CHARLES PERRY

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The Original Peculiar Food Compendium

In recent years, we've seen a string of books on insects and other presumably disgusting foods. "The Curiosities of Food: Or the Dainties and Delicacies of Different Nations Obtained From the Animal Kingdom" (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, 2001: $16.95), originally published in 1859, might have been the first.As Alan Davidson explains in his introduction, the author, Peter Lund Simmonds, was a friend of William Buckland, famous in 19th-century England for being willing to taste literally anything.