Chapter · Brazil · At the table
Eating without bread, drinking without wine
What a Frenchman finds in Tupinamba houses in 1557
A country with no wheat and no vine, and a witness who spends close to a year in it. He describes the gestures, keeps the Tupi names, corrects two books already in print, and reports the experiment he ran himself. This path reads his chapter IX end to end.
Context first
A lesson to read before the others, to set the scene.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this chapter
- 1Grated like a cheeseTo explain how an unknown root is turned into food, the author has it grated like a cheese, whitened like snow and cooked into apothecary’s comfits. Describing the unknown means finding the known thing that comes closest.9 min
- 2The drink made by chewingA drink boiled then chewed, stored by the dozen in vessels of sixty pints, made by the women alone. The author repeats it to correct a book already in print, and sends Europe’s drinkers back to school.9 min
- 3The inside turned back to flourThe dough rises, it is as white as the flower of wheat flour, and under the knife the inside has turned back to flour. The author ran the test to contradict a book, and gives the root the dish that suits it.10 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from first-hand sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives, museums and institutes. A fact without a source does not get written, and every lesson lists its own as direct links.
The rhythm
A lesson is five minutes of cards and four questions. Those questions then come back the next day, then at 3, 7, 21 and 60 days, and that return is what makes it stick. One a day is enough, and you can do several in a row.