The curiosities of food

In Short

The Curiosities of Food is an expansive mid-nineteenth-century survey of global animal consumption, examining how different societies obtain, prepare, and value various forms of protein. Expanded from a series of public lectures, the narrative ranges from South American cattle ranches and Russian frozen meat markets to North American hog yards, Pacific egg-harvesting islands, and European lobster ponds. It offers an unvarnished catalogue of culinary customs, market tariffs, and hunting traditions across continents. The work endures as a fascinating historical record of human adaptability, economic geography, and the culturally shifting boundaries of palate and appetite.

The Story

The work opens by establishing the fundamental necessity of bodily sustentation, contrasting the comfortable English butcher shop with the harsh realities faced by travellers, settlers, and indigenous peoples who must eat whatever nature provides. It begins its global survey in South America, detailing the seasonal slaughter of cattle to produce charqui, or sun-dried jerked beef, where every scrap of fat is fried into grasa and shipped across trade routes to supply islands and navies. Moving north, the narrative turns to the industrial scale of American swine production, particularly in Ohio, where swine cover acres of land and dominate the regional economy.

From these massive agricultural operations, the account shifts to cold climates and urban dining. In Russia, extreme winter frosts turn meat and fish so solid they must be sawn into slices, leaving trails of animal sawdust gathered by impoverished children in open-air markets. Russian dining establishments are depicted with equal vividness, from overpriced French-style restaurants to native eateries where white-robed waiters serve cabbage soup, sturgeon, wild birds, and vodka to weary patrons.

The narrative then moves into wilder terrains, exploring indigenous hunting methods in the Australian Bush, where wallabies, bandicoots, and carpet-snakes are cooked over open embers. These observations lead into an investigation of culinary taboos and disguised meats, questioning why European palates reject horses, donkeys, and dogs while accepting masked dishes engineered by modern culinary machinery. Historical context is provided through detailed London market tariffs, tracking fixed prices for wild fowl, rabbits, and livestock from the thirteenth-century reign of Edward I through the opulent feasts of Henry VIII.

As the narrative progresses, it focuses on marine and avian harvests. Hundreds of thousands of sea-bird eggs are collected from remote cliffs on the Farallon Islands, Dassen Island, and the English coast. Along the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, thousands of workers crush millions of turtle eggs in water troughs to extract mantega, a clear oil used for cooking and lighting. Amphibians receive equal attention, comparing Paris fish-mongers who skin living frogs for restaurant tables with Chinese vendors who decapitate, flay, and weigh frogs for eager customers.

The final movements explore oceanic and invertebrate life. Industrial shark fisheries in Norway and Kurrachee capture thousands of sharks annually for oil and lucrative fin exports to Canton. The account surveys regional delicacies, including West Indian hog fish and Chile’s transparent paye fish, before moving inland to describe African locust swarms harvested in sacks, steamed, and winnowed for winter pottage. The journey concludes among aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates: massive concrete salterns in England keeping seventy thousand lobsters, global snail commerce spanning German strawberry-fed delicacies and eight-inch African species, and Chilean parrot-bill barnacles harvested from coastal rock formations.

How It Unfolds

The imperative of regional necessity The narrative begins by establishing that geography and resource availability dictate human diet far more than custom. While English consumers enjoy well-regulated livestock markets, settlers and indigenous communities rely on whatever wild game or preserved flesh they can secure.

Industrial slaughter and preserved provisions In South America, thousands of cattle are slaughtered annually to create sun-dried charqui beef and rendered fat for international trade. Meanwhile, Western American cities like Cincinnati build entire urban economies around millions of hogs, treating swine as both living residents and essential export commodities.

Cold markets and urban dining realities Extreme Russian winter freezes convert livestock and fish into solid blocks that butchers saw apart, generating meat dust for poor children. Moscow's dining halls present a stark contrast between expensive, poorly cooked foreign dishes and clean, traditional Russian meals served by white-robed attendants.

Indigenous hunting and European taboos In the Australian Bush, native hunters expertly skin and roast opossums, wallabies, and snakes over open embers. This raw survivalism prompts a broader reflection on European food prejudices, questioning why table traditions accept heavily disguised meat while rejecting donkeys, horses, and dogs.

Historical price controls and avian harvests London's municipal history reveals centuries of fixed poultry prices, showcasing municipal market regulations from 1272 through royal Tudor banquets. This focus on fowl extends globally to massive egg gathering enterprises on California's Farallon Islands and South African Dassen Island.

