I’ve asked this question a few times before but got no answer yet, taking another crack at it. So… why did Americans stop eating the common carp, Cyprinus carpio? To be clear, I am NOT talking about the “jumping carp” or “Asian carp” introduced in the 1970’s, I am talking about the goldfish-looking one with big scales introduced back in the 1800’s.

It would be helpful to me as well to know:

-WHO was eating common carp in the 1800’s USA?

-HOW did those people prepare it?

-WHY was it brought over? What was the rationale behind transporting this fish species across the ocean?

In my biology/environmental science career, I’ve worked with both invasive species and fishermen. When it comes to intentionally introduced invasives, I can often look at them and be like “ok, it was stupid but I can see why someone wanted to bring this plant over. It looks pretty.” (or looks useful) Now with common carp, I have actually eaten them when I lived in China. They were delicious. The locals did not fillet the fish, and were quite comfortable eating around the pointy bones. In that way, its no more difficult than eating king crab legs or peeling the shell off your shrimp. As long as you can pick the bones out, these fish are not too difficult to prepare–basically just pull the guts out, scale them and throw them in a pan/wok with the seasonings you want. So it makes sense to me that, as I have read, the common carp was brought over for the purpose of eating.

So imagine my surprise when I take a job working closely with fishermen in the US and I bring up wanting to catch and eat some carp. The responses I got from them could be summed up as incredulous revulsion. They would state many reasons why we don’t eat them… too bony, they taste like mud, and are bottom feeders. But we eat other so-called “bottom feeders” like cat fish, and common carp themselves are VERY widely eaten across the rest of the globe and are one of the top most farmed fish globally. One of my fishermen friends there caught a huge carp for me, I prepared it in the Chinese way and everyone agreed it was very delicious… except for the fisherman himself, who refused to eat a bite of it. When I’ve seen others ask questions like this on American fishing forums, this incredulous “why would you even want to” distaste comes up as well to the point it borders on taboo.

So… somehow, over a period of many decades, something happened that made Americans go from “Let’s bring these fish we like to eat from Europe so we can eat them here!” To “Keep that garbage fish away from me!” To me this seems like a quite significant cultural shift. Surely the US in the 1800’s was well stocked enough with other kinds of fish, and the intentionality of bringing it over makes me feel someone was at least a little enthusiastic about eating it… usually when non-native species were brought over on purpose it is because someone missed them from their home country. I think it just really bugs me as an environmentalist because it feels like such a waste… that we have damaged our freshwater systems for nothing. Maybe it has something to do with the same reason, culturally, we no longer feel comfortable consuming giblets and head cheese and stuff like that? This question has been on my mind for years and I just haven’t had luck finding a satisfactory answer on the internet, if anyone knows the answer please let me know! It would soothe my fish-obsessed soul!