Tasting the World: Food in Early European Travel Narratives

Abstract

Descriptions of foods and food practices in early European travel narratives constitute a crucial dimension of representations of non-Europeans in Asia and the Americas. A very preliminary comparison of seven travel narratives suggests a fundamental change in attitudes beginning in the seventeenth century. Earlier narratives are far more likely to express wonder at the abundance of foods associated with high rank, but also horror of unclean meats and especially of cannibalism, while at the same time rhetorically familiarizing foreign foodstuffs. Seventeenth century sources, on the contrary, deliberately stress the exotic nature of such foods through visceral reactions of delight and especially distaste, employing a tone of ironic detachment. This change in tone occurs at a time when European consumption of exotic products, especially foods, ceases to be a luxury reserved exclusively for the highest strata of society. These changes in patterns of consumption in turn modified attitudes of Europeans to non-Europeans.