Cannibalism is a taboo and a reality. Humans eat humans for religion, revenge, hunger, and art. There is more than one way to prepare human flesh. The methods for cooking cannibalistic cuisine are as varied as the reasons for engaging in the forbidden activity. WARNING: some of the text on this list is quite disturbing.

See Also: 10 Facts About Human Cannibalism From Modern Science

10 A Taste of Tlatelcomila

Stained and broken bones from a 2,500 year old site of Tlatelcomila outside Mexico City have not only proved that late pre-classic Mexico experienced cannibalism, we now know how the victims were cooked. Experts were prompted to do analysis based on the red and yellow color of the bones. They uncovered an ancient recipe for human flesh.

Some of the victims were boiled. Others were grilled. The flesh was marinated with indigenous chilies and annatto – seeds from the achiote tree still used in Latin American cuisine. The yellow bones were boiled for a long duration with annatto. The red bones got their color from the intensity of the cooking. Experts replicated the process by boiling cow bones to achieve similar hues. Cannibalism is not just a thing of the past in Mexico Recently reports suggest the Knights Templar Cartel was initiating members by having them devour the hearts of children.^[1]

9 Deep-Free Genitas

[WARNING: Web searching Mao Sugiyama results in images of the meal he cooked – I strongly recommend against looking.] In 2012, Japanese chef Mao Sugiyama served up his own genitalia to five intrepid diners. A self-described asexual, Sugiyama underwent elective genital surgery just after his 22nd birthday. He then prepared his penis, scrotum, testicles with button mushrooms and parsley. Sugiyama announced the culinary experiment via twitter. The guests paid $250 a plate. Six signed up. Five showed. However, a gaggle of onlookers came out to witness the bizarre spectacle. The overflow diners were feed crocodile-based dishes, while the intrepid five were served the main event.

The story ignited a firestorm of curiosity. Many were appalled and contacted the authorities. Curiously, cannibalism is not illegal in Japan. Given the voluntary nature of Sugiyama’s sacrifice, there was nothing police could do to stop the affair. There is a long history of eating genitals. Testicles are considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. Lamb testicles are particularly popular. Some batter them with eggs and crumbs. A classic “rocky mountain oyster” is pan or deep-fried, like Sugiyama’s junk.^[2]

8 Cannibal Cookbook

Human minced meat mango tartare. Human tenderloin with cider. These are just some of the recipes contained within “To Eat or Be Eaten – A Guide to Cannibalism.” Cascos Chamizo’s work contains handy charts for butchering humans, pages of stats justifying cannibalism, and of course, recipes. The work navigates which pieces should be avoided – for lack of nutrition or their potential health risks.

Spanish-born Chamizo is not a cannibal – just a conceptual artist. The project is not about promoting man-eating – but, in his own words, “exploring global issues like lack of resources, overpopulation, and issues around consumerism.” Cannibalism elicits powerful emotions and people become engaged. Chamizo’s recipes are real. They come from experimenting with animal cuts that resemble what could be harvested from a human. Interestingly enough, most western countries do not have a ban on the consumption of human meat.^[3]

7 Grilled with Pindo Palm

Peru’s Guayaki tribe knows a thing or two about eating humans. They were endo-cannibals, who eat their own dead. They do not hunt down enemies for food. However, they won’t pass up an opportunity for meat. They indicate that human flesh is sweet – like wild hog. It is a little more tender and covered in a layer of yellowish fat, making it unique amongst jungle animals.

Their recipe: girll the human flesh with the bud of the pindo palm. If a man is being eaten – boil the penis, and give it to a woman. Eating male genitalia means they will give birth to a boy. The Guyaki look forward to being devoured by their loved ones. The only way for the Ove, or soul, to reach the heavens is through ritual endo-cannibalism. The deceased will actually haunt the living until there are consumed.^[4]

6 Human Haggis

In 2013, New York police officer Gilberto Valle was arrested for plotting to kidnap, torture, and eat female victims. The “Cannibal Cop” searched terms like “human meat recipes” and “how to cook a girl.” The manhunt for Valle’s co-conspirators became an international affair. Dale Bollinger, a nurse from Canterbury, England, was arrested by authorities soon after. Using the screen name “MeatMarketMan,” Bollinger described eating multiple females, the pork-like taste of human flesh, and even provided a recipe for human haggis using heart and lungs. Apparently, feet are his favorite delicacy.

