Nordic Food Lab is very weird, very cool, very specific project—a non-profit that attempts to “explore the edible potential of the Nordic region.” Countries with extreme winters aren’t known for their agricultural bounty, but Scandinavia has been inhabited by humans since at least 6,600 BC, so that means rediscovering a lot of food that’s been nearly abandoned by those contemporary and so-often cosmopolitan descendants of Vikings—or in the inspiring words of Nordic Food Lab, “(re)valorising the despised and forgotten.” So what did they come up with during their culinary experiments with animal blood? Some really appealing-looking food, actually!

Of course, plating and presentation can fool the eye—what about flavor though? Apparently it depends on a lot of biological factors:

We discovered that taste perception in general differs between male and female tasters, and younger and more elderly, with women generally having an increased sensitivity towards metallic taste. Perception thresholds for bitter and sweet compounds vary not only between the sexes, but also with monthly-changing hormone concentrations in women that influence their nervous system. Decreasing thresholds during menstruation means that women will perceive bitter compounds more easily at these times. Unfortunately no research has been done on changes in metallic taste-perception during the menstrual cycle, since metallic taste via ion-channels is a rather young discovery. During our own tests of our blood pastry products, however, this difference became obvious to us.

So apparently if you’re a lady on the rag, blood tastes worse to you? How counterintuitively fascinating! Nonetheless, article author Elisabeth Paul has some high praise for the blood recipes, which also have the added benefit as an egg alternative for those with allergies. Blood of course, clots, making it a somewhat difficult ingredient to work with, but if you want to make your own blood foods, Nordic Food Lab has recipes on the site, along with best practices for handling blood—they used pig’s blood if you’re curious.

If you’re more of an audiovisual learner, check out the video below of the charming Swede walking you through a how-to for traditional Finnish blood pancakes after the jump…
 

 

 

 
I’m a big believer in the prurient pun, and I think anyone who can actually monetize juvenile humor is a true student of humanity who paid attention in class. So I doff my cap to new-agey nutritionist (and possibly penis-obsessed crazy person) Adrienne Hew, who penned 50 Ways to Eat Cock: Healthy Chicken Recipes with Balls! My only criticism of this culinary concupiscence is that the book might suffer from repetition. If the joke was just in the title, it would allow readers to question her motives, maybe even consider the possibility of her naivete. For example, the competing oral sex-themed cookbook, 50 Ways to Eat a Beaver exercises some subtly. Hew however, is relentless:

Curious about cock? You’re not the only one. Once revered for his virility and strength, the rooster has taken a back seat to the hen in more recent years. With healthy chicken recipes like Risotto Cock Balls and Cock-o’s, 50 Ways to Eat Cock is a fun and inventive chicken cookbook that takes a revealing look at the folklore, history, culinary culture and nutritional benefits of this well-endowed ingredient. With tongue-in-cheek descriptions, these playful cock recipes are bulging with everything from the quintessential to the quick-and-easy to the downright quirky. You’ll learn how to tame this tough bird meat into succulent and finger-licking gourmet meals.

Thanks to the ingenuity of author and Certified Nutritionist, Adrienne Hew, the noble cock retakes his rightful place at the head of the table. Grab the “hard copy” as the perfect bridal shower gift!

Okay, the “hard copy” line is pretty good, even though I think we could have done without the winking quotation marks.

As a cook book, I’m a little skeptical of the project (though I hold out far more hope for her follow-up book 50 Ways To Eat Your Honey: Healthy Honey Recipes for Mastering the Art of Honeylingus). To my knowledge, rooster is pretty inedible in any recipe other than coq au vin, or some other variation of “stew-with-bacon-until-edible.” This does not mean I will not be purchasing it though. Bachelorette parties have certain, near-sacred phallic traditions that simply must be observed (I don’t make the rules), but that doesn’t mean a dick joke can’t have practical applications.
 

 
In 1959—three years before his breakout solo exhibition at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in New York—Andy Warhol teamed up with a well-known socialite named Suzie Frankfurt to produce a slim satirical cookbook mocking the trendy French cuisine recipe books that were all the rage at the time. It was called Wild Raspberries, named in jest after the Ingmar Bergman movie, Wild Strawberries, that landed on U.S. shores the same year. Frankfurt took care of the text, Warhol did the illustrations, and none other than Julia Warhola—Warhol’s mother—did the lettering. Warhol hired several young men to help with the illustration—some have argued that this cookbook was the genesis of Warhol’s later assembly line method of art production. 
 

Andy Warhol and Suzie Frankfurt, Wild Raspberries
 
Frankfurt appears to have been a pretty interesting woman. She was an interior designer and worked at Young + Rubicam in the 1950s, the same time that Warhol was working as a commercial artist. As her New York Times obituary put it in 2005, “A bohemian hostess, the flame-haired Ms. Frankfurt was known as a creative catalyst as well as a celebrity decorator. The designer Gianni Versace, for example, credited her with introducing him to America when he was largely unknown, not to mention also introducing him to Studio 54.”
 

 

 
More recipes after the jump…..

Dirty bird
 
I’ll spare you any more bad puns, but this is legitimately the best thing to come out of Fifty Shades of Grey. I never thought I’d say this, but without a doubt, I will be buying this parody cookbook. Fifty Shades of Chicken: A Parody in a Cookbook, is exactly what it sounds like, with spot-on imitations of the horrible prose that got so many lonely housewives all aflutter.

A sampling:

The way his apron hangs from his hips already has me all wobbly. But as he coats my thighs with sticky liquid I can hardly contain myself. Is it the wine, or is my aroma starting to drive him crazy too? He heats me up fast, it won’t take much too?

He heats me up fast, it won’t take much to finish me off now. His lips quirk up to a smile. My own juices are mixing with the coating and running all over the place. I get the strangest, sweetest, hedonistic feeling up and down. It’s epicureanism run wild!

He spreads my thighs out on a plate. Sticky hands and at least five wet napkins. What will the housekeeper think? Who cares?

The recipe looks good, too!