birdsnest soup

— Travellers have so often spoken of birdsnest soup, canine hams, and grimalkin fricasees, rats, snakes, worms, and other culinary novelties, served up in equally strange ways, that their readers get the idea that these articles form as large a proportion of the food as their description does of the narrative. […] The famous birdsnest soup is prepared from the nest of a swallow (Hirundo esculenta) found in caves and damp places in some islands of the Indian Archipelago; […]