The saga of the “ Cannibal Cop” posed an interesting question: can we be found guilty of fantasy? Valle claims he was merely providing stories for the online community of “vores.” Short for “carnivore,” vore is actually a common fetish. On Dogpile’s list of top 100 porn search terms, “vore” came in at #85 – just below “small tits” and slightly above “clown.”^[5]

5 Banana Leaves & Hot Rocks

In 2006, Australian journalist Paul Rafaele became the first white man to travel beyond the pacification line of Indonessian Papua New Guinea. He ventured into the territory of cannibalistic members of the Korowai Tribe. According to the Korowai, they do not eat people – they eat khakhua. These parasitic spirts possess the body of a man – never a woman – and slowly devours their host from the inside out. They must eat the khakhua – just as it ate the human it took over. The Korowai are big on revenge.

Korowai cook humans like hogs – in ovens made of leaves and hot river rocks. However, they are quick to point out that human flesh tastes more like cassowary than pig. The individual parts are wrapped in banana leaves and given out to the clan. The head belongs to the family that killed the khakua. They eat every except the hair, nails, and penis. Children are strictly forbidden from participating. Khakua are too strong for the young.^[6]

4 Roasted Maize Cakes & Rotten Flesh

The Wari’ of Brazil eat both the flesh of their enemies and their loved ones. However, they do not consider themselves cannibals. This tribe long lived in isolation from the outside world. Wari’ interactions with outsiders – or wijam – were hostile. The Wari’ did not considered wijam people. The Wari’ eat the flesh of their dead as part of complex funerary rites depicting their worldview.

The Wari’ do not relish consuming their dead. They allow the body to rot for two to three days. It was then cut up and grilled. Once ready, the meat was shredded and placed on a woven mat next to roasted maize cakes. The flesh is consumed with sticks – contact with the fingers is taboo. The rotten state exaggerates the unpleasantness. Occasionally the bones were macerated and consumed with honey. The Wari’ consider burying loved ones and allowing them to rot to be as taboo.^[7]

3 Corpse Curry

In Pakistan’s Bhakkar district, two brothers were arrested for digging up the grave of a 24-year-old woman and cooking her in a curry. Farman Ali and Arif Ali were arrested after the grave of Saira Parveen was discovered empty just two days after her funeral. An investigation led to the brothers’ house, where police discovered the remains of Parveen, along with the partially consumed body of a four-year-old girl. The brothers were charged with desecrating graves and sentenced.

After serving two years in years in prison, the brothers were arrested again. Complaints about the smell of rotting flesh led authorities to their home, where authorities discovered the head of a child. The brothers admitted to cooking the youngster in a curry. We do not know details of their recipe. However, Punjabi cuisine is rich, robust, and full of flavor.^[8]

2 Human Soup

The Jesuits described the Xiximes as “the wildest and most barbarian tribe of the New World.” Reports of their cannibalism have been dismissed as European bias. However, archeologists recently unearthed bones that prove these inhabitants of Northern Mexico were man-eaters. Untouched for centuries, the cache was discovered 8,530 feet above sea level in Cueva del Maguey – a village built into a cliff-side cave in the pine forests of Durango.

According to missionary reports, the Xiximes had a preferred method of cooking flesh. Body parts were cooked in pans until the bones could be stripped clean. The flesh was then cooked in a soup containing corn and beans. The cannibal practice was deeply rooted in the Xiximes worldview. The cycles of life and death were forever entwined. After corn harvest, bands of warriors would be dispatched to find human prey. Lone men were easy targets. Occasionally small forest battles were engaged in for this purpose.^[9]

1 Cuisine of the Cannibal Islands

In 2003, Fijians apologized for eating Rev. Thomas Baker. The English missionary was the only white man to die of cannibalism in Fiji’s history. Overcome with grief, the Fijians have long since moved beyond this practice. However, he former British colony was once called the Cannibal Islands. Man-eating was a part of Fijian culture from 2500 years ago until the late 19th century. People who died of natural causes were never eaten. Only those killed made good food. Although most food was traditionally eaten with hands, forks were used to eat flesh. Human meat was not to be touched, believing it caused skin disease.

