Horse meat is commonly eaten in France, Italy, Switzerland and Japan, with the Quebecois of Canada also enjoying it. Apparently there is a reason why the English are so squeamish about eating horse meat. I was told that, during the time of Alfred the Great, horse meat was eaten in such large quantities that the breeding stock was killed off. The King kept bringing more animals into England and they always got eaten up so he asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to anathemitise the practice. I don’t think even the English would be this idiotic. The French appetite for horse meat is relatively recent, said to date from the Battle of Eylau in 1807, when the surgeon-in-chief of Napoleon’s Army, Baron Dominique-Jean Larry, advised the starving troops to eat the flesh of horses which had died on the battlefield. The cavalry found whatever they could to flavour the meat and then used their breastplates as cooking vessels.