Today be* Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties!
From Gastro Obscura:
The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe
William Dampier’s food-writing firsts included the use of the words “barbecue” and “chopsticks.”
*If you would like to know more about how to conjugate the verb "be" (I be; you be; he,she,it be) Mango Languages offers a course, Start Learning Pirate:For all the perceived glamour of piracy, its practitioners lived poorly and ate worse. Skirting death, mutiny, and capture left little room for comfort or transformative culinary experience. The greatest names in piracy, wealthy by the day’s standards, ate as one today might on a poorly provisioned camping trip: dried beef, bread, and warm beer. Those of lesser fame were subject to cannibalism and scurvy. The seas were no place for an adventurous appetite.
But when one gifted pirate permitted himself a curiosity for food, he played a pioneering role in spreading ingredients and cuisines. He gave us the words “tortilla,” “soy sauce,” and “breadfruit,” while unknowingly recording the first ever recipe for guacamole. And who better to expose the Western world to the far corners of our planet’s culinary bounty than someone who by necessity made them his hiding places?
British-born William Dampier began a life of piracy in 1679 in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche. Orphaned in his late teens, Dampier set sail for the Caribbean and fell into a twentysomething job scramble. Seeing no future in logging or sugar plantations, he was sucked into the burgeoning realm of New World raiding, beginning what would be the first of his record-breaking three circumnavigations. A prolific diarist, Dampier kept a journal wrapped in a wax-sealed bamboo tube throughout his journeys. During a year-long prison sentence in Spain in 1694, Dampier would convert these notes into a novel that became a bestseller and seminal travelogue.
Parts of A New Voyage Around the World read like a 17th-century episode of No Reservations, with Dampier playing a high-stakes version of Anthony Bourdain. Aside from writing groundbreaking observations on previously un-researched subjects in meteorology, maritime navigation, and zoology, food was a constant throughout his work. He ate with the locals, observing and employing their practices not only to feed himself and his crew but to amass a body of knowledge that would expand European understanding of non-Western cuisine....
....While you won’t find flamingos, penguins, or turtles on too many contemporary menus, several contributions from A New Voyage reshaped our modern English food vocabulary.* In the Bay of Panama, Damier wrote of a fruit “as big as a large lemon … [with] skin [like] black bark, and pretty smooth.” Lacking distinct flavor, he wrote, the ripened fruit was “mixed with sugar and lime juice and beaten together [on] a plate.” This was likely the English language’s very first recipe for guacamole. Later, in the Philippines, Dampier noted of young mangoes that locals “cut them in two pieces and pickled them with salt and vinegar, in which they put some cloves of garlic.” This was the English language’s first recipe for mango chutney. His use of the terms “chopsticks,” “barbecue,” “cashew,” “kumquat,” “tortilla,” and “soy sauce” were also the first of their kind.....
...Grammar Notes
No interpretation is created equal. Grammar Notes, color-coding, and features that focus on specific grammatical nuances between target and source language strengthens your understanding of Pirate language structure.
- Call Someone Names
- Express Surprise
- Give Sailing Commands
- Greet a Friend and a Superior
- Pay a Compliment
- Invert the Simple Sentence Structure
- Understand the Usage of Be
- Use the 2nd Person Pronoun Ye
- Use Me as a Possessive
