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Modes of preparation

Based on theoretical considerations, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that human flesh was most typically boiled, with roasting also used to prepare the bodies of enemies and other outsiders in exocannibalism, but rarely in funerary endocannibalism (when eating deceased relatives). But an analysis of 60 sufficiently detailed and credible descriptions of institutionalized cannibalism by anthropologist Paul Shankman failed to confirm this hypothesis. Shankman found that roasting and boiling together accounted for only about half of the cases, with roasting being slightly more common. In contrast to Lévi-Strauss's predictions, boiling was more often used in exocannibalism, while roasting was about equally common for both.

Shankman observed that various other "ways of preparing people" were repeatedly employed as well; in one third of all cases, two or more modes were used together (e.g. some bodies or body parts were boiled or baked, while others were roasted). Human flesh was baked in steam on preheated rocks or in earth ovens (a technique widely used in the Pacific), smoked (which allowed to preserve it for later consumption), or eaten raw. While these modes were used in both exo- and endocannibalism, another method that was only used in the latter and only in the Americas was to burn the bones or bodies of deceased relatives and then to consume the bone ash.

After analysing numerous accounts from China, Key Ray Chong similarly concludes that "a variety of methods for cooking human flesh" were used in this country. Most popular were " broiling, roasting, boiling and steaming", followed by " pickling in salt, wine, sauce and the like". Human flesh was also often "cooked into soup " or stewed in cauldrons. Eating human flesh raw was the "least popular" method, but a few cases are on record too. Chong notes that human flesh was typically cooked in the same way as "ordinary foodstuffs for daily consumption" – no principal distinction from the treatment of animal meat is detectable, and nearly any mode of preparation used for animals could also be used for people.