's difficult to imagine a city as synonymous with good food as Paris transforming almost overnight into a place where elegant dining rooms served elephant consommé and plump rats became luxury items. Yet for four and a half months in 1870 this is exactly what happened. The Franco Prussian War brought the German armies to the gates of the French capital and the resulting siege forced Parisians into a grim ballet of creativity and endurance. The same city that invented the modern restaurant found itself navigating a culinary landscape no chef or gourmand would ever wish to imitate.
This curious chapter of gastronomic desperation survives in vivid detail thanks to an American doctor who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Robert Lowry Sibbet, a Pennsylvanian travelling through Europe, found himself trapped inside the city when the German lines encircled it. He later published a 580 page volume titled The Siege of Paris by an American Eye Witness in 1892, packed with observations that read like a strange and unsettling travel diary.
The American Visitor Who Saw It All
Sibbet’s first impression of Paris is full of admiration. He wrote of the beauty of its museums, the orderliness of its streets and the calm confidence of its citizens. Yet beneath that calm unrest was already gathering.
Napoleon III had travelled to the front only to be captured at the disastrous Battle of Sedan on the 2nd of September, 1870. With news of the defeat tempers in Paris flared. By the 4th of September France had proclaimed itself a republic and the government prepared for the inevitable siege.
Paris Prepares for Siege
Sibbet noted that preparations for isolation began almost immediately. The Ministry of Agriculture was, in his words, “very active in gathering in from the adjoining departments all the produce and fuel that can be found, as well as fat cattle, cows, calves, sheep and hogs”. The Bois de Boulogne became an improvised holding ground carpeted with livestock.
The City Is Cut Off
The German noose tightened fully on the 18th of September. Sibbet recorded the moment the final lifelines were cut. “The last railroad was taken, the last telegraph line was cut, and now the postroads all around the cities are occupied by the Germans”, he wrote, adding with stark simplicity that he was now “a prisoner in a great city”.
The familiar rhythms of Parisian life dissolved quickly. The first sign of real trouble came on the 10th October 1870 when the city opened markets to horse meat in an attempt to slow the rate at which sheep and cattle were disappearing.
Horse Meat Becomes the New Normal
Parisians were initially sceptical, which led Sibbet to describe exactly how each animal was handled. Horses were “blindfolded, struck with a sledgehammer on the forehead and bled with a large knife. The blood is caught in basins and used for the purposes of making puddings”.
To encourage confidence, the Central Sanitary Commission hosted a full horse themed banquet featuring horse broth, boiled horse with cabbage, horse haunch à la mode and roast fillet of horse. It was an early attempt at normalising a diet no one had expected.
Dogs Cats and Rats at the Butcher’s Stall
By mid November rationing had become strict. Citizens were limited to 100 grams of fresh meat per day. On the 12th of November, 1870 Sibbet encountered a scene that has since become emblematic of the siege. “On the right side of the stall was several large dogs, neatly dressed … next to these are several large cats, also very neatly dressed … On the left of the stall there is a dozen or more of rats stretched upon a tray”.
A mother and daughter approached nervously. “She wishes to inquire the price of the rats, and, if she has money enough, to purchase one”, Sibbet wrote.
Henry Markheim observed that “dog is not a bad substitute for mutton”, and that “cat, as all the world knows, is often eaten for rabbit”. The wealthy turned the situation into mordant amusement, “making merry over their pâtés de rat”.
Cats and dogs sold for 20 to 40 cents per pound. A “plump rat” cost 50.
How the Wealthy Dined During the Crisis
By the end of 1870, most of Paris’s famous cafes and restaurants had closed, replaced by state run canteens designed to keep the poorest inhabitants alive. Officially, food was scarce for everyone. In practice, the siege exposed sharp inequalities. The authorities introduced price controls on certain staple foods at the beginning of the blockade, but these measures were poorly enforced and quickly undermined by a thriving black market. Until mid October there was no rationing of any kind. When rationing finally arrived, it applied only to meat. Bread was rationed only at the very end of the siege.
There were no serious attempts to limit hoarding or speculation. Many wealthier Parisians had anticipated the siege and stocked cellars with food and wine beforehand. As supplies dwindled and prices soared, these reserves insulated the upper classes from the worst effects of hunger. In the city’s more exclusive quarters, the crisis became an opportunity for elaborate culinary improvisation rather than simple survival.
Sibbet himself lived modestly. His breakfasts often consisted of rolls and hot chocolate, though by December he suspected the milk was being adulterated. On Christmas Day he ate “roasted horse meat, a small dish of potatoes, excellent wheat bread and plenty of wine”, a meal he acknowledged with some discomfort, knowing that working class Parisians were standing in long queues for thin broth made from horse bones.
