Curried Sardines?

I was leafing through 'One Continuous Picnic' the other day, which describes itself as a gastronomic history of Australia. For me, eating's like sex; I like thinking about it and talking about it just about as much as I like actually doing it. Anyway, there's a lovely chapter about food during the Depression, and it details some dishes which have mercifully become extinct. Such as, among other things, curried sardines, marrow cream (made from marrow and sugar) and mock tripe. This last one is richly archaic. Tripe itself must have been such a common and desirable foodstuff that making something that resembled tripe (from mutton flaps!) was a selling point.

I'm not a fussy eater, but I can't stomach (if you'll excuse the pun) tripe. I'm up for most kinds of offal, and in general will try to pick the weirdest thing on any menu. I used to do this to gross out my wife, who was very fussy, but it's also a bit of dare for myself. Mae West is supposed to have said "When choosing between two evils, I like to try the one I've never tried before". (Now i think about it, it's another parallel between food and sex.)

A colleague and I once had a themed lunch at (St John's Bread and Wine that consisted of faggots, bath chap and spotted dick. The bath chap was a bit gelatinous, but agreeably challenging. The faggots were good, as always, the highlight being when the waitress put them down in the middle of our table (we were sharing) and said accusingly 'faggots!'. The spotted dick was good, if you like that sort of thing.