The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe
December 2, 2023 11:21 PM Subscribe
The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe. William Dampier’s English food-writing firsts included the use of the words barbecue and chopsticks.
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.
Noteworthy in that it does not include mayo.
Said for the people who insist on doing guacamole wrong. And also in a way that should constitute a food crime worthy of The Hague's attention.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 4:16 AM on December 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
Noteworthy in that it does not include mayo.
Said for the people who insist on doing guacamole wrong. And also in a way that should constitute a food crime worthy of The Hague's attention.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 4:16 AM on December 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
Original article from Atlas Obscura, for those of us who don't wish to give Pocket any traffic.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:20 AM on December 3, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:20 AM on December 3, 2023 [9 favorites]
Nthing the text, I think it is still very readable. Here's the guacamole excerpt:
This fruit has no taste of itself, and therefore it is usually mixed with sugar and lime-juice and beaten together in a plate; and this is an excellent dish. The ordinary way is to eat it with a little salt and a roasted plantain; and thus a man that's hungry may make a good meal of it. It is very wholesome eaten any way.posted by Ashwagandha at 5:16 AM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
Man knew what he was talking about
posted by Baethan at 5:19 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Baethan at 5:19 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
This guy has got to make an appearance in the next season of Our Flag Means Death.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:31 AM on December 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 7:31 AM on December 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
The history of guacamole is not so easy. Dampier was observing natives of Panama adding lime juice. Limes are not native to the Americas.
Guacamole the word comes from Nahuatl for 'Avocado sauce' and it is likely that the Aztecs were simply mashing avocados. Later additions such as garlic, tomatoes, lime etc. are all likely part of a rich food history which is not completely known and with regional variations.
posted by vacapinta at 7:36 AM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
Guacamole the word comes from Nahuatl for 'Avocado sauce' and it is likely that the Aztecs were simply mashing avocados. Later additions such as garlic, tomatoes, lime etc. are all likely part of a rich food history which is not completely known and with regional variations.
posted by vacapinta at 7:36 AM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. written in the late 19th Century but set in the early 18th Century, Long John Silver is the ship's cook, among other things.
His nickname among the crew is "Barbecue,." I was surprised to see that word used in that setting, but it was clearly part of the pirate lexicon.
posted by Repack Rider at 8:44 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
His nickname among the crew is "Barbecue,." I was surprised to see that word used in that setting, but it was clearly part of the pirate lexicon.
posted by Repack Rider at 8:44 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is very interesting, thanks chariot pulled by cassowaries.
If anyone knows of an audiobook version, please share; it would make some 80+ year old sailors and kitchen crew very happy!
posted by drowsy at 9:21 AM on December 3, 2023
If anyone knows of an audiobook version, please share; it would make some 80+ year old sailors and kitchen crew very happy!
posted by drowsy at 9:21 AM on December 3, 2023
Oops, respecting edit rules I need to specify here that I was looking for the audio of A NEW VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD by William Dampier.
posted by drowsy at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2023
posted by drowsy at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2023
Dampier is my favorite pirate/scientist/travel writer. He was deeply problematic (certainly did terrible things to slaves, abandoned his wife for decades, kidnapped children, murdered Spaniards), often the first to write about a place, in some cases the first Englishman to visit a place, and he basically invented travel writing. He was astonishingly well traveled, and one thing I like to do when visiting a place he might have visited is check to see if he wrote about it.
For example, I've visited Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa (on the west coast of Mexico. You may have heard about it in The Shawshank Redemption). He visited in the late 17th century. They anchored in Zihuatanejo (he calls it Chequetan) and then they conducted a raid in ixtapa (you can find it the book pracowity linked to by searching for: ESTAPA; MUSSELS THERE) where they menaced a local woman and her family, forced her to help them conduct a raid (which is great if you are looking for a concise description of a real pirate raid, written by an actual pirate who was there. They just get food.) Then after that success:
Afterwards we gave the woman some clothes for her and her children, and put her and two of them ashore; but one of them, a very pretty boy about seven or eight years old, Captain Swan kept. The woman cried and begged hard to have him; but Captain Swan would not, but promised to make much of him and was as good as his word. He proved afterwards a very fine boy for wit, courage, and dexterity; I have often wondered at his expressions and actions.
Holy shit! Pirates!
