A man’s yen to eat gonads does not necessarily reflect either homosexual tendencies or machismo, but it is a fact that at least nine out of ten people who enjoy eating testicles are of the masculine persuasion. Out of embarrassment, sexual panic, or a sense of humor, virtually no one calls a ball a ball. Whether the organs are harvested from a rooster, sheep, pig, or bull, they go by such names as Rocky Mountain oysters, prairie oysters, swinging beef, tendergroin, calf fries, and cowboy caviar. Pop culture has mined a nice little vein of comedy from a tenderfoot’s misunderstanding of these terms, as seen in Baxter Black’s poem “The Oyster,” in which a cowboy squirms as an Eastern lady tells him how she likes to pry open oysters with her knife, and in the movie Funny Farm, in which Chevy Chase sets the town record for eating calf fries before he understands the painful reality of what they are.
Rarely found outside the West and Great Plains, gonads tend to take the role of hors d’oeuvres, usually served deep-fried in bite-size pieces with cocktail sauce. Their flavor is vaguely organy, similar to sweetbreads, although deep-frying usually eclipses whatever subtleties of taste testicles may have. Historically, they were a special occasion treat enjoyed by cowboys at the end of a day of castrating young male bovines.