Suranyi - 17-C. English Travel Literature and Foreign Foodways

Food and Foodways
ISSN: 0740-9710 (Print) 1542-3484 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gfof20
Seventeenth-century English travel literature and

the significance of foreign foodways
Anna Suranyi
To cite this article: Anna Suranyi (2006) Seventeenth-century English travel literature
and the significance of foreign foodways , Food and Foodways, 14:3-4, 123-149, DOI:
10.1080/07409710600962043
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Food & Foodways, 14:123–149, 2006
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C 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 online

DOI: 10.1080/07409710600962043
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH TRAVEL LITERATURE

AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FOREIGN FOODWAYS1
ANNA SURANYI
Northeastern University
Downloaded by [Vienna University Library] at 03:13 11 November 2015
Early modern English travel writers describing Europe often included detailed
descriptions of foreign foodways in their narratives. These descriptions served not
only to satisfy readers’ curiosity about the details of foreign life, but as a means
of marking cultural differences. In particular, the role of such descriptions was
to emphasize and reinforce attitudes about foreign countries that were not specif-
ically related to food. Instead, the underlying theme was international power
relations. This tendency is most clearly revealed by comparing representations of
the foodways of the Irish and the Ottoman Turks. These regions were superficially
described as having similar traits, such as simple foods, lack of social distinctions
in the serving of food, and a lack of proper accoutrements of food serving.
However, similar practices were interpreted differently according to the needs of
the authors. While the Irish were regarded as bestial and unskilled, the Turks
were seen as deliberately austere, much as the English viewed themselves. Both
the English and the Turks were also able to manufacture refined edibles if they
wished. The typical austerity of Turkish foodways was believed to contribute to
their military discipline, a valuable lesson for the English.
The 17th century was an era with a new flowering of popular

writing. Growing numbers of books were printed about nonreli-
gious subjects, and books themselves were increasingly cheaper
and more available to the public. One of the most popular genres
of writing during this period was travel literature, especially in
English, which proliferated rapidly in the late 16th and early
17th centuries.2 Published works by returned travelers served to
satisfy the curiosity of a people living in an ever-expanding world
that was nevertheless difficult and dangerous to travel in oneself.
They also helped to define for a growing reading public their
relationship with the other societies that inhabited the world,
as well as what it meant to be English. Many of these accounts
consisted of a narrative depicting the adventures and observations
Address correspondence to Anna Suranyi, Department of History, 249 Meserve Hall,
Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115. E-mail: a.suranyi@
neu.edu
123
124 A. Suranyi
of an individual traveler, although some were also more purely

ethnographic works about other societies or advice manuals for
prospective travelers. The largest topical focus was on travel to
Europe and the Middle East.3
Most of these works included some focus on ethnographical
depictions: that is, they described the exotic cultures of foreign
peoples for their English readers, concentrating especially on cul-
tural attributes such as social relations, cleanliness, and foodways.
I have found that English travelers usually expressed consistent
judgments about foreigners. Yet, while they pointed out attributes

both to appreciate and to criticize among continental European
peoples such as the Italians, French, Dutch, and Germans, the
travel writers had much stronger opinions about two particular
groups within the European circuit. The Irish and the Ottoman
Turks were located at the two extreme boundaries of Europe,
geographically, and, as represented by the travelers, socially as
well. Almost uniformly the writers found the Irish to be barbarous
and degraded, thus justifying colonial governance by the English.
Turks, on the other hand, were seen as civilized, austere, and as
presenting a dangerous military threat (despite the improbability
of a Turkish invasion of England). I will demonstrate in this
article that the travelers’ representations of the peoples that they
observed cannot be taken as undiluted observations. Instead,
I contend that these writers were enormously affected by the
cultural prejudices and power relations that existed between indi-
vidual countries or regions and England. This distinction is most
strikingly revealed in a comparison of the travelers’ depictions of
Turkish and Irish foodways, which I undertake below.
Although representations of the Irish and the Turks were
extremely disparate, these two groups were often described as
engaging in the same cultural practices, in particular those
associated with food. Yet I have found that similar traits were
valued entirely differently for the two peoples. For example, a
tendency to prepare uncomplicated foods, or the consumption
of “cakes” rather than bread, were described entirely differently
depending on whether they were taking place in the Ottoman
Empire or in Ireland. This disjunction suggests that particular
foods and customs did not possess concrete values (such as tasty
or disgusting) intrinsic to themselves, at least in these particular
instances. Instead, the values assigned to particular foods and
Seventeenth-Century English Travel Literature 125
foodways were established according to the preconceptions of

the English authors who observed them. Foreign cultures were
first assessed for value as a whole. For example, the Turks of the
Ottoman Empire were known for their austerity, the Irish for their
barbarity. Once such a determination existed, observations of
foodways were marshaled to support previously made judgments.
These a priori representations had such strength that they tended
to overrule any qualities attached to the foods or foodways them-
selves. Thus the most important key to determining how these
cultures were represented was the alignment of power relations

between regions.
Even in the early modern period, discernable “culinary cul-
tures” were in existence, coupled with a perception of “national
distinctions” in the culture of food, which were easily subject to
“national and social stereotyping.”4 National identity was believed
to be discernable in food and furthermore it was a widely accepted
practice to consider national foodways as representative of other
national conventions.5 In addition, eating behavior and manners
were a matter of increasing importance, because they were be-
coming a mark of cultivation and refinement in the early modern
era.6
In fact, alimentary differences have historically been a fun-
damental way to distinguish the key characteristics of a people.
In his book on the role of sugar in history, Sidney Mintz asserts
that “food preferences are close to the center of [human] self-
definition: People who eat strikingly different foods or similar
foods in different ways are thought to be strikingly different,
sometimes even less human.”7 Not only could foodways be used
to define a culture, but they could also be used to delineate the
acceptable limits of cultural behavior. “The subject of distaste,”
folklorist Michael Owen Jones comments in analyzing disgust,
“encompasses aesthetics and moral judgments, and sometimes,
rejection of our fellow human beings.”8 The idea of disgust
implies the potentiality of contamination by the disgusting object,
which should thus be avoided at all costs.9
Depiction of foodways can be one mode of delineating and
stratifying human society. Roger Abrams points out that “The
question of food choice is entailed in the larger symbolic ordering
process by which humans endow the environment with meaning
and feeling. By this we not only develop an understanding of
126 A. Suranyi
what we may eat to survive but how we can place foods in larger
categories that become part of the discourse on the universe.”10
Abrams identifies “deep stereotypes” which call “attention to a
lack of civility through abnormal sexual proclivities, expressive
disabilities, and of course, strange eating habits.”11 Yet while the
notion of deep stereotypes can be a valuable tool in identifying
culturally ingrained reasons for rejecting the behavioral traits of
foreigners, it incorporates an assumption that the actual observa-
tion of foreign attributes is the basis for such judgments.
In fact, it appears that contemporaries could select cultural