Amphibian commerce and deep-sea fisheries Market practices surrounding frogs illustrate sharp cultural contrasts, from Parisian fishmongers severing frog legs to Chinese vendors skinning headless specimens by weight. Scale increases dramatically with global shark hunting, where whip-cord nets and harpoons yield thousands of carcasses for fin trading in Canton and oil production in Norway.

Invertebrate menageries and local delicacies The survey concludes with terrestrial and marine invertebrates, from African locust swarms winnowed for pottage to massive artificial lobster ponds holding seventy thousand specimens. Global snail trading and Chilean parrot-bill barnacles complete the comprehensive mapping of human food sources.

The People

The text brings human encounters with food to life through distinct observers and practitioners across the globe. In the Australian Bush, native hunters like Tomboor-rowa and Gnunnumbah seek immediate sustenance after wet weather, tracking carpet-snakes and wallabies across wet terrain. Facing precarious conditions and hungry hunting dogs, they expertly skin, gut, and roast their catch directly over open flame, demonstrating an unadorned mastery of local resources.

In the urban sphere, satirist Sam Slick critiques mid-nineteenth-century culinary pretense. Desiring honest, unadulterated food, Slick finds his efforts thwarted by sophisticated dining machinery that systematically disguises meats, dressing veal and mutton until natural ingredients become completely unrecognisable. Naturalist Mr. F. T. Buckland approaches strange fare with scientific curiosity, seeking an affordable taste of delicacies in Paris. Bypassing expensive restaurants, he negotiates directly with market vendors, observes live preparation, and discovers that French frogs taste remarkably superior to their English counterparts.

Commercial figures also shape this landscape. Sir James Hawes, as Mayor of London in 1575, seeks to protect citizens from exorbitant market gouging by implementing strict price caps on poultry, cygnets, and rabbits. In Africa, hunter R. Gordon Cumming turns environmental plagues into opportunity, utilizing large blankets during cold nights to collect bent branches of dormant locusts to feed himself and his dogs. Meanwhile, Bombay observer Dr. Buist documents Kurrachee fishermen who brave giant sixty-foot basking sharks, using whip-cord nets and harpoons to build a thriving regional trade in fins and oil.

In Its Own Voice

Describing pig farming in the American West, the text highlights how swine dominate local commerce.

In the Western States pork is the great idea, and the largest owner of pigs is the hero of the prairie.

Observing frozen Russian meat markets, the author notes how winter affects local butchery.

The bones and meat being all rendered equally hard by the frost, the animals are sawn up into a number of slices, of an inch or two in thickness, and by this operation a quantity of animal sawdust is scattered on the snow, and afterwards gathered up by poor children, who haunt the market for that purpose.

Examining artificial lobster storage in England, the narrative depicts the crowded conditions inside deep holding ponds.

Even here, however, their cannibal-like propensities are not extinguished; for the powerful make war upon, and incorporate into their own natures, the weak.

What It's Really About

Beneath its broad collection of gastronomic eccentricities, the text explores how culture, geography, and economic necessity construct human dietary boundaries. It argues that culinary preference is rarely a matter of objective quality or absolute disgust, but rather a reflection of local environment, resource availability, and social convention. By placing English butcher shops alongside South American charqui processing, Australian indigenous hunting, and Chinese live-frog markets, the work dismantles assumptions of civilized eating. It exposes the hypocrisies of fashionable dining, where artificial preparation hides familiar meats while unadorned survival fare is labeled barbaric. Ultimately, the work asks what truly constitutes wholesome food, demonstrating that hunger and environmental adaptation inevitably triumph over cultural prejudice when sustaining human life across the globe.

Why Read It Today

This volume will deeply appeal to culinary historians, anthropologists, and curious readers fascinated by global foodways and economic geography. Reading it feels like browsing through an expansive nineteenth-century cabinet of curiosities, overflowing with trade statistics, market price tariffs, and vivid travel anecdotes. What stays with you is the sheer variety of human resourcefulness, from collecting sea-bird eggs on rocky Pacific islets to boiling Orinoco turtle eggs for lamp oil.

However, modern readers must navigate notable historical difficulties. The text reflects nineteenth-century colonial attitudes and racial terminology when describing indigenous populations in Australia, Africa, and South America. Furthermore, sensitive readers may find certain passages unsettling, as the text dispassionately details violent animal slaughter, live skinning of frogs, and throwing live young wallabies into campfires. The inclusion of dense historical price tables and dry export metrics can also slow the narrative momentum. Despite these period flaws, the book offers an extraordinary window into a world where global trade was rapidly expanding, providing a rigorous, eye-opening account of how humanity feeds itself across diverse landscapes.