A WELL-PRESERVED SECRET

The vegetable lamb of Tartary did not bleat when bound by its hind legs, nor when verdant blood spilled from its neck into wineskins and jars. More fruit than beast, its flesh, ground with peppercorn and mandrake root, was stuffed into casings of dried artichoke intestine. From there, it was hung to ferment near shaded fires, then cured with salts in Ural mountain caves. These medicinal sausages were said to be able to heal ulcers, and otherwise lethal wounds of the gut, though no record remains of their actual culinary quality and flavor. 

We know from Kircher that these "lambs" grew from umbilical shoots emerging from a central stalk, which afforded them only a limited range upon which to graze before death and rot. A commonly circulated notion is that accounts of the vegetable lamb are simply cases of mistaken identity with the golden chicken fern, whose fuzzy bulbs somewhat resemble young fowl. This narrative is a form of conservation by obfuscation: a way to preserve an endangered species by conflating it with one better known to discourage those who would abuse the knowledge of its continued existence. Far more likely is that this rhizome found evolutionary advantage in the Müllerian mimicry of mammalian prey animals, spreading seeds in rocky climes with the help of confounded predators while maintaining scarce, deep, long-lived roots from which its flowering fruit might crawl at distant intervals.

Rumors persist that Carthusian monks maintain small, protected “flocks” of these creatures in their mountain cloisters to this day. Within their silent order, the innocence of a lamb born without sin, whose blood can be made into alcohol, is a matter of meditation offered quietly to their most faithful. Among them is one of the three living souls sworn to secrecy who knows the recipe for the liquor called chartreuse, where it is one of one hundred thirty plants distilled into the now-ancient concoction. The most famous cocktail made from this product of their monastic labors is called the “Last Word,” in honor of the vows they must take. 

There is also the urban legend of a rich hermit living in the Oaxacan Sierra Madres who collects the rarest of all pechuga mezcals, which require an animal carcass to be placed in the copper alembic still alongside agave. The meat cooks during the distillation, adding a unique signature to the resulting flavor by way of the Maillard reaction, trapping spirit within spirit. His taxonomical library of bottles spans hundreds of species purchased from an international syndicate of poachers, and the vegetable lamb is counted among his most prized curations. Trespassers in his canopic zoo are said to be similarly processed, albeit to a separate collection.

If you somehow encounter the vegetable lamb today, it is almost assuredly already dead, but what has become of it is most likely well cared for. If you know the right farmers markets to visit along the northern shores of Lake Superior, you might even be able buy some for yourself, preserved as a savory jam.