characteristics from a random and almost infinite supply of traits,
some pointing in one direction, some in another, to support
an opinion that had already been formulated. Stephen Mennell
suggests that the structuralist approach to distinguishing national
food characteristics (and by implication other traits) is limiting in
that it cannot be used to predict national characteristics or other
differences, and thus cannot really define such attributes, but
merely describe them. He therefore argues for a “developmental
approach” that focuses on “structured processes of change” such
as shifts in “social interdependence and changing balances of
power within society,” based on the sociogenetic approach of
Norbert Elias.12 I follow a similar approach here, though focusing
not on internal cultural change but intercultural dynamics be-
tween various societies. In the case of foodways, while 17th-century
travelers assigned importance to foreign foodways, they carefully
selected particular foods and customs within a broad spectrum of
practices to make their points. Foodways could be depicted so as
to demonstrate a particular assertion, so that a habit possessed
by both a negatively valued culture, such as the Irish, and a
positively viewed one (at least in some instances), such as that of
the Ottomans, could be evaluated differently depending on whose
trait it was, even if the activity appeared to be the same in both
cases.
Early modern works on travel recognized the importance of
food in establishing cultural boundaries, and often stressed the
importance of observing foods and foodways for their readers. In
Sir Thomas Palmer’s manual for travelers, published in 1606, the
author suggested that paying attention to foodways, among other
cultural traits, would be a useful way for travelers to understand
the foreign society in which they found themselves. Palmer wrote
that the traveler should first “consider, whether the people in

generall be civill or barbarous.”13 In order to discern this and
other traits, he continued, “let travailers marke the gesture,
apparell, decencie, conversation, diet, feeding, giving of honour,
and all other actions of the people of a countrey.”14 Expanding
these observations, Palmer maintained that “I propounde foure
censures, which open the verie affects of the heart . . . They are
the exercises, the diet, the apparel, and the conversation of
men.”15 “The second censure” for Palmer was “the diet of men,”
and he maintained that examining diet by itself was a sufficient

way to discern the essence of a society, in particular its military
vigor:
Diet, it is either of meate, of drinke, or of sleepe. Those that be epicures

in any of these three, are to be taxed for the most part for slouthfull,
vitious and effeminate bodies. Those that be temperate in these three, and
accustome their bodies to endure hardnesse, may be observed for men of
action and employment: and as these may proove good instruments for
warre, so the other are scarce good for either.”16
Although no travelers admitted to following a method of travel

or to using a manual, most did in fact pay particular attention to
issues similar to those that Palmer and the writers of other travel
guides mentioned. They devoted sections or paragraphs to the
headings mentioned by Palmer, often quite extensively. In fact,
Thomas Coryate’s 1611 book about his travels (entitled Coryats
Crudities in a pun on vulgarities and the French term for raw
vegetables) was farcically presented in the title page as a work
about food, and the joke was carried on for several pages before
it was dropped.17 More commonly, when descriptions of cultural
manifestations such as apparel or diet occurred, it was clearly
not for the purpose of settling idle curiosity (though curiosity
was likely a factor as well), but to enable the reader to evaluate
the society in question. Thus the Ottoman scholar Thomas Smith
initially apologized for including a description of Turkish food
in his 1678 text on Turkish society and government, writing that
“this paragraph of their diet I should altogether have omitted, as
of too poor and mean a consideration.” However, he justified his
statement by writing that it would only have been true “if it did not
conduce somewhat to the bet(t)er understanding their manners
and tempers.”18
128 A. Suranyi
Most English travelers to foreign countries did not form

close personal relationships with the indigenous peoples they
came across, and many encounters with foreign peoples were
centered around food, in inns or picnicking along the road. The
travelers tended to describe food use as though it were uniform
throughout a culture, thus making foodways useful for cultural
generalizations. For instance, gentleman traveler Fynes Moryson,
whose 1617 Itinerary described most of Europe from Ireland to
Turkey, argued that although traditionally varying food uses were
proverbially ascribed to different Italian cities, it was still possible

to generalize about Italian food in particular, and described Italy
broadly, beginning “the Italians generally compared with English
or French, are most sparing in their diet.”19
England
Only a few writers ventured to discuss English foodways, but

when they did so they normally praised them. In the course of
his account of the sights and scientific curiosities of continental
Europe, the naturalist John Ray immodestly claimed that “no
wonder the Englishmen were formerly noted for excessive eating,
they having greater temptation to eat, both from the goodness of
their meat [i.e., food], and the curiosity [ability] in dressing it,
than other nations.”20 Likewise, “the English have some proper
dainties [delicacies], not knowen in other parts,” Fynes Moryson
reflected in his compendious book, and “in generall, the art of
cookery is much esteemed in England.”21 Moryson emphasized
that the English were skilled at producing “dainties.” He seemed
to have been a great consumer of “dainties”; in any case, he
mentioned them frequently. A dainty (which can be savory as well
as sweet), however, is not only evidence of tasty food, but also of
skill, leisure time, abundance and wealth. In particular, sugar in
the 17th century was a high class, expensive, and refined food,
“costly and a delicacy,” and an example of “advanced technical
processes.”22 The English, then, had the ability to manufacture
and appreciate refined foods.
Yet Moryson also maintained that while the English possessed
the ability to manufacture fancy foods, in fact they usually pre-
ferred not to do so. Moryson continued with his praises of English
eating customs, stating that although some of the English drank
heavily, “in generall the greater and better part of the English,
hold all excesse blameworthy, and drunkennesse a reprochfull
vice.”23 Correspondingly, many 17th century English cookbooks
and other written works promoted “plain” foods characterized by
“a spirit of thrift and economy,” coupled with “an overt hostility
to French extravagance.”24 Thus the English saw themselves as
exemplifying restraint, coupled with a seemingly contradictory
ability to manufacture sophisticated edibles. Comparison with
this ideal was an underlying current in many travel works that
described food. This preference was reflected favorably in English

representations of the Turks.
Europe
Travelers frequently commented on the supposedly national

characteristics of other indigenous cuisines they encountered.
Often other European regions suffered from various deficits of
character regarding food, either from a surfeit of drink or an over
simplicity of food, although they also sometimes earned praise.
France, for example, was already considered a region of fine
cooking, and French fare was a staple of early modern cookbooks,
although there were also complaints about French food, espe-
cially that it was over-sauced without enough substance.25 Moryson
declared that the “French alone delight in mortified meates.”26
The Dutch, known as clean, industrious, pious, and honest,
were often noted for their simple food in contrast to that of the
French. “They feed very sparingly,” Sir John Reresby, a royalist
refugee from Cromwell’s rule, remarked in the 1650 s, “the best
citizens seldom eating warm flesh above twice in a week, and that
boiled.”27 Moryson attested that
nothing is more ordinary then for citizens of good accompt and wealth
to sit at their dores . . . eating a great lumpe of bread and butter with
a lunchen of cheese . . . . They feed much upon rootes [such as carrots,
radishes, or turnips], which the boyes of rich men devoure raw with a
morsell of bread, as they runne playing in the streetes.28
In addition to their homely appetites, the Dutch did not respect

rank, an attribute apparent in their food habits (and elsewhere):
Reresby noted that “the truth is, gentlemen have there the least
respect in any place,” while Moryson averred that “in the chiefe
130 A. Suranyi
innes, a man shall eate at an ordinary [receive a fixed-price meal],

and there gentlemen and others of inferiour condition sit at the
same table, and at the same rate.”29
The Germans, although usually respected otherwise, were of-
ten seen as gluttonous drunkards. “All Dutch [German] consorts
drinke stiffely,” Moryson wrote, with which royalist ecclesiastic Pe-
ter Heylyn concurred in his geographical treatise of 1621, writing
“They are . . . addicted . . . very much to Bacchus.”30 Reresby even
claimed that merely living in the “neighbourhood of the bigger
Germany” had turned the Flemish into drunkards.31 And this

stereotype was shared by the Germans themselves. Even Martin
Luther felt that he was able to differentiate between various
regions in Germany on the basis of appetites.32
As for the food in Germany, it was occasionally repulsive, but
usually tasty. Moryson described his misgivings toward a dish of
calf’s head, also described by Reresby:
In Saxony, Misen, and those parts, they sometimes serve to the table a
calves head whole and undevided into parts, which to us strangers at the
first sight seemed a terrible dish gaping with the teeth like the head of a
monster, but they so prepare it, as I never remember to have eaten any
thing that more pleased my taste.33
In fact, their food was not without art—often it was tempered by