Shortly after this, they sail across the pacific. The boy isn't mentioned again, as far as I can tell, and Dampier eventually leaves the ship in the Andaman Islands, but I often think about that poor woman and her kids. The places he describes are basically still as he describes them, at least geographically.
posted by surlyben at 9:39 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
For example, I've visited Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa (on the west coast of Mexico. You may have heard about it in The Shawshank Redemption). He visited in the late 17th century. They anchored in Zihuatanejo (he calls it Chequetan) and then they conducted a raid in ixtapa (you can find it the book pracowity linked to by searching for: ESTAPA; MUSSELS THERE) where they menaced a local woman and her family, forced her to help them conduct a raid (which is great if you are looking for a concise description of a real pirate raid, written by an actual pirate who was there. They just get food.) Then after that success:
Afterwards we gave the woman some clothes for her and her children, and put her and two of them ashore; but one of them, a very pretty boy about seven or eight years old, Captain Swan kept. The woman cried and begged hard to have him; but Captain Swan would not, but promised to make much of him and was as good as his word. He proved afterwards a very fine boy for wit, courage, and dexterity; I have often wondered at his expressions and actions.
Holy shit! Pirates!
Shortly after this, they sail across the pacific. The boy isn't mentioned again, as far as I can tell, and Dampier eventually leaves the ship in the Andaman Islands, but I often think about that poor woman and her kids. The places he describes are basically still as he describes them, at least geographically.
posted by surlyben at 9:39 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sugar and lemon is the standard avocado recipe in Brazil. When I visited relatives in a rural area a couple decades ago, they were not familiar with Mexican guacamole.
posted by ryanrs at 10:02 AM on December 3, 2023
posted by ryanrs at 10:02 AM on December 3, 2023
Noteworthy in that it does not include mayo.
Who on earth is adding mayo to guacamole??
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:28 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Who on earth is adding mayo to guacamole??
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:28 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Very bad people. Maybe not pirate-level bad, but still.. mayo?
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:54 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:54 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
His nickname among the crew is "Barbecue,." I was surprised to see that word used in that setting, but it was clearly part of the pirate lexicon.
I didn't cross-reference this with other sources, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says, and I suspected as much, that the word "barbecue" comes from buccaneer which comes from French boucanier which means someone who dries meat on a boucan, which is a grill. So we have the use of a grill becoming the name of a person, a buccaneer, and then this gets dropped into the West Indies, which were full of pirates, and the word transforms to barbecue, back to the object again. And this happened back in the 1600s.
posted by hippybear at 11:57 AM on December 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
I didn't cross-reference this with other sources, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says, and I suspected as much, that the word "barbecue" comes from buccaneer which comes from French boucanier which means someone who dries meat on a boucan, which is a grill. So we have the use of a grill becoming the name of a person, a buccaneer, and then this gets dropped into the West Indies, which were full of pirates, and the word transforms to barbecue, back to the object again. And this happened back in the 1600s.
posted by hippybear at 11:57 AM on December 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Dampier is also the subject of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, Diana and Michael Preston's 2004 biography.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:58 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Who on earth is adding mayo to guacamole??
Even the mayo people would agree that adding peas is a step too far.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:33 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even the mayo people would agree that adding peas is a step too far.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:33 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Who on earth is adding mayo to guacamole??
Sounds like something Tim Gurner would do, to get millennials to stop buying avocado and buy whatever he's selling instead.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:19 PM on December 3, 2023
Sounds like something Tim Gurner would do, to get millennials to stop buying avocado and buy whatever he's selling instead.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:19 PM on December 3, 2023
Even the mayo people would agree that adding peas is a step too far.
In England, guacamole is peas. Mashed up with vinegar and eaten with fish and chips. That's what Tony Blair thought, anyway.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:21 PM on December 3, 2023
In England, guacamole is peas. Mashed up with vinegar and eaten with fish and chips. That's what Tony Blair thought, anyway.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 3:21 PM on December 3, 2023
the word "barbecue" comes from buccaneer which comes from French boucanier
Barbecue comes from Spanish barbacoa, which comes from Taíno (an Indigenous language of what is now Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Jamaica), as indicated in the source linked.
I'm surprised that tortilla didn't make it into English until 1690 as it must have been relatively common in Spanish in Mexico since it was a staple food for many of the Indigenous peoples.
posted by ssg at 3:33 PM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
Barbecue comes from Spanish barbacoa, which comes from Taíno (an Indigenous language of what is now Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Jamaica), as indicated in the source linked.
