Reptile Recipes for the Discriminating Palate

Ernest Liner is an 80-year old retired pharmaceutical sales rep who left Bristol Myers Squibb after serving the company for over 32 years. Throughout his long life, Liner has traveled extensively throughout his native Louisiana and other southeastern states, as well as Mexico, Honduras, and Costa Rica, and he has written or co-authored over 130 scientific papers. But his field trips and scientific pursuits haven’t had anything to do with pharmaceuticals. No, Liner is a reptile lover who has been interested in slithering creatures since he caught his first poisonous snake, a copperhead, when he was in the Cub Scouts. Since that time he has devoted much of his life to studying reptiles. Oh, and he loves to eat them, too.

The connection between humans and reptiles has existed for centuries, as evidenced by cave paintings, stamps, figurines, stories, and even the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent. But one of the closest connections throughout history has been one of using them for food. Many societies have regularly eaten reptiles and amphibians in numerous ways, and now Dr. Liner has collected many of those cooking methods and recipes into a volume of recipes for curious reptile lovers and culinary adventure-seekers to explore. Liner is himself a master Cajun cook and has been enjoying dining on reptiles for most of his life. His new cookbook, The Culinary Herpetologist, contains a collection of over 950 recipes from international sources, along with comprehensive descriptions of how humans have prepared amphibians and reptiles for consumption through the ages. This cookbook contains something for everyone, from historical recipes such as Blackfeet Indian Jellied Snake and Roasted Poison Dart Frog to mouth-watering modern recipes such as Turtle Croquettes, Iguana Stew, and Zippy Alligator Dip. The cookbook is the long-awaited second edition of his original A Herpetological Cookbook.

Liner knows his subject better than most cookbook authors, because not only has he discovered a number of new species, he has also had four herpetological species, one earthworm, and one parasite from a lizard named after him. How many cookbook authors can boast that kind of prowess over their cooking specialty? The Culinary Herpetologist is an entertaining, historically important manifesto that every herpetologist or reptile lover should own. Whether or not you love them enough to eat them, this cookbook will give you interesting and valuable insight into the history of the connection between humans and reptiles, and learning more about them could just make you want to give them a taste. And the next time you pick up your hoe to chop a snake in half for invading your garage, you may want to and go ahead and chop it into bite-size pieces and let Dr. Liner help you make it into a meal.

But if you just can’t bring yourself to engage in any toad tasting, you can substitute a more common reptile for the meat in the recipes. Evolutionary science has shown that birds are actually feathered reptiles, and crocodiles are actually more closely related to birds than they are to snakes. So go ahead and substitute a feathered reptile for any of the non-feathered ones in Dr. Liner’s recipes. After all, they all taste like chicken anyway.