“a most delicate sawce.”34 Because of their preoccupation with
hearty food, the Germans were “much inclining to fatnesse” and
the women especially “by reason of their intemperance in eating
and drinkinge . . . are somewhat corpulent.”35
In contrast, the Italians had a relatively simple, spare diet.
This perception may have been connected to a genuine prepon-
derance of vegetable foods in the Italian diet, which was not as
meat-heavy as the diet in England, France, and Germany (at least
among the upper orders of society).36 Moryson wrote that “the
Italians generally compared with English or French, are most
sparing in their diet. Generally they require small preparation or
furniture of their table, they eate neately and modestly,” although
there were dainties in Italy as well.37 In addition, the Italians
possessed the unique refinement of the fork (not common in
England until the late 17th century), which struck Moryson and
Thomas Coryate so much that they devoted extensive digressions
to it. Coryate adopted its use and exported it to England, where
he was teased for his fastidiousness, while its use was mocked by
Ben Jonson.38
The European regions discussed briefly above (Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, and France) were lands of which the
travelers made both favorable and unfavorable judgments. The
assessments of these regions, while following a general pattern,
also exhibited considerable variation. There appeared to be no
true consensus about European eating habits. Moryson called
the Germans the worst drunks of all, while Coryate claimed
that they drank moderately, and should influence the English.39

Representations of European foodways are clearly worthy of more
consideration and present intriguing complexities. Nevertheless,
in the remainder of this article I will concentrate on the represen-
tations of two regions whose descriptions were especially striking.
Depictions of the foodways of the Irish and of the Turks fell into
more consistent patterns than those of continental Europe, and
possessed a number of particularly illuminating features.
Ireland
The Irish were seen as the most bestial of all Europeans and
received the most vilification in the travel accounts. While many
other peoples were on the receiving end of biting criticisms,
only the Irish seemed to be without redeeming qualities. The
Irish were considered barbaric, slovenly, and filthy. They lived
in a land that could have been fertile, but its fertility was not
realized because of their poor husbandry.40 Every activity that they
engaged in was characterized as lazy, dirty, and barbarous. They
behaved like beasts, to the point of disregarding normal human
behavior, even clothing. And all of these attributes were expressed
in their foodways.
It is important to note here that neither the Catholicism
nor the proximity of the Irish were the root cause of these
assertions against them. Other Catholic countries, such as France
and Italy, did not fare nearly so badly in the travel literature, nor
in depictions of their foodways. This was despite the fact that
France was certainly a source of suspicion and perhaps danger
for the English. Instead, it was Ireland’s more exceptional status
as a colonized region, and one that was constantly threatening to
erupt in rebellion, that resulted in the need to denigrate it.
132 A. Suranyi
As for the “wild Irish,” as many called them, Moryson was

expressing a common viewpoint when he charged that they were
“barbarous and most filthy in their diet.”41 Even “many of the
English-Irish,” or colonists of medieval English origin, “have by lit-
tle and little been infected with the Irish filthinesse”: for example,
“for the cheese or butter commonly made by the English Irish,
an English man would not touch it with his lippes, though hee
were halfe starved; yet many English inhabitants make very good
of both kinds.”42 The Irish were even unaware of the existence of
soap, and mistook it for a foodstuff:
It is strange and ridiculous, but most true . . . when they found sope and
starch, carried for the use of our laundresses, they thinking them to bee
some dainty meates, did eate them greedily, and when they stuck in their
teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us English churles, for so they terme
us.43
Thus in one sentence, Moryson marked the Irish not only as

greedy, but as dirty (because they lacked soap), and inherently
antagonistic to the English.44 It was not unusual to depict the Irish
as beastly, or of an order only a little above animals. For example,
Moryson stated, “They willingly eate the hearb schamrock, being
of a sharpe taste, which as they runne and are chased to an fro,
they snatch like beasts out of the ditches.”45
The central articles of the typical Irish diet were in fact
repulsive, according to the 17th century Englishmen who wrote
about it. Irish fare included a number of strange and unpleasant
tastes such as “shamrocks” and “bonnyclabber” (sour curdled
milk), as well as raw or insufficiently cooked meats, rotten meat
from dead animals, and “cakes” rather than bread.46 The “dainties
proper to England” were “rare in Ireland.”47
The particular culinary offenses the Irish were charged with
were especially telling. The eating of raw or bad meat was used
to portray them as animalistic and alien. Moryson averred with
disgust that “many of these wilde Irish eate no flesh, but that
which dyes of disease or otherwise of it selfe, neither can it scape
them for stinking,” and provided detailed examples, while in
1571 the recusant priest Edmund Campion alleged that “in haste
and hunger they squese out the blood of raw flesh.”48 Even when
the Irish did cook their meat, Moryson asserted that “they devoure
great morsels of beefe unsalted, and they eat commonly swines
flesh, seldom mutton, and all these pieces of flesh, as also the
intralles of beasts unwashed, they seeth in a hollow tree, lapped
in a raw cowes hide, and so set over the fier, and therwith swallow
whole lumpes of filthy butter.”49 He continued with even greater
revulsion that the Irish “seeth them in a filthy poke, and so eate
them, being nothing but froth, and send them for a present one
to another.”50
In general, Irish food was uncleanly and incompetently
made, the travel writers alleged. Chronicler James Perrott con-
curred in the early part of the 17th century that:

Their diet was but mean, feeding more on milk scarcely strained, and
therefore usually stuffed with that which is not fit to be named, much less
to be used, and with butter neither cleanly made nor handsomely kept,
diversely coloured and as evilly savored. The flesh they used, being for
the most part pork and beef, both fresh and not salted, neither was well
dressed.51
In 1610, former soldier Barnaby Rich, who had forged a second

career in popular writing, mocked that:
According to the proverb, God sends meat and the devil sends cooks. So,
it pleaseth God to send them plenty of milk, but as they behave themselves
in the using of it, it is fit for nobody but for themselves, that are of
the uncleanly diet, not only in their milk and butter but in many other
unsavoury dishes besides.52
He continued that:
All the vessels that they use about their milk are most filthily kept: and I
myself have seen, that vessel which they hold under the cow whilst they
are in milking, to be furred half an inch thick with filth, so that Dublin
itself is served every market day with such butter as I am sure much more
loathsome than toothsome.53
John Stevens, an excise collector who was also a Catholic Jacobite

remarked sardonically that the Irish:
. . .Generally being the greatest lovers of milk I ever saw, which they eat and
drink above twenty several sorts of ways, and what is strangest for the most
part love it best when sourest. They keep it in sour vessels and from time
to time till it grow thick, and sometimes to that perfection it will perfume
a whole house.54
One of the most important staples of the early modern