The Christmas Menu That Shocked the World
On Christmas day 1870, Paris’s respected Voisin restaurant produced a Christmas menu that has since become one of the most striking documents of the siege. Printed boldly with the words “99TH DAY OF THE SIEGE”, it preserved the formality of French haute cuisine while revealing how far the city’s diet had shifted.
The meal opened with stuffed donkey’s head, followed by a choice between red bean soup and broth of elephant. Further courses included roast camel, kangaroo stew, antelope terrine, bear ribs, cat served with rats, and wolf haunch dressed in deer sauce. The wines were among the finest still available, reinforcing the contrast between luxury dining rooms and the hunger outside their doors.
A contemporary menu from the Latin Quarter shows how widespread these offerings had become. It lists, without disguise, dishes such as horse consommé with millet, dog liver skewers, minced saddle of cat with mayonnaise, braised dog shoulder in tomato sauce, rat salami with Sauce Robert, and plum pudding enriched with rum and horse marrow. The bluntness was deliberate. By government decree, vendors were forbidden from passing dog or cat meat off as beef or venison. Anyone who tried faced arrest.
Eating the Animals of the Paris Zoo
The elephants served during the siege were zoo animals, slaughtered because there was no longer any way to feed them. The elephant used at Voisin was likely not Castor or Pollux, the well known pair housed at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, but a lesser known elephant from the Zoological Garden. Elephant meat had already appeared at market by mid December, and by Christmas it was being prepared in restaurant kitchens.
As domestic animals disappeared, Parisians turned systematically to whatever remained. Horses were eaten first, beginning in early October. By mid November, fresh meat of any conventional kind had run out. Dog and cat meat followed, and then rats, though rats were consumed in relatively small numbers due to fears of disease and the expense of preparing them safely. Eventually, the animals of the Jardin des Plantes were slaughtered, including Castor and Pollux themselves, who were killed shortly after Christmas.
Voisin’s menu continued with roasted cat flanked with rats, kangaroo stew, terrine of antelope and truffles, and wolf dressed with deer sauce. The juxtaposition was unsettling: the refined language of French cuisine paired with the stark reality of survival.
A contemporary Latin Quarter menu reads in part:
* Consommé de cheval au millet. (Horse consommé with millet)
* Brochettes de foie de chien à la maître d'hôtel. (Dog liver skewers à la maître d'hôtel)
* Emincé de rable de chat. Sauce mayonnaise. (Minced saddle of cat. Mayonnaise)
* Epaules et filets de chien braisés. Sauce aux tomates. (Braised shoulder and fillet of dog. Tomato sauce)
* Civet de chat aux champignons. (Cat stew with mushrooms)
* Côtelettes de chien aux petits pois. (Dog cutlets with peas)
* Salamis de rats. Sauce Robert. (Rat salami. Sauce Robert)
* Gigots de chien flanqués de ratons. Sauce poivrade. (Leg of dog with a side of baby rats. Pepper sauce)
* Begonias au jus.
* Plum-pudding au rhum et à la Moelle de Cheval. (Plum pudding with rum and horse marrow)
Ordinary Meals in Extraordinary Times
For most Parisians, daily meals bore no resemblance to these menus. Rationing and poverty shaped diets far more than curiosity or novelty. Infant mortality rose sharply as fresh milk disappeared from the city. Poor women and children suffered most. Their husbands, often serving in the National Guard, earned 1.50 francs per day, “little enough of which reached their wives”, while the men themselves had the small advantage of being occupied and occasionally able to warm themselves indoors.
As hunger deepened, it coincided with a bitter winter and an acute shortage of fuel. Coal gas was strictly rationed and largely replaced with oil, which itself was requisitioned on 25/11/1870. Wood soon became the last remaining source of heat. In working class Belleville, residents cut down street trees. By late December, desperation spread westward, and trees along the Champs Élysées and Avenue Foch were felled.
By January, between 3,000 and 4,000 people were dying each week from hunger and cold. Disease followed quickly. Cases of smallpox, typhoid, and pneumonia rose sharply. Typhoid spread in part because the siege forced Parisians to draw drinking water directly from the Seine.
The Siege Lifts but the City Is Changed
Paris surrendered at the end of January 1871. When Sibbet surveyed the city in mid February, he noted that the domestic animals were gone entirely. “Even of that symbol of Paris, the poodle, there was no sign”.
In reflecting on how far Parisians had been pushed, Sibbet quoted a poem circulating during the darkest days of the siege, a bitter summary of survival under blockade:
“Kind patrons and friends you smile at this food,
But never ‘til hungry can you tell what is good,
Remember, I pray you, of these kinds of meat,
We were eating to live not living to eat.”