In his 1883 work ‘Camping Among Cannibals’, Alfred St. Johnston describes Fijian cannibal culinary technique: flesh was either baked whole in ovens, or cut up and stored in earthenware pots they used for cooking. Certain herbs were nearly always cooked with the flesh, either to prevent indigestion or as a sort of savory stuffing – I know not which.^[10]

About The Author: Abraham Rinquist is the Executive Director of the Winooski, VT Branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the co-author of “Codex Exotica” and “Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.”

Food has evolved a lot. It’s easy to take the complexity of the recipes and technology we enjoy today for granted—but it wasn’t always this way. There was a time when things weren’t so sophisticated and took quite a lot longer.

If you’ve ever wondered what food tasted like back then, you’re in luck. We have the answer. We’ve managed to preserve and recover recipes from the time of Richard II all the way back to the Sumerian empire, and you can still try them today.

10The Forme Of Cury
AD 1390

The Forme of Cury is England’s oldest surviving cookbook. When you serve one of the recipes you can find in it, you’re tasting the same food somebody ate in the 14th century. What’s more, you’re tasting the same food King Richard II ate.

The book was compiled by King Richard II’s personal chefs, and it’s full of dishes that were served to the king of England himself. There are over 190 recipes compiled in there altogether, ranging from the simple to the exotic. Some recipes are as simple as throwing peeled garlic in a pot of water and oil and then sprinkling saffron on top, while others call for porpoise or whale meat.

One place you can try the dishes is at the Cafe at the Rylands, which tested out several of them with their customers back in 2009 and kept a few of the more popular choices on hand. Otherwise, you can just cook them yourself. The full cookbook in its original Middle English can be downloaded here, while several simplified recipes can be found here.

9Annals Of The Caliphs’s Kitchens
AD 1000 AD

The Annals of Caliphs’ Kitchens, an ancient book by a man named Al-Warraq, is the oldest Arabic cookbook still in existence. The book is filled with over 600 different recipes you can try, some of which are incredibly different from the things you’ve tasted today. Some of these gives really unique insights into how food used to be prepared. One sauce, for example, calls for the cook to leave milk out in the sun for 50 days—a majorly different process from how most people do it today.

The book also has comments on culture, proper behavior, and health—including how to avoid a hangover. The book recommends eating cabbage before going out drinking and then making a stew called “Kkishkiyya” in the morning, which is meant to calm down your headache and your stomach pain.

You can buy the book online. Or, if you’re planning on going out drinking tonight, you can get the recipe for Kkishkiyya online for free right here.

8Apicius
(c. AD 500)

If you want to find out what kind of decadent feasts a Roman emperor would gorge himself on, you’ll want to read Apicius. This cookbook is believed to have been written by Marcus Gavius Apicius, a successful Roman chef. Nobody knows for sure exactly when it was written, but it’s at least 1,500 years old.

The food in it was apparently revolutionary in its time and had some unique discoveries on how to treat meat, most of which sound completely mouthwatering. One, for example, suggests stuffing a pig’s mouth full of dried figs and feeding it honeyed wine before killing it. The book has over 500 recipes, and more than 400 of them are served dripping in sauce.

You can read the original cookbook here—although there is a bit of a challenge in recreating these. The book was intended to be used by experienced Roman cooks, so most of the recipes don’t give quantities of ingredients or cooking times. For the most part, you’d have to go by taste and instinct.

A recipe for pork with apples, however, has been recreated by The Silk Road Gourmet with modern, specific instructions, so you could try one taste of the Roman Empire today.

7The Life Of Luxury
300 BC

The first three entries on the list are from after the death of Christ, and so they’re full cookbooks that aren’t too different from what we use today. With “The Life of Luxury,” though, we’re going farther back—and things start getting a bit different.