European diet was bread, and the Irish failed as miserably in this
134 A. Suranyi
aspect of their diet as in the others. For the travelers, a key piece
of evidence for the culinary laziness or ineptitude of the Irish was
their lack of bread or the substitution of “cakes of oates for loaves
of bread,” (although according to Campion, “flesh they devoure
without bread,” at all).55 The Irish substitution of cakes for bread
was constantly mentioned by travelers. Moryson referred to the
eating of cakes repeatedly.56 For the modern scholar, it not
entirely clear what was meant by “cakes.” However, the Irish are
known to have baked oaten (and sometimes wheaten or barley)
cakes on a griddle (they are still sometimes eaten in Ireland at the

present day) that were commonly used by travelers or laborers, or
by all sections of society in the absence of leavening.57 They were
described relatively noncommitally in the journal of the excise
collector John Stevens:
We had here . . . barley bread baked in cakes over or before the

fire . . . Oaten and barley bread is the common fare, and that in cakes, and
ground by hand. None but the best sort or the inhabitants of great towns
eat wheat, or bread baked in an oven or ground in a mill.58
and with distaste in 1672 by a friendly French visitor writing

in sympathy with fellow beleaguered Catholics, who normally
praised Irish products, but complained that “throughout all the
inns on the road no other sort of bread is eaten.”59
The English visitors’ revulsion for the hearth cakes was a
reflection of their own threshold of distaste and disdain for the
Irish rather than a quality inherent in the bread itself. Hearth
breads (rather than oven baked) or breads baked without yeast
were considered unhealthy.60 The “cakes” were usually oaten, an
extremely low status grain in the early modern period, and one
criticized by both the English and the French.61 The preference
for bread over cakes mirrored the social distinctions that existed
regarding the consumption of white or brown bread (the former
for gentle folk, the latter for servants).62 While English laborers
did eat brown rather than white bread this difference paled before
the greater one. In fact, by the 17th century, even laborers in
England were demanding bread made from white wheat flours
rather than dark rye and bran breads. Even prisoners were fed
white bread.63 In contrast to Ireland, Moryson wrote that in
Catholic Italy, “they have very white bread, light, & pleasant in
taste,” while in England, the “citizens and gentlemen eate most
pure white bread.”64 Other Europeans also ate loaves of bread

rather than cakes.
Even the feasts of the Irish nobility afforded further occasion
for depicting the barbaric habits and criticizing the disagreeable
food preparation of the Irish. The Irish feast was depicted in
1581 by engraver and author John Derricke, in a long verse piece
first published in 1581.65 Derricke was involved in the military
suppression of an Irish rebellion in the 1570 s. The work was
largely an account of the military defeat of the Irish, illustrated
with engravings, but Derricke included a long digression on Irish

feasting and eating customs, including a visual representation in
a woodcut. As in Moryson’s description, the meal was cooked in
a cow hide, because of the lack of cooking utensils or facilities
among the Irish. The illustration depicted a disorderly outdoor
feast, with popish friar, bard, and harper entertaining the guests,
and various objects strewn on the ground, while soldiers warmed
naked buttocks at the fire.66 In the verse text, Derricke stressed
the dirty and repugnant aspects of the feast, such as the “un-
washed puddings,” the half-cooked meats, which included offal
such as entrails, the feasting of the diners “like ravening hungry
dogs/ devouring gut and limb . . . Whose lips and chaps [chops,
jaws] with blood do swim.”67 He charged that the feasters sat
on the ground instead of using tables, at the best cushioning
themselves with straw. Unlike the Italians who used forks rather
than touch their food with their hands, the Irish didn’t have
any implements or utensils at all, with the exception of knives,
which they used to slash off slices of meat.68 Bread was “very rare.”
Not only were the Irish feasters beastlike, but also rebellious and
dangerous, as the phrase “hellish rout [fiendish bunch]” and the
“stabbers [daggers]” used for the meat emphasized.
In keeping with the image of the Irish as beastly, they were
frequently debased by an association with naked bodies, and
many examples related to food or eating. For example, Moryson
priggishly claimed that “At Corck I have seene with these eyes,
young maides starke naked grinding of corne with certaine stones
to make cakes thereof, and striking of(f) into the tub of meale,
such reliques thereof as stuck on their belly, thighes and more
unseemly parts.”69 Moryson also supported his estimation of Irish
depravity by showing that not just the English were struck by the
beastliness of the Irish. Other Europeans, even other Catholics,
136 A. Suranyi
were appalled by their behavior. In a classically Lévi-Straussian

insult:
An Italian friar comming of old into Ireland, and seeing at Armach this
their diet and nakednesse of the women . . . is said to have cried out,
Civitas Armachana, civitas vana,
Carnes crudæ, mulieres nudæ
Vaine Armach City, I did thee pity,
Thy meates rawnes, and womens nakednesse.70
This quotation, like Derricke’s illustration, directly linked the

practice of eating uncooked meat to the barbarous nudity exhib-
ited by the Irish. In fact, a form of bilateral symmetry is present in
all of these depictions of the Irish, in which disorder, dirt, rawness,
barbarousness, nakedness, wantonness, and an animal-like nature
were contrasted to proper order, cleanliness, appropriately pre-
pared food, civility, clothing, proper chastity and humanity. Yet,
as will become apparent, while a binary analysis seems to describe
what is occurring in depictions of Irish eating and living habits, it
is insufficient to explain it. The primary purpose of these tropes
was exclusionary, not defining. Rather than merely describing the
distinctive characteristics of two groups, the attempt at definition
was itself subsequent to the exclusion.
Turkey
In contrast to Ireland, at the opposite end of Europe, both

geographically and paradigmatically, was the dangerous looming
imperial presence of the Turks. Unlike the Irish, for most writers,
the Turks were a civilized people. Where barbarousness reigned
among the Irish, the word “civility” cropped up repeatedly to
define the Turks. Turkish cleanliness was continually emphasized,
as opposed to Irish grubbiness. Yet the Turks were also feared
as a potential threat, and references to slavery, corruption, and
tyranny were common, as were detailed descriptions of their
military strength and readiness.71
Turkish attributes, like those of other cultures, were reflected
in their diet. Moryson wrote that “for their dyet, the Turkes
live sparingly, I had said slovenly, but that I remembred their
frequent bathings and washings, and the curious clenlinesse of
the linnen, and all other clothes which they weare: but I will
bee bold to say, they feede negligently, and without any pompe
or magnificence.”72 This assessment is an interesting conglom-
eration of positively and negatively charged words. Moryson re-
ferred to the Turks as slovenly, but corrected himself—instead
he maintained that the “curious cleanliness” of their clothing
superceded the previous observation. In early modern England,
“curious” meant careful, painstaking, scrupulous, or skillful.73
In comparison, Moryson had castigated the Anglo-Irish because
although they had “competant meanes [to] use the English
dyet” they did so “some more, some lesse cleanly, few or none
curiously.”74 William Biddulph, “preacher to the company of
English merchants resident in Aleppo,” concurred that “the diet
of the Turks is not very sumptuous, for the most common dish is
pilaw,” but added that it “is good savory meat made of rise[rice],
and small morsels of mutton boyled therein.”75 He continued that
despite the usual simplicity of the Turkish diet, they were capable
of creating more sophisticated fare:
Their more costly fare is sambouses and muclebites [various types of

savory pastries]. Sambouses are made of paste like a great round pastie
with varietie of hearbes and meates therein, not mince but in buckones
[morsels]. A muclebite is a dish made of eg(g)s and hearbs. Their smaller
sambouses are more common, not so big as a mans hand, like a square
pastie, with minced meat therein. They have also varietie of helloway
[halvah], that is, sweet meats compounded in such sort as are not to be
seen elswhere.76
Similarly, John Burbury, an attaché to an embassy sent to Con-

