Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Panthera leo, the ‘king of beasts’, nowadays having difficulty in surviving and therefore not to be recommended as food, has nonetheless been eaten with pleasure by peoples of the regions in Africa and Asia where it flourished. Leipoldt (1976) states that he had been told by African hunters that lion meat was as good as venison and that he had verified this by preparing the meat in various ways. Fried steaks, previously marinated in wine and vinegar, scored top marks, and lion meat also produced excellent biltong. However, he indicates, there was a very strong prejudice on the part of everyone except black Africans against using lion meat.