Abstract
Hippophagy is still unthinkable in many European countries, but in the Mishär Tatar culinary tradition, horsemeat products play an important role. Part of the Mishär Tatars, originally from Nizhny Novgorod province (Russia), migrated to the eastern Baltic Sea region in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They continued to slaughter horses and eat horseflesh, despite being opposed and stigmatized by the majority in their new surroundings. Today, home slaughtering has disappeared, and the tradition focuses mainly on sausages prepared for domestic consumption or bought in food stores. Horsemeat is today considered a delicacy and an important aspect of commensality among Mishär Tatars. There is a small and persistent market for horseflesh products in the eastern Baltic Sea area, mainly Finland, Saint Petersburg (Russia), Estonia, and Latvia. Hippophagy continues to play an important role for the diaspora Mishär Tatar identity and the preservation of traditional narrative and culture, and so far it has resisted all adaptation attempts in the majority societies, where horsemeat is frowned upon.
Highlights
To eat for pleasure, rather than for survival, is probably the most important factor behind human food culture and the development of food habits
Strict adherents to Islam consider religion a hindrance to eating pork or non-halal meat, but Mishär Tatars do not necessarily follow the Muslim restrictions and even pigs can be found in the backyard of their village houses
The Mishär Tatars did not commonly use the word “halal” until some decades ago, and there was no specific food production industry connected with religion until recently
Summary
To eat for pleasure, rather than for survival, is probably the most important factor behind human food culture and the development of food habits. We prefer to consume foods with a story, especially when they are useful for the body [1]. Some foods have high nutritional and emotional value, such as horseflesh, yet traditionally hippophagy has been taboo in most of Europe and North America [2–4]. In Western and Northern Europe, hunger was previously preferred to eating horses, Hippophagy in Eurasia While Western Europeans generally refuse to consume horseflesh, Turkic and Mongolian nomads and their present-day settled descendants are fond of the meat. The Altaians in Siberia bought horses from Russians for food until fairly recently [13]. The Russian peasants despised horsemeat, which they considered an “ungodly abomination”, as one observer put it, and they would rather starve to death than to eat a horse [12]
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