The Life of Luxury is meant to be funny. Rather than just telling you how to cook food, it’s written as a parody of overblown epics, complete in full verse. It’s hilarious—at least, the academics who research it assure us it is, anyway. For most people, though, jokes like “a rather rough ox-tongue . . . is good in summer around Chalcis” might not exactly hold up 2,300 years later.

It’s believed that the book would be put on display during banquets so that people could glance in it and have a chuckle while eating, but the book itself didn’t actually survive. The only reason we know anything about it is because another writer named Athaneaues quoted it in a book called Philosophers at Dinner, written in AD 200.

You can read the parts that survived, though, online here—and you can try recipes that were written before the birth of Christ.

6Garum
600–800 BC

Garum is a salty fish dish—incredibly salty. This is a dish that, in some recipes, calls for as much salt as fish, so if you fry it up with a one-pound fish, you’re supposed to throw an entire pound of salt into the bucket.

This recipe wasn’t written down as neatly as the first few were, but a writer named Laura Kelley who specializes in ancient food has done her best to figure it out. She’s managed to track down records from as far back as 600–800 BC that describe it as a “Carthaginian sauce,” and so we know it was being prepared at least that long ago.

Kelley has also gone to a lot of work trying to recreate it. She mixed together instructions from the oldest documents she could find with a few instincts on what tasted well and then put it together. You can find her instructions here and do it yourself—but you’re going to need a bit of patience. This a recipe from a different era that used different technology, so it takes nine months of fermentation to get it ready.

5Midas Touch Beer
700 BC

You’ve probably heard the story of Midas, whose every touch turned things to gold, but you might not realize he was a real person. Obviously, King Midas couldn’t turn everything he touched to gold, but he did live, and he did die. And 2,700 years later, we found his tomb.

There wasn’t any gold in Midas’s tomb—he was buried with some of his possessions, but they were ironically all made of bronze. There was, however, something very interesting: the surviving residue of Midas’s beer.

Chemical investigation of the beer in Midas’s cups gave us enough information to actually recreate it, revealing that people in that time drank something altogether different from what we have today. The drink was made of a mixture of wine, beer, and mead, sort of like something you’d mix together if all you had was a few drops left in a few nearly empty bottles and strong determination to get drunk.

This one takes a lot less effort to try, because the Dogfish Brewery has reverse-engineered it and sells it around the world. Reviews call it muddled, flat, and lifeless, but it’s got to be worth it just for the experience of tasting a liquor King Midas himself loved so much that he was buried with it.

4The Babylonian Tablets
1700–1600 BC

Yale University managed to get into its possession a set of tablets descended all the way from Bablyon, 3,700 years ago, filled with recipes. This is very old food—historians believe that the fact that some of it is cooked in liquid was groundbreaking for its time, as this was prepared in a time so far back that cooking with water just hadn’t occurred to anyone yet.

The first person to thoroughly analyze them, Jean Bottero, didn’t exactly give them a positive review. He called the food “fit for only his worst enemies.” The recipes are, admittedly, a bit simple—one dish, for example, has the exotic-sounding name Akkadian but translates to a much less appealing “meat cooked in water.”

Still, people have gone to great lengths to prove Bottero wrong. Brown University has tried to improve on Bollero’s interpretations of the recipes, claiming they can be made delicious. A full, modern-style recipe for one of the dishes, “Wildfowl Pie” can be found online here.

3Mersu
Before 1600 BC

According to Jean Bottero, there are only two full recipes older than the Babylonian Tablet, one of which is for mersu. Bottero describes the mersu tablet as “recipe” for a “cake,” although all the tablet actually says it that dates and pistachio were delivered to make a dish called mersu

The rest of this comes from theories based on the name and other similar dishes, so we aren’t necessarily right about how mersu was made. Still, there are recipes you can try that give out best guess.

The oldest recipe actually found was from a city called Nippur and was apparently used as a sacrificial offering to the gods. It includes figs, raisins, minced apples, garlic, oil, cheese, wine, and syrup, which makes it sound like the most decadent and spectacular treat in the world.

Some suggestions on how to put together your own mersu can be found here. For one this old, you won’t exactly find a full recipe—but you’ll be able to put together something close.

2Kebabs
1700 BC

I will admit that eating a kebab may not be as unique of an experience as some of the others on this list.

