Start Date
1-6-2022 11:30 AM
End Date
1-6-2022 11:45 AM
Description
A safari is usually defined as an expedition to hunt, or observe animals in their natural habitat. This paper’s aim is to explore what food was eaten on African safaris, focusing on the nineteenth-century and then the first half of the twentieth. Safari guides began taking rich British and American tourists on expeditions from the early 1900s. The hunting and display of wild animals were intimately associated with the ideologies of Empire and with Muscular Christian Masculinity. Large numbers of animals were slaughtered as trophies and their carcasses provided ‘chop’ for the hunters and the African porters. The ‘deliciousness’ – or otherwise – of various meats is discussed, for example, the taste of various cuts of elephant. While the male hunters’ motivation was often to provide meat for consumption, in contrast, Mary Kingsley, on her journeys in West Africa, procured food supplies from local colonial outposts and, for instance, enthused about a tin of herring while climbing Mount Cameroon. In the 1930s Ernest Hemingway continued in typical great white hunter tradition and recounts cooking Grant gazelle tenderloin on sticks around the camp fire. While game meat is the main focus of meals, other foods were sometimes consumed.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/efdy-n528
As Soon As the Buck Is Killed, the Liver Should Be Taken Out and Cut Into Thin Slices: On Safari In Africa 1860-1960
A safari is usually defined as an expedition to hunt, or observe animals in their natural habitat. This paper’s aim is to explore what food was eaten on African safaris, focusing on the nineteenth-century and then the first half of the twentieth. Safari guides began taking rich British and American tourists on expeditions from the early 1900s. The hunting and display of wild animals were intimately associated with the ideologies of Empire and with Muscular Christian Masculinity. Large numbers of animals were slaughtered as trophies and their carcasses provided ‘chop’ for the hunters and the African porters. The ‘deliciousness’ – or otherwise – of various meats is discussed, for example, the taste of various cuts of elephant. While the male hunters’ motivation was often to provide meat for consumption, in contrast, Mary Kingsley, on her journeys in West Africa, procured food supplies from local colonial outposts and, for instance, enthused about a tin of herring while climbing Mount Cameroon. In the 1930s Ernest Hemingway continued in typical great white hunter tradition and recounts cooking Grant gazelle tenderloin on sticks around the camp fire. While game meat is the main focus of meals, other foods were sometimes consumed.