stantinople, commented favorably on the “tender meats,” often
“smoked with perfumes,” that he was served.77
Nonetheless, travelers usually stressed the simple foods of the
Turks, which superficially seemed to resemble the charges leveled
against the Irish. However, simplicity was valued positively in the
case of the Turks. Moryson had complained about the Irish “these
wild Irish never set any candles upon tables: What do I speak
of tables: since indeede they have no tables, but set their meate
upon a bundle of grasse, and use the same grasse for napkins to
wipe their hands.”78 This was not unlike Derricke’s lines. Yet when
Moryson discussed the Turks, he wrote that
The richer sort doe sit at meate like tailors with their knees bended, upon
carpets, or upon the grasse when they eate by rivers sides and in gardens,
138 A. Suranyi
as they doe more frequently then in the house. And their table is so low,
as they may well reach to it sitting upon the ground. About this table they
cast a long towell to wipe their hands, but passengers by the high-way, and
generally the ordinary sort of Turkes, use grasse instead of this towell.79
In this instance, although the Turks and the Irish were engaged in
the same activity, the tone of the text was very different. While the
Irish were described as “wild” and squatted on the ground because
they lacked tables or towels, the Turks ate deliberately at the river’s
side or in a garden, presumably for the pleasant atmosphere,

using a towel if they were able as a napkin, but otherwise using
grass, just as the Irish did.
He continued, the Turks “have no knives, neither have they
variety of dishes set before them, but all sitting in a circle fall upon
one dish” and men “of the better sort” eat out of the common
pot.80 Thomas Smith agreed that “they sit close and round a
copper vessel place upon a stool a foot and a half high from the
ground, which contains their plates and dishes either of tin or
earth (for the emperor does not use silver).”81 Not only were the
Turks bereft of any dining furniture or utensils, but they did not
respect rank, a quality also shown by the Irish (and the Dutch). Yet
these observations were not qualified with negative adjectives such
as filthy or barbaric and were interspersed with phrases which can
be construed as positive. Moryson continued “taking meat, they
all together say a short prayer or grace, and talke not whilest they
eate, but silently fall hard to their worke. They have aboundance
of all things for foode . . . They have plenty of corne (at least
sufficent for their temperate dyet), which is exceeding good, and
farre bigger then ours.”82 The Turks were pious (if misguided),
avoided frivolous talk, and were temperate in their desires. They
were able to produce healthy and flavorful crops, unlike the Irish,
who had to subsist on oatmeal. In fact, the portrayal of Turkish
food as deliberately simple may have been in itself favorable, as
it demonstrated a similarity to the English preference for “plain”
foods which was mentioned above.
An attribute that the Turks did share with the Irish was the
consumption of “cakes” rather than bread. Yet rather than the
unpleasant and uncleanly made oatcakes of the Irish, as William
Biddulph wrote it, the Turks’ “bread is made all in cakes, after
the ancient manner, as Abraham entertained angels with hearth
cakes.”83 Thomas Dallam, an organ-maker, described “little cakes

of breade” which accompanied “a verrie fine bankett.”84 Doctor
John Covel specified a little more clearly when he mentioned
“flat” bread, which possessed “a brackish taste, yet it is not
unpleasant.”85 Moryson, one of the harshest critics of the Irish
and a frequent discussor of breads throughout Europe, wrote
merely that “the Turkes have no other bread but cakes baked
on the harth.”86 Among the Turks, “cakes” likely referred to a
kind of Mediterranean flatbread, made of wheat and probably
quite different from the hearth cakes found among the Irish.
However, the readers of the travel works would not have been
aware of this distinction, lacking any detailed criteria. As far as
they were able to discern, “cakes” among the Irish were evidence
of lack of technological progress; among the Turks, evidence of
austerity.
The coffee drinking of the Turks was also a subject of
comment, often in order to emphasize Turkish sobriety.87 The
antiquarian George Sandys suggested in 1615 that the beverage
imbibed by the Turks was once the libation of the Spartans,
“why not that black broth which was in use amongst the Lacede-
monians?” who were of course famed for both their skill as
warriors and for their austerity.88 Henry Blount also thought it
was the Spartans’ “blacke broth” and assured his readers that
coffee replaced alcohol in the Turkish diet, and that it “dryeth
ill humors in the stomacke, and comforteth the braine, never
causeth drunkennesse, or any other surfeit, and is a harmelesse
entertainment of good fellowship.”89 The diet of the Turks was
moderate and abstemious, not beastly like that of the Irish.
The drinks of the Turks were an interesting exception to
their reputation for simple foods. While many writers mentioned
the Turkish penchant for drinking “cleere water,” in light of the
prohibitions against alcohol (although some writers, usually those
who were more negatively inclined against the Turks, maintained
that they were drunkards in secret), virtually all authors also
discussed the non-alcoholic drinks made by the Turks to replace
alcohol, such as coffee, but also sweet refined drinks, particularly
sherbet. Sherbet was considered a delicacy, a drink made with fruit
juice or other flavorings such as violets, combined with water and
sugar, and was often served cooled. The manufacture of sherbet
was not an easy procedure. William Biddulph pointed out that
140 A. Suranyi
sherbet was made “with snow therein to make it coole,” and

appeared to be quite impressed by the fact that “although the
countrey bee hot, yet they keepe snow all the yeere long to coole
their drinke.”90 The use of snow required a relatively involved
and difficult process including rapid transportation networks and
preservation techniques, and could not fail to have an impact
on European travelers. Sherbet was also mentioned in detail by
a number of others.91
In addition, the consumption of sherbet was especially sig-
nificant because its manufacture required sugar. Sidney Mintz

has argued that during the early modern period, “the connec-
tion between elaborate manufactures of sweet edibles and the
validation of social position is clear.”92 In 17th-century England,
“the rich and powerful . . . derived an intense pleasure from their
access to sugar—the purchase, display, consumption, and waste of
sucrose in various forms.”93 Sugar, which conferred social status
in England, suggested to the English travelers and their readers
that the Turks inhabited a refined society in which such delicacies
were readily available. Sherbet also contained water, and the
abundance of clean water was again the consequence of art not
nature: the water came not from springs, but fountains.94 All of
these indicators served to demonstrate that the Turks had the
capacity to partake of a refined and luxurious diet, and merely
chose not to do so in most cases, selecting austerity and military
readiness over gluttony or soft living.
While the Turks possessed some characteristics very similar to
those criticized among the Irish, such as the simple preparation
of foods or the consumption of cakes, in reference to the Turks
these traits had been transformed into benefits. The resulting
representation of a sophisticated culture which was able to tem-
per its appetites was strikingly similar to the perception of the
English about themselves. Where the Irish were characterized by a
barbarous primitiveness, the Turks had a sophisticated simplicity.
The Irish were ignorant, the Turks ascetic. The Irish were tainting,
the Turks possessing manners that in some respects deserved to be
copied. While among the Irish, a simple life connoted beastliness,
the trait of simplicity among the Turks was not necessarily a
negative quality. In fact, simplicity was both a cause and an
indication of the successful aspects of Turkish society, in which
self control and discipline were key qualities.
While there existed an ample number of texts that attacked

or purported to criticize various aspects of Turkish civilization,
even within these works there was a countervailing tendency to
find positive aspects to Turkish society that could not be discerned
in a similar fashion among the Irish. 17th-century writers strove to
show that the Ottomans possessed a culture worth emulating in
some respects by emphasizing that the Turks were similar to the
English, but also that they surpassed the English in some degrees.
In particular, the writers were impressed by the military discipline
and organization of the Turks.

