Topical Guide 724
Mark Dorset
Food: Bêche de Mer
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38, quoting from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters:
[…] the local delicacy that these intrepid travelers find truly repulsive is called in French bêche de mer, which means “spade of the sea” and doesn’t make any sense at all, but is actually a corruption of the Portuguese biche do mar, which makes perfect sense, because it means “worm of the sea.” This tasty treat is also called “sea slug” or “trepang,” or, in an example of the sort of wishful thinking that English-speaking diners seem to display when confronted with the foods of the wider world, “sea cucumber.” It is, to be precise, a wormlike holothurian, an echinoderm, a relative of the considerably more attractive starfish.
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