The Tao of Travel

And there groweth a manner of fruit, as though it were gourds. And when they be ripe, men cut them a-two, and men find within a little beast, in flesh, in bone, and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit I have eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvellous in his works.

—The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Tartar Traveling Cuisine

When going on a long expedition, [the Tartars] carry no baggage with them. They each carry two leather flasks to hold the milk they drink and a small pot for cooking meat ... In case of need, they will ride a good ten days' journey without provisions and without making a fire, living only on the blood of their horses; for every rider pierces a vein of his horse and drinks the blood. They also have their dried milk, which is solid like paste; and this is how they dry it. First they bring the milk to the boil. At the appropriate moment they skim off the cream that floats on the surface and put it into another vessel to be made into butter, because so long as it remained the milk could not be dried. Then they stand the milk in the sun and leave it to dry. When they are going on an expedition, they take about ten pounds of this milk; and every morning they take out about half a pound of it and put it in a small leather flask, shaped like a gourd, with as much water as they please. Then, while they ride, the milk in the flask dissolves into a fluid, which they drink. And this is their breakfast.

—

The Travels of Marco Polo,

translated by Ronald Latham (1958)

A Morning Skalk in the Hebrides

Their fowls are not like those plumped for sale by the poulterers of London, but they are as good as other places commonly afford, except that the geese, by feeding in the sea, have universally a fishy rankness.

Their geese seem to be of a middle race, between the wild and domestick kinds. They are so tame as to own a home, and so wild as sometimes to fly away.

Their native bread is made of oats, or barley. Of oatmeal they spread very thin cakes, coarse and hard, to which unaccustomed palates are not easily reconciled. The barley cakes are thicker and softer; I began to eat them without unwillingness; the blackness of their color raises some dislike, but the taste is not disagreeable. In most houses there is wheat flower, with which we were sure to be treated, if we staid long enough to have it kneaded and baked. As neither yeast nor leaven are used among them, their bread of every kind is unfermented. They make only cakes, and never mould a loaf.

A man of the Hebrides, for of the women's diet I can give no account, as soon as he appears in the morning, swallows a glass of whisky; yet they are not a drunken race, at least I was never present at much intemperance; but no man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which they call a

skalk.

The word

whisky

signifies water, and is applied by way of eminence to

strong water,

or distilled liquor. The spirit drunk in the North is drawn from barley. I never tasted it, except once for experiment at the inn in Inverary, when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. It was strong but not pungent, and was free from the empyreumatick [burnt] taste or smell. What was the process I had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.

Not long after the dram, may be expected the breakfast, a meal in which the Scots, whether of the lowlands or the mountains, must be confessed to excel us. The tea and coffee are accompanied not only with butter, but with honey, conserves, and marmalades. If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.

In the islands however, they do what I found is not very easy to endure. They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of Cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odors with the fragrance of the tea.

—Samuel Johnson,

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

(1775)

The Raw Meat of the Druze

The Druze custom of eating raw meat fascinated [Lady Hester Stanhope, in 1812]. She recounted later, "I purchased of a Druze an immense sheep, the tail weighing eleven pounds, and desired it to be taken to a village, where I ordered the people assembled to eat. When I arrived, the sheep was alive; the moment it was killed it was skinned, and brought in raw upon a sort of dish made of matting, and in less than half an hour it was all devoured. The women ate of it as well as the men: the pieces of raw fat they swallowed were really frightful."

—James C. Simmons,

Passionate Pilgrims: English