I'm surprised that tortilla didn't make it into English until 1690 as it must have been relatively common in Spanish in Mexico since it was a staple food for many of the Indigenous peoples.
posted by ssg at 3:33 PM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
Guacamole the word comes from Nahuatl for 'Avocado sauce' and it is likely that the Aztecs were simply mashing avocados.
Sources differ on this one, others think the original ahuacamolli was avocados, tomatoes and chiles. Fun fact, some sources say that ahuacatl comes from the word for testicle in Nahuatl (which kind of makes sense) and thus ahuacamolli was an aphrodisiac.
posted by ssg at 3:59 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sources differ on this one, others think the original ahuacamolli was avocados, tomatoes and chiles. Fun fact, some sources say that ahuacatl comes from the word for testicle in Nahuatl (which kind of makes sense) and thus ahuacamolli was an aphrodisiac.
posted by ssg at 3:59 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
In England, guacamole is peas. Mashed up with vinegar and eaten with fish and chips. That's what Tony Blair thought, anyway.
I'm willing to believe Tony Blair was wrong about that, since he was wrong about so much else. But the specific reference being made was to the NY Times' cooking section's suggestion to add peas to guac. (Link goes to previous FPP here of that; the NYT still has that recipe available, including a reader's fond comment that their grandmother used to make "guacamole" with both peas and mayo.)
posted by Dip Flash at 4:18 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm willing to believe Tony Blair was wrong about that, since he was wrong about so much else. But the specific reference being made was to the NY Times' cooking section's suggestion to add peas to guac. (Link goes to previous FPP here of that; the NYT still has that recipe available, including a reader's fond comment that their grandmother used to make "guacamole" with both peas and mayo.)
posted by Dip Flash at 4:18 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was today years old when I learned that guac, a substance that I can't stand because I have a limited sense of taste and avocados are a wrong texture in my brain so I cannot teat them... when I learned that guac was made by some people with mashed up peas and mayonnaise.
And I began to think that maybe Trump SHOULD be reelected.
posted by hippybear at 8:20 PM on December 3, 2023
And I began to think that maybe Trump SHOULD be reelected.
posted by hippybear at 8:20 PM on December 3, 2023
Sugar and lemon is the standard avocado recipe in Brazil.
Is there any other ingredients? Brazilan guacamole recipes just gets the standard US version for me when googling. The standard version is good, but I like different stuff and I have avocados, sugar, and lemons. It's actually not uncommon to add fruit to the Mexican version, occasionally pineapple or mango. But still the secondary flavor there is not really 'sweet'.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:31 PM on December 4, 2023
Is there any other ingredients? Brazilan guacamole recipes just gets the standard US version for me when googling. The standard version is good, but I like different stuff and I have avocados, sugar, and lemons. It's actually not uncommon to add fruit to the Mexican version, occasionally pineapple or mango. But still the secondary flavor there is not really 'sweet'.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:31 PM on December 4, 2023
Is there any other ingredients? Brazilan guacamole recipes just gets the standard US version for me when googling.
A more useful term for googling might be "Creme de Abacate." Some recipes have just the three ingredients, others have milk, condensed milk, ice cream, etc. as additional ingredients. Here's an example of a simple recipe.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:07 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
A more useful term for googling might be "Creme de Abacate." Some recipes have just the three ingredients, others have milk, condensed milk, ice cream, etc. as additional ingredients. Here's an example of a simple recipe.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:07 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
For what it's worth, I thought I would not like Brazilian avocado cream. The Hass avocados I can usually buy here have a distinct flavour and it doesn't go with sweet so well, I think. But the avocados I ate in Brazil were super-mild in flavour, near tasteless. It made sense.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:40 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:40 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Many years ago I cooked in a restaurant with some cooks from Mexico City, who made a pourable sauce which they called guacamole, and it involve blending together avocados, mayonnaise, lime juice, cilantro, and fresh green chilies in a vitamix blender. Sometimes roasted peppers and roasted onions were also added to the mix. it went great on everything, but especially scrambled egg tacos for breakfast. They maintained that mayonnaise was the official condiment of Mexico City.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:02 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:02 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hey, this post has been added to the Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:18 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:18 AM on December 6, 2023
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