The future, it seems, has many strange dishes in store for the American stomach.  Whether you are rich or one of the plain people that have to work, whether the idea of new fantastic food appeals to your palate or to your pocketbook, you will be attracted by the array of foreign viands with curious names which have already been successfully introduced and are now beginning to be marketed in this country.  Mr. William N. Taft, in the Technical World Magazine, presents the following wild menu for the dinner table: 

Jujube Soup
Brisket of Antelope
Boiled Petsai
Dasheen au Gratin
Creamed Udo
Soy Bean and Lichee Nut Salad
Yang Taw Pie
Mangoes
Kaki
Sake.

This, he assures us, is not the bill of fare of a Chinese eating house, nor yet of a Japanese restaurant, it is the daily meal of an American family two decades hence, if the Department of Agriculture succeeds in its attempt to introduce a large number of new foods to this country for the dual purpose of supplying new dainties and reducing the cost of living.  Uncle Sam has determined to decrease the price of food as much as possible, and, for this purpose, delegated Dr. David S. Fairchild, Agricultural Explorer in charge of the Foreign Plant Section of the Bureau of Plant Industry, in particular, to see what can be done about it.

More than 30,000 fruits and vegetables have been tested by Uncle Sam’s experts and, according to Dr. Fairchild, a goodly portion of the foodstuffs which have been regarded as staples since the days of the first settler are doomed.  Consider for example “Jujube Soup!” Mention that to the average person and he will answer: 

“But I thought the jujube was a fruit, like an apple.  How can you make soup of it?” The average person is right.  The jujube is a fruit—­but a most remarkable one.

“It is about the size and appearance of a crab apple, but contains only a single seed.  It grows on a spiny tree, long and bare of trunk, with its foliage cropping out at the very top like a royal palm of the tropics.  The jujube itself has been used for years to flavor candies and other confections.  But the essence is very expensive and comparatively rare, despite the profusion with which the fruit grows in its native habitat.

“Dr. Fairchild, however, imported several specimens for the Department’s gardens in California, where they are bearing prolifically.  The arid sands of the southwest, where nothing but cactus and sage-brush formerly would grow, have been found to be excellent soil for the jujube, and it is the hope of Uncle Sam’s food experts to see the entire Arizona and New Mexico deserts dotted with jujube orchards, with income to their owners.  The jujube is delicious eaten raw, but it may be cooked in any manner in which apples are prepared, used as a sauce or for pie, preserved or dried.  Finally, its juice may be used as a delicious and highly nutritive fruit broth.”