"Yet we are certainly edible, and we are as mortal as any other living being. Preparation that foregrounds an awareness of the life and death of our meal does not arouse fear for our own safety, but it prompts meditation on the cycles of life and death that we all undergo by forcing reflection on the very moment where we participant in that cycle. The gasping carp puts us in the presence of death. The fragrances that summon up the life of the ortolan are compressed into its taste, a taste that is both nauseously difficult and ecstatically delectable. It would reach neither extreme were it not for one's intense, bodily awareness of this moment when a life and a death are commemorated in taste.