The menu included the above five courses, but not in that order.

Course 1: Pork Blood Soup With Barley and Marjoram -- This dish was like a liquid version of French blood sausage, not at all bloody-tasting, but with a rich, coarse texture, nicely bumpy with barley, given an extreme floral shot by the fresh marjoram. Everyone went for seconds.

Course 2: Truffled Cow Tripe in Béchamel Sauce -- Served like several of the other courses in metal bowls from which we could help ourselves, the cow tripe was so supple it must have been cooked for hours. The bechamel sauce was rich, and the scent of truffles (well, truffle oil) was powerful. The membership was beginning to realize at this point that every dish was going to be impossibly rich. Very nicely cooked brussels sprouts accompanied this course.

Course 3: Beef Hearts With Bacon Sauce and Dumplings -- This thin stew, powerfully flavored with minced bacon and shot with paprika, was to be ladled over sliced, steamed dumplings, something like northern Chinese bao. The heart was tender and not particularly fibrous, and the dumplings delighted one and all.

Course 4: Fried Rabbit Livers With Tartar Sauce -- Who knew that rabbit livers were so large? Or that they'd taste so good when crumbed and fried? The Society generally agreed that this was the best dish of the evening, and we thought the notably mild livers would make a spectacular hero sandwich, especially with the homemade tartar sauce served on the side.

Course 5: Smoked Beef Tongue With Pickled Mushrooms and Potato Puree -- We were almost too full to approach the tongue, but we did and found it silky smooth and smoked as much as good Texas barbecue. A thoroughly worthwhile dish, however, and the tiny white pickled mushrooms formed a nice flavor contrast.

The closing moments of the meal

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Here's what the entire dish looked like. Pretty, right?

Pale, ovoid, and spongy, the "eggs" really did resemble eggs, and the flavor was appropriately bland, too. They made a wonderful combination with the fried potatoes and onions, the whole thing glistening with grease.

We quickly finished up every morsel. Can you guess what we were eating?

The exterior shines invitingly on a rather barren stretch of C.I.A.

Kavkaz
943 Coney Island Avenue
Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
718-940-9454

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The texture of the organ is disarming, somewhere between pudding and whipped cream; the color an otherworldly pale gray; and the flavor almost nonexistent, which is why the French bathe them in vinegary black butter, while the Pakistanis further obscure the texture and taste by scrambling the brains with eggs, into an orgy of cholesterol.

The Lebanese -- as at Karam -- simply roll them into tubular sandwiches on big round (non-pocket) pitas. Inside the Middle Eastern burrito are pickled root vegetables, tomatoes, lettuce, and parsley. You should open up the sandwich as shown above, and spoon in the wonderful white garlic sauce, which is something like strongly flavored mayonnaise and brings a burn to the lips.

The worst part about beef brains is -- they look like human brains.

Karam
8519 Fourth Avenue
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
718-745-5227

Karam blazes into the night near the intersection of 86th Street and Fourth Avenue, Bay Ridge's busiest corner.

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Instead, the classic sauté of liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart in butter at Uzbek restaurant Cupola Samarkanda II is cradled in a parabolic cracker called toki. The curved flatbread has precisely the same texture and flavor as a matzoh, reminding us of the long history of Jews in Uzbekistan, particularly in Bukhara.

The sautéed organs drip juice mixed with butter down on the toki, and the toki gets softer in places, leading to a nice crunch-to-squish ratio. An utterly delightful, and utterly shareable, appetizer. 1797 McDonald Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-375-7777

The late-night scene at Cupola Samarkanda II is one of Brooklyn's wildest.

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Sure, you can get great chicken livers at Citarella in the Village, goat heads at Esposito's in Hell's Kitchen, tripe of several sorts at Michael's Prime Meats in Flatbush, and a shifting catalog of organs at boutique butchers like Brooklyn's Meat Hook or Chelsea's Dickson Farmstand. But what market has the largest, most certain, and cheapest supply? The answer is Western Beef. This discount meat store boasts branches in all five boroughs, Jersey, Long Island, and even Florida, and the prices are mind-bogglingly cheap.

Here's a pictorial catalog of the organs I encountered in their humongous cold room on West 16th Street yesterday.

Pretty little pig feet, all in a row.

Zut! Zut! Turkey butt!

They've got chicken hearts ...

... and chicken livers.

Calf tongue.

Calf hearts.

Beef kidney.

Turkey necks.

Blood sausage reminds us that blood is an organ, too.

Pig ears are always willing to listen to your problems ...

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Gandhi's unprepossessing premises on Bedford Avenue.

The menu sprawls, as it often does in places that seem way too small to make so many dishes, but the efficient staff is well in control of the situation. On a first visit, I checked out a dish rarely seen on Punjabi and Bangladeshi menus around town: chicken liver poori ($3.95), a small meal constructed along the lines of the much more common dal poori, in which a deep-fried flatbread is matched with a dish of chickpea curry, for a perfect vegetarian small meal.

If your ideal for chicken livers is tender, lightly fried, and very moist, this dish isn't for you. The livers have been rendered rubbery, and come deposited in a fluffy, oniony gravy. Which makes them easier to pick up with your extravagantly puffy poori. The dish was a hit with me, but there were dozens of other things I wanted to try at this halal canteen, where the prices seem slightly high for the neighborhood: goan shrimp curry, rupchanda (whole fish cooked with cracked mustard seeds and green chiles), and coconut soup. I did, however, check out the palaka soup, and it was nicely red, mellow, and laced with shreds of spinach, making a great winter potage.

I'm looking forward to another visit with more mouths.

Gandhi
2032 Bedford Avenue
Flatbush, Brooklyn
718-282-7012

Palaka soup laked with mustard oil, one of Gandhi's vegetarian delights.

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Cau cau is the way Peruvians prepare cow stomach tripe. Though turmeric is often regarded as little more than a coloring agent, here the spice shines as an earthy flavor unto itself. The tripe is stewed with small cubes of potatoes, and cilantro creates an altogether different flavor vector. If you normally are a little queasy about eating tripe, you won't be when you taste this wonderful stew, which is served with rice and an opaque green sauce that is only one among many heat options at Lima Limon.

Lima Limon
94-20 Roosevelt Avenue
Jackson Heights, Queens
718-651-5002

The interior of Lima Limon may be too brightly lit for some.

You may enjoy shopping for some Colombian fetish clothes just down the street, after dining at Lima Limon.

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The New York Times has a beautiful story today about a group of traditional butchers in Limoges, France, who are trying to popularize and preserve the traditional organ-meat cookery of the area.

Every October, the butchers of Limoges throw a festival called La Frairie des Petits Ventres, or the Brotherhood of Small Bellies. The celebration includes day-long street fairs in which butchers sell all manner of offal, and ends with religious processions in the evening. Residents tuck into local specialties like "the nose of love," a boned pig snout filled with pig tongue, and amourettes, sheep's testicles stewed in garlic, parsley, and port.

We know where we're going for vacation next year ...