Book: The Curosities of Food

Anyone who has ever had a glimpse at my bookshelves will know that there is no rhyme or reason to the eclectic array of subject matter to be found there. The history of sand in the form of a desert? The social life of insects? Myths, fables, spells and hermit lore? How to make moonshine and tie a hog? Poetry, plays, dictionaries of languages I'll never learn, short stories, long stories, true stories and made up stories, one could say there's not much missing but then every time I enter a bookstore I find much that I'm missing. Including this gem.

"The Curiosities of Food" or "The Dainties and Delicacies of Different Nations Obtained from the Animal Kingdom" is written by Peter Lund Simmonds with an intro by Alan Davidson, author of The Oxford Companion to Food. Originally ublished in 1850 in London England, it's a culinary travelogue (long long before they were popular and ubiquitous!) discussing nearly everything and anything that walks, swims, crawls, slithers or flies and has at one time or another been ingested.

It's not reading for the faint of heart (modes of cooking monkeys, the delicacy of dog meat, how to bake elephants paws, African haggis - hippo flesh and fat, penguin livers and hearts, larvae and spider recipes all feature in various chapters), but it sure makes for interesting scholarship.