Unlike the English, the Ottomans possessed a standing mil-
itary that was vigorous and accustomed to war. Turkish austerity
demonstrated military readiness. In terms of diet, as Thomas
Palmer had commented in the quote above from his travel man-
ual of 1606, temperateness in food intake could be correlated to
men accustomed to “hardness” and known for their austerity and
skill in warfare. George Sandys’ and Henry Blount’s references to
the Spartans reflected this belief. Thus, in his survey of Turkish
government, religion and society of 1678, Thomas Smith stated
that among the Turkish troops:
Each has his tin-pot and his coffee, and a quantity of pulse, rice, flesh
dried in the sun, and beaten into powder for his broth, onions and salt in
his little sack; this is the usual entertainment of the camp. Every fountain
supplies them with drink; for it is a crime punishable with death, and as
rigorously executed at such a time, to bring wine among them. They go
soberly to destroy their enemies.”95
Moryson concurred that the Turks

are ignorant of the arts of birding, fouling, hunting, or cookery, and
having no lascivious apetite provoking them to gluttony are content
with simple meates. Their sobrietie in this kind cannot sufficiently be
commended, and since their greatest men can bee content to feede on
rice, and drinke water, it is no marvell, that with ease they keepe great
armies in the field.96
Both these writers emphasized the simple diet of the Turks, but
also that such a simplicity led to military strength and readiness.
Henry Blount likewise admired their discipline: “they march in
ranke and file with wonderful silence, which makes commands
received readily: they are alwayes provided of bisket, dryed flesh,
and store of rice, with a kinde of course butter, so as in the
142 A. Suranyi
greatest desarts, they are in plentie.”97 Even “coarse” butter, so

disgusting when consumed by the Irish, was to be appreciated
among the Turks. Henry Marsh also commended Turkish aus-
terity: “let the world also be taught, the great and admirable
effects of sobriety and abstinence, and the mischiefs of ryot
and excesss” for the Turks “are now by their temperence and
abstemiousness . . . become the mightiest nation, and the greatest
lord of the universe.”98 He unfavorably contrasted the behavior of
Christian armies with those of the Turks, writing:
We therefore march with men few in numbers, and those corrupt in

manners, against millions of men well disciplin’d; for Turks leave their
vices in their houses, from whence we carry ours. In their pavilions and
tents, no deliciousness; arms onely, and necessary provisions: in Christians,
all sorts of table-delicates, luxury and riousness; and commonly, as many
light lacivious women, as men. What wonder then if they conquer who are
preserved by sobriety, parsimony, diligence, fidelity and obedience?99
Cartographer John Speed contended in 1668 that the Turks “are

not to eat or sleep in war, but at full leisure; and are the truest
military men upon earth.”100
In these statements, the authors insisted that the austere
nature of Turkish diet and life, as they perceived it, contributed
directly to the latters’ military success. These martial allusions
were no accident: by emphasizing the sobriety and temperance of
the Turkish military, the writers were subtly urging their English
readers to modify their practices, perhaps even to adopt some
Turkish traits. In this case, likely both Turkish discipline and
their military organization were being hinted at. It was not a
coincidence that in his detailed description of the Turkish polity,
foreign consul Paul Rycaut included a section on the Turkish
military, and then explicitly compared European and Turkish
armies.101
Conclusions
In the books of the 17th-century travel authors, foreign cultures

were observed, absorbed, and digested. Based both on their
observations and on their prior notions, such writers compared
foreign societies with their own, occasionally for the purpose of
critiquing English practices, but usually to praise the English. Yet
I argue that the depictions of foreigners in travel narratives were

more than uncomplicated descriptions. Foreign societies were not
represented purely on the basis of observations, but according
to the relations of power that existed between them and the
English. Texts portraying Turkey and Ireland reveal this tendency
very clearly because in the discussions of their foodways these two
regions superficially appear similar. The travelers represented the
Turks and the Irish as possessing many of the same habits: simple
food and living conditions, little regard for the rank of compan-
ions, no proper eating furniture or utensils, the consumption of

cakes rather than bread. However, depending on the context,
these practices could be interpreted either negatively or positively.
The texts contained indicators that helped readers interpret
descriptions of particular customs appropriately. Thus the travel
writers described the Irish contenting themselves with rotten
meat, inedible bread, and filthy butter, while the Turks combined
austere but tasty foods with sophisticated edibles. The latter
image was strikingly like the writers’ perceptions of the English
themselves. And the Turks went even further, transforming the
asceticism of their foodways into military discipline, potentially a
lesson for the English.
I further contend that the ultimate assessment of a partic-
ular culture went beyond the mere description of its attributes.
Instead, the writers of travel literature marshaled depictions of
cultural traits to support evaluations that had already been made.
Foodways, whether real or imagined by the travelers, mattered less
than previously developed conceptions, such as the need to justify
colonial rule in Ireland or a desire to reform English military
organization via emulation of the Turks. Cultural prejudices in
this case were not based on cultural difference (though significant
cultural differences did exist), but stemmed from another source
of anxiety—international relations of power—which was deeply
imbedded in the fabric of English society.
Notes
1. In writing this article I wish to thank a number of colleagues and others

who read and commented on it, in particular Carole Counihan, Laura
Frader, and Robert Launay, and also the anonymous readers from Food
and Foodways, all of whom offered a number of valuable suggestions.
144 A. Suranyi
2. Works about travel were published in large numbers, frequently reprinted,

and often comprised a large proportion of the libraries of notable figures
such as Milton, Locke, and Isaac Newton, because they were a chief source
of information about the wider world. John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The
Library of John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 13, 18, 19,
27; Jackson Campbell Boswell, Milton’s Library, (NY: Garland Publishing,
1975), 75, 160, 216. By the mid 18 century, travel literature began to change
significantly and to focus increasingly on the personal development of the
traveler as well as the unusual customs he or she observed. See C. Lynn
Batten, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century
Travel Literature, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).

3. Although voyages to North America were rapidly catching up.
4. Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 74;
Stephen Mennell, ”Divergences and convergences in the development of
culinary cultures,” European Food History, Hans J. Teuteberg, ed., (Leicester:
Leiecester University Press, 1992, 278, 280.
5. Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, Carl Ipsen, trans., (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994), 110. The distinct national cuisines that were beginning
to appear were manifested in cookbooks that proclaimed the nationality
of their recipes, such as Le Cuisinier françois of 1651, or Gervase Markham’s
The English Hous-Wife of 1660, the latter of which continually asserted the
Englishness of its audience. See also Mennell, ”Divergences,” and Mennell,
Manners, 66, 71.
6. See Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, translated by Edmund Jephcott,
(Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1994 [1939]); Stephen Mennell,
“On the Civilizing of Appetite,” in Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik,
eds., Food and Culture,(New York: Routledge, 1997), 315–337; Jean-Louis
Flandrin, “Distinction through Taste,” A History of Private Life III. Passions
of the Renaissance, Philippe Ariès and Georeges Duby, eds., trans. by Arthur
Goldhammer, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 274–275.
7. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power , (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 3,
8.
8. Michael Owen Jones, “What’s Disgusting, Why, and What Does It Matter?,”
Journal of Folklore Research, 37(1), (2000), 53–71; 66.
9. Jones, ”Disgusting,” 65.
10. Roger Abrams, “Equal Opportunity Eating: A Structural Excursus on
Things of the Mouth,” In Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States:
The Performance of Group Identity, Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, eds.,
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 24.
11. Abrams, “Eating,” 22.
12. Mennell, Manners, 6–16.
13. Sir Thomas Palmer, An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes, into
forraine Countries, the more profitable and honourable, (New York: Da Capo
Press, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1972 [1606]), 60.
14. Palmer, Essay, 61.

