The Food Adventurers: How Around-the-World Travel Changed the Way We Eat

A delectable gastronomic expedition into the linked histories of global travel and global cuisine. From mangosteen fruit discovered in a colonial Indonesian marketplace to caviar served on the high seas in a cruise liner’s luxurious dining saloon, The Food Adventurers narrates the history of eating on the most coveted of tourist journeys: the around-the-world adventure. The book looks at what tourists ate on these adventures, as well as what they avoided, and what kinds of meals they described in diaries, photographs, and postcards. Daniel E. Bender shows how circumglobal travel shaped popular fascination with world cuisines while leading readers on a culinary tour from Tahitian roast pig in the 1840s, to the dining saloon of the luxury Cunard steamer Franconia in the 1920s, to InterContinental and Hilton hotel restaurants in the 1960s and ’70s. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Introduction: Eating Apart 8 Part I: From Sail to Steam, 1840–1900 22 1. Ida Pfeiffer 24 2. The Comte De Beauvoir 45 Part II: The Golden Age of Steam, 1900–1945: Itinerary: SS Cleveland 66 3. Water 74 4. Harry Franck 94 5. Durian 116 6. Edith James 139 7. Mangosteen 161 8. Juanita Harrison 182 9. The Rice Table 202 Part III: Aeroplanes and The Age of Mass Tourism, 1945–75: Itinerary: Pan Am 220 10. Myra Waldo 229 11. Intercontinental 250 12. Hilton and Trader Vic’S 273 Conclusion 296 References 306 Further Reading 335 Acknowledgements 337 Photo Acknowledgements 338 Index 339