Waiter, waiter – there’s a kangaroo in my soup!

SQUIRREL PIE: ADVENTURES IN FOOD ACROSS THE GLOBE by Elisabeth Luard (Bloomsbury £16.99)

The food we eat has always been a crucial part of who we are. This is the message at the heart of elisabeth Luard’s book about her culinary travels around the world. The historical snippets she uncovers are fascinating. We learn that hawaii was once known as the Sandwich Islands because Captain Cook (who discovered them) had been sponsored by the earl of that name.

When Marie Antoinette told her subjects to eat cake, she meant kugelhopf, a cross between cake and bread and an Austrian speciality (despite being the poster girl for the French royal family, she was actually born in Austria). And harrods once had a branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina — the company’s only foreign outpost.

A crucial element of any book like this is that you trust the person leading you. Luard passes the test completely. how could you not warm to someone who likes the food in Lyon because there’s a ‘welcome absence of anything that smacks of molecular cuisine or art-on-a-plate’?

The variety of things eaten in different countries is staggering. The peasants of Crete survived World War II in good health because, although German invaders emptied food cupboards and slaughtered sheep and goats, they left the snails untouched.

(One of the recipes included is for ‘bouboutie’, a snail broth whose name denotes the sound of shells bubbling in the pot.)

Meanwhile, 19th-century convicts transported to Tasmania were so hungry they resorted to eating each other. They avoided going to sleep ‘in case they woke up basted on the barbie’.

even when our tastes are for the same thing, differences occur. ethiopian workmen like coffee so much they add it to tea.

And the French city of Arles has a coffee shop that isn’t allowed a roaster because its neighbours complained about the smell — as Luard points out, it’s impossible to ‘imagine objecting for a single instant to the fragrance of freshly roasted coffee wafting down the street’.

There’s even controversy over the direction in which you should slice ham: the Spanish cut Iberico with the grain, the Italians cut Parma ham against it.

The fat in Iberico ham, incidentally, starts

to melt at room temperature, causing it to stick to the plate — so to test if it is genuine, tilt your plate on its side.

Food and the customs surrounding it are always changing.

Indians began copying Western tourists in taking their tea without sugar: the result has been a dramatic improvement in the state of their teeth.

Dentists now spend their time whitening teeth instead, as ‘even the poorest want to look like Bollywood stars’.

But Luard tends to focus on the things that have stayed the same, the recipes handed down through the generations. In her case this means a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book Of Household Management, complete with her grandmother’s handwritten addition that the kangaroo tail soup is ‘good enough but can be improved by a dram of whisky’.

Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu insisted that people cook only state-approved recipes, ordering all traditional books to be burned. ‘Everyone gave the police a book that didn’t matter,’ recalls a veteran, ‘and hid the real ones under the mattress.’

But the most powerful passages are those about Luard’s own life. A childhood as a diplomat’s stepdaughter taught her that ‘home is a state of mind, portable as a penknife’.

And visiting Arles brings back memories of being there with her daughter Francesca, who died in her 20s.

As she buys some chocolates, Luard thinks of the mourning cakes that used to be handed out at funerals to cheer the bereaved.

‘Is it for a gift?’ asks the woman in the shop. ‘Would you like a ribbon?’

‘Yes,’ answers Luard. ‘My daughter would like a ribbon.’