17. The full title of Coryate’s work is Coryats Crudities, hastily gobled up in five
moneths travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia comonly called the Grisons country,
Helvetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands; newly
digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, & now dispersed
to the nourishment of the travelling members of this kingdome. (London: Printed
by W. S., 1611). Coryate was noted for his clowning and wit, and was actually
a court fool in the household of Prince Henry, son of James I. Nevertheless,
his book on travel, which begins as farce, gradually shifts into a more typical
travel journal.
18. Thomas Smith, Remarks upon the Manners, Religion and Government of the
Turks, (London: Printed for Moses Pitt, 1678), 189. Smith was one of
those writers who accused the Turks of barbarousness, yet his account still
contained several subtle praises of the Turks, and coincided well with other
accounts.
19. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell. (New York: Da
Capo Press, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., 1971[1617]), III, 113.
20. John Ray, Observations topographical, moral, & physiological made in a journey
through part of the low-countries, Germany, Italy, and France, (London: Printed
for John Martyn, 1673), 52.
21. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 150. See also “Eugenius Philo-Patriae,” A succinct
description of France, (London: 1700), 17.
22. Sidney W. Mintz, “Time, Sugar, and Sweetness,” In Counihan and van
Esterik, eds., Food, 357–369; 358, 363.
23. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 152.
24. Mennell, “Divergences,” 282. For other examples, see also Mennell, Man-
ners, 84, 92; William Montague, The Delights of Holland, (Printed for John
Sturton and A. Bosvile, 1696), 17. The trend toward simplicity was not
exclusive to the English: There was a general European tendency from the
Renaissance onward toward an increase in elaborateness in preparation of
food, but a decrease in the amount of spices and flavorings used. Delicacy
of flavor and preparation rather than gross quantity was becoming the
fashion. Mennell, Manners, 33, 53–54.
25. For allusions to French cuisine, see Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys,
Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., v. 7, (Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1972); 4: 341; 6: 2, 112; 8: 211; 9: 78, 82, 112, 115, 134,
172, 345, 423–424; or J. Murrell A New Booke of Cookerie, (New York: Da
Capo Press Inc., 1972 [1615]), n. p. For complaints about French cooking,
see Peter Heylyn, The Voyage of France, (London: Printed for William Leake,
1673), 20, 50; “Eugenius Philo-Patriae,” Succinct description, 17; Montague,
Delights, 17.
26. Moryson, Itinerary, III,134.
27. Sir John Reresby, The Memoirs and Travels of Sir John Reresby, Bart., (London:
Printed for Edward Jefferey, 1813), 157.
28. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 97. The Dutch, who were often chided by various
travelers for eating butter (see for example Moryson or Reresby, 159), were
146 A. Suranyi
among the first to substitute it for oil, a trend which swept Europe and was
due to the spread of cattle farming. Montanari, Culture, 117–118.
29. Reresby, Memoirs, 158; Moryson, Itinerary, III, 98.
30. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 85; Peter Heylyn, Microcosmus, (Amsterdam: The-
atrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd., 1975 [Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield, and
James Short, 1621]), 143.
31. Reresby, Memoirs, 158
32. Montanari, Culture, 110, 111.
33. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 82; Reresby, Memoirs, 141.
35. Heylyn, Microcosmus, 143.

36. Montanari, Culture, 112–113.
38. Moryson, Itinerary, I, 208; Coryate, Crudities, 90–91; Jonson cited in Peter
Brears, Maggie Black, Gill Corbishley, Jane Renfrew, and Jennifer Stead,
A Taste of History, (London: English Heritage, 1994), 198. On forks see
Alison Sim, Food and Feast in Tudor England, (Somerset: Sutton Publishing
Limited, 1997), 99. The earliest English fork and knife sets date from the
1660 s. Brears et al., Taste, 198. Both Moryson and Coryate gave cleaniness
and aversion to the touch of others as the reason for using a fork, which
they suggested was used universally by all social classes in Italy. However,
pointing out that it is perfectly appropriate to pick up certain kinds of
foods with one’s fingers, Norbert Elias argues that the use of the fork stems
not from ideas of cleanliness, but ideas about appropriate boundaries
of behavior. He asserts that “the first authority in our decision between
‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized‘ behavior at table is our feeling of distaste.
The fork is nothing other than the embodiment of a specific standard of
emotions and a specific level of revulsion.” Elias, Civilizing Process, 103.
39. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 85–86; Coryate, Crudities, 439.
40. For example, Sir William Brereton, parliamentary commander and diarist,
stated that “it seems to be a good sweet-natured earth, but it hath
been overtilled, and much wronged by the Irish husbandry.” Sir William
Brereton, Travels in Holland the United Provinces England Scotland and Ireland,
1634–1635, (Printed for the Chetham Society, 1844), 149.
42. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 161–162. The “English-Irish” or Anglo-Irish were the
descendants of Anglo Normans who had settled in Ireland in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
44. The Irish were repeatedly castigated for their dirty clothing. For example,
see Moryson, Itinerary, III, 91, 180 or Edmund Campion in James Ware, Two
Histories of Ireland, (New York: Da Capo Press, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
Ltd., 1971; Dublin, Printed by the Society of Stationers, 1633), 18, 110.
46. It is not clear what “shamrocks” were, although they were likely not
the modern plant of that name. They were mentioned repeatedly when
referring to Irish diet. There is some evidence that the term may refer
to watercresses. J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney, (Cork: Cork

University Press, 1954), 33.
48. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 163. Campion in Ware, Two Histories, 18. Note that
Campion was a Catholic priest, despite his notable lack of sympathy for the
Irish.
51. Perrott, Chronicle, in John Harrington, ed., The English Traveller in Ireland,
(Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1991), 74.
52. Barnaby Rich, A New Description of Ireland, (London: 1610) in Harrington,

Traveller , 88–89.
53. Rich, Description in Harrington, Traveller , 89.
54. John Stevens, The Journal of John Stevens, Containing a Brief Account of the
War in Ireland, Robert H. Murray, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), in
Harrington, Traveller , 133.
55. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 163; Campion in Ware, Histories, 18.
56. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 161–163.
57. Louis Michael Cullen, “Comparative aspects of Irish diet, 1550–1850,” in
Teuteberg, European Food, 51.
58. Stevens ”Journal,” in Harrington, Traveller , 133.
59. ”They eat here. . .. cakes called kets, which they bake on thin iron plates
over a fire; being sufficiently baked on one side, they turn them on
the other, till they become as dry as a biscuit. They are made without
leaven, and sometimes so ill baked that a person who is not used to
them cannot eat them” Albert Jorevin de Rocheford, “Description of
England and Ireland after the Restoration,” (1672) in C. Litton Falkiner,
Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the 17th Century, (New
York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), 422.
60. Sim, Food, 87.
61. Cullen, “Irish diet,” 47–48. For a Genevan critique of oat bread, see
Montanari, Culture of Food, 106.
62. The social differences implied by the consumption of brown or white
breads is discussed by R. A. McCance and E. M. Widdowson, Breads Brown
and White, (London: 1956), cited in Jack Goody, ”Industrial Food: Towards
the Development of a World Cuisine,” in Counihan and van Esterik, Food,
355 n. 19; Mennell, Manners, 61; and also in Sim, Food, 8–9. Massimo Mon-
tanari mentions a “hierarchy of bread” that replicated social hierarchies.
Montanari, Food, 106.
63. J. C. Drummond, The Englishman’s Food, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957),
93, 105–106. Medieval peasants, on the other hand, ate ”coarse ’black’
bread” (75).
64. Moryson, Itinerary, I, 70; III, 149, 150 (although ”The English husbandmen
eate barley and rye browne bread, and preferre it to white bread as abiding
longer in the stomack, and not so soone disgested with their labour”).
Moryson admitted that in Irish “cities they have such bread as ours, but
of a sharpe savour, and some mingled with aniseed, and baked like cakes,
148 A. Suranyi
and that onely in the houses of the better sort.” III, 162. On the appeal of
Italian bread, see also Ray, Observations, 363.
65. John Derricke, The Image of Irelande, David B. Quinn, ed., (Belfast: The
Blackstaff Press, 1985; London: John Daie, 1581).
66. Derricke, Image, Plate III.
67. Derricke, Image, 192–193.
68. Moryson concurred, writing “They desire no broath, nor have any use of a
spoone.” Itinerary, III, 163.
70. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 164. For the purposes of the rhyme, Moryson’s
translation is rather free; the friar made no mention of pity.

