Apres avoir detourne les fientes seches qui couvraient le sol, on apporta une natte qu’on etendit a terre. Quelques instants apres, on nous servit pour souper un plat qui, a la lumiere vacillante d’un feu, notre seul eclairage, semblait etre compose d’herbages haches cuits, et autour desquels on avait verse du lait. J’avais faim, mais ce mets me semblait detestable par son amertume et par un gout particulier que je ne pouvais definir.
-Voyage en Ethiopie au Soudan orientale et dans la Nigritie (1847 a 1854), Pierre Tremaux, 1862
They say everything looks better by firelight. Not true. Sometimes if you don’t recognize what you’re about to swallow, better not to pick at it in the first place. Add to that the Frenchman Tremaux’s unsurprising yet under the circumstances completely unreasonable insistence on being served haute cuisine at a Sudanese tribal pique-nique, he was left with a taste in his mouth that Escoffier himself couldn’t have defined, not to mention the degout of having to eat it on camel dung covered ground. Better to have ordered the aseeda and eaten standing up.