71. Despite the unlikelihood of a Turkish invasion, it appeared as a persistent
fear even as far west as Britain. For prayers against the Turks, see J.
Larwood and J. C. Hotten, History of Signboards, (Chatto and Lolindus,
1898), 427–429. For sermons against them, see G. B. Harrison, A Second
Elizabethan Journal, Being a Record of those Things Most Talked of During the
Years 1595–1598, (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931), 273, cited
in Nabil Matar, Islam, 6. On celebration of Turkish defeats, see Vitkus,
“Early Modern Orientalism,” 210–211, and Samuel Chew, The Crescent and
the Rose, (New York: Octatgon Books, 1965), 125–127. The Turks did in
fact occasionally launch forays to the British coastline. For evidence of
Turkish slave raiding expeditions on the Cornish and Irish coasts, see
Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the world, 1600–1850, (New York:
Pantheon Books, 2002), 50; Dictionary of National Biography entry ”Sir James
Perrot,” 906 (in 1625); Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age
of Discovery, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 75; John Taylor,
A valorous and perilous sea-fight. Fought with three Turkish ships, pirates or men
of warre on the coast of Cornewall, (London : Printed by E. P[urslowe] for
Edward Wright, 1640).
73. I have taken these definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.
75. William Biddulph, Travels into Africa, Asia and to the Blacke Sea, (New York:
Da Capo Press, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1968 [London, Printed by
Thomas Haveland, for W. Aspley, 1609]), 65.
76. Biddulph, Travels, 65. Biddulph’s sambouses were probably similar to the
pastries called samosas in India, and sambusaks, sambosas, or similar
variants in parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.
77. John Burbury, A relation of a journey of the Right Honourable My Lord Henry
Howard from London to Vienna, and thence to Constantinople, (1671), 186.
80. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 128–129.
81. Smith, Remarks,188.
82. Moryson, Itinerary, III, 128. The word ”corne” indicates wheat in the
phrasing of the times
83. Biddulph, Travels, 42.

84. Thomas Dallam, Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, J. Theodore Bend,
ed., (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1893), 45.
85. John Covel in Early Voyages, 120. Elsewhere he also described ”little flat
loaves of bread (like pancakes),” 260.
86. Moryson, Itinerary, I, 244. See also 216.
87. Coffee drinking was praised in seventeenth-century Europe as an alterna-
tive for alcohol. There have been several analyses of coffee drinking in
the period. See, for example, Montanari, Culture, 124–127. Nabil Matar
suggests that coffee was seen as inebriating, and tied to Muslim connec-
tions. Islam in Britain 1558–1685, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1998), 110–118.
88. George Sandys, Sandys Travels, (London: Printed for John Wiliams Junior,
1673), 52.
89. Henry Blount, A Voyage into the Levant, (Norwood, New Jersey: Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum, Walter J. Johnson, Inc., 1977 [1636]), 105.
90. Biddulph, Travels, 66. Merchant Robert Bargrave also mentioned that
Constantinople was ”furnished” with snow ”the whole Somer-time.” The
Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, Levant Merchant, Michael G. Brennan, ed.,
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1999), 74.
91. See for instance, Moryson, Itinerary, I, 244, III, 129; Sandys, Travels, 51;
Smith, Remarks, 179–180; Burbury, relation, 155, 184.
92. Mintz, Sweetness, 90.
93. Mintz, Sweetness, 154.
94. Biddulph, Travels, 66. Burbury, Relation, 126, 203. Biddulph especially
praised the qualities of Turkish water.
95. Smith, Remarks, 132.
97. Blount, Voyage, 70–71.
98. Henry Marsh, A New Survey of the Turkish Empire, (London: Printed for
Henry Marsh, 1663), Dedicatory Epistle.
99. Marsh, Survey, 90–91.
100. John Speed, A prospect of the most famous parts of the world, (London: Printed
for Roger Rea, 1668), 183.
101. Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, (London: Printed
by J. D., 1687), III, and especially p 98. Rycaut also included elaborate
enumerations of the Turks’ military strength, 86–87.

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Food and Foodways

ISSN: 0740-9710 (Print) 1542-3484 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gfof20

Seventeenth-century English travel literature and

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ISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 online

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH TRAVEL LITERATURE

The 17th century was an era with a new flowering of popular

of an individual traveler, although some were also more purely

judgments about foreigners. Yet, while they pointed out attributes

foodways were established according to the preconceptions of

cultures were represented was the alignment of power relations

In fact, it appears that contemporaries could select cultural

that the traveler should first “consider, whether the people in

and he maintained that examining diet by itself was a sufficient

Diet, it is either of meate, of drinke, or of sleepe. Those that be epicures

Although no travelers admitted to following a method of travel

Most English travelers to foreign countries did not form

proverbially ascribed to different Italian cities, it was still possible

Only a few writers ventured to discuss English foodways, but

described food. This preference was reflected favorably in English

Travelers frequently commented on the supposedly national

In addition to their homely appetites, the Dutch did not respect

innes, a man shall eate at an ordinary [receive a fixed-price meal],

Germany” had turned the Flemish into drunkards.31 And this

In fact, their food was not without art—often it was tempered by

that they drank moderately, and should influence the English.39

As for the “wild Irish,” as many called them, Moryson was

soap, and mistook it for a foodstuff:

Thus in one sentence, Moryson marked the Irish not only as

curred in the early part of the 17th century that:

In 1610, former soldier Barnaby Rich, who had forged a second

John Stevens, an excise collector who was also a Catholic Jacobite

One of the most important staples of the early modern

cakes on a griddle (they are still sometimes eaten in Ireland at the

We had here . . . barley bread baked in cakes over or before the

and with distaste in 1672 by a friendly French visitor writing

pure white bread.”64 Other Europeans also ate loaves of bread

with engravings, but Derricke included a long digression on Irish

were appalled by their behavior. In a classically Lévi-Straussian

This quotation, like Derricke’s illustration, directly linked the

In contrast to Ireland, at the opposite end of Europe, both

Their more costly fare is sambouses and muclebites [various types of

Similarly, John Burbury, an attaché to an embassy sent to Con-

side or in a garden, presumably for the pleasant atmosphere,

cakes.”83 Thomas Dallam, an organ-maker, described “little cakes

sherbet was made “with snow therein to make it coole,” and

nificant because its manufacture required sugar. Sidney Mintz

While there existed an ample number of texts that attacked

and organization of the Turks.

Moryson concurred that the Turks

greatest desarts, they are in plentie.”97 Even “coarse” butter, so

We therefore march with men few in numbers, and those corrupt in

Cartographer John Speed contended in 1668 that the Turks “are

In the books of the 17th-century travel authors, foreign cultures

I argue that the depictions of foreigners in travel narratives were

ions, no proper eating furniture or utensils, the consumption of

1. In writing this article I wish to thank a number of colleagues and others

2. Works about travel were published in large numbers, frequently reprinted,