A kebab, for those unaware, is meat, perhaps skewered through with a stick, and some form of this meal is popular all around the world. Still, it’s worth noting just how remarkably ancient kebabs are. There is definitive evidence that people in Greece were eating them as early as the 17th century BC, which means that every time you bite into a Greek kebab you’re sharing an experience someone had almost 4,000 years ago.

Even the Chinese kebab, called chuan, is believed to just have been an adaptation of the Greek recipe, picked up from European traders about 2,000 years ago. It’s believed that the Chinese tried the Greek recipe, added a few spices to fit their own palate, and then adopted it as their own. There’s evidence from Chinese tombs that they ate them as early as AD 220.

So, anywhere you are in the world, any time you bite into a kebab, you’re biting into a history that goes back almost 4,000 years.

1Sumerian Beer
1800 BC

This incredibly ancient recipe for Sumerian beer isn’t exactly a recipe at all. Instead, it comes from a poem dedicated to Ninkasi, the goddess of beer. The poem just happens to be weirdly detailed. The poem praises Ninaski by saying things like, “You are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven / puts in order the piles of hulled grains” often enough and with enough detail that people have been able to actually recreate the liquor fairly accurately.

The beer it makes has to be drunk with straws and apparently tastes fairly similar to hard apple cider. Unlike Midas Touch, though, it can’t be sold en mass. The beer has to be drunk right away or else it goes bad—so the only way you can try this one is if you make it yourself.

Which you can do. Read the poem for yourself right here. Just make sure you have a bappir and some large reed mats ready.

Mark Oliver contributes to several websites, included Cracked, The Onion’s StarWipe. You can see everything he writes on his website.)

We tend to think of medieval food as bland or boring. After all, there were no chocolates, potatoes, or tomatoes. (They all came from America.) But some medieval foods were so strongly flavored that we would find them unpalatable today, especially because people back then loved to mix fragrances like rose water or lavender with their dinners.

In medieval times, the very best food was eaten by the king and his court. And no king was more lavish than Richard II, who was known across Europe for his opulence.

So we are lucky that a recipe book written by his best chefs has survived to the modern day, containing no fewer than 196 recipes. It is called The Forme of Cury, and you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg if you can get your head around Middle English.

Let’s dig in.

10 Funges

This recipe—No. 10 in The Forme of Cury—simply calls for funges (the medieval word for “mushrooms“) and leeks to be cut up small and added to a broth, with saffron for coloring. Easy.

However, it also asks us to add “powder fort.” This was a well-known spice mixture in medieval times, much like garam masala is today. Powder fort was usually made from pepper and either ginger or cinnamon.

However, as this food was made for the king, they probably used a more complex mix, likely including cloves or saffron. For a powder fort mix you can try at home, combine 28 grams (1 oz) of cinnamon, 28 grams (1 oz) of ginger, 28 grams (1 oz) of black pepper, 7 grams (0.25 oz) of saffron, and 3.5 grams (0.125 oz) of cloves.^[1]

Pepper was the most common spice in medieval Europe, followed by cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Mushrooms were cheap and widespread in medieval England. So this dish would have been quite affordable but still well outside the reach of most medieval people.

9 Cormarye

Sometimes, kings needed to impress their guests, and the best way to do that was to serve them a big hunk of pork in a rich sauce. Cormarye, which is Recipe No. 53 in The Forme of Cury, would have been the main feature of a royal feast. The red wine and pork loin joint made it an expensive recipe even by modern standards, and the exotic coriander and caraway spices would have cost a fortune back then.^[2]

Make a sauce from red wine, ground pepper, garlic, coriander, caraway, and salt. Roast the pork joint in it. Then add the sauce and the drippings to a broth and serve them together.

8 Toastie

Yes, you read that right. Richard II’s personal cookbook contains a recipe for a toastie—or tostee, as they called it. If someone served us this in a cafe nowadays, however, we might wonder if they’d made a mistake.^[3]

This recipe, which is No. 93 in The Forme of Cury, is more like jam on toast than a modern-day toastie. Mix together red wine and honey in a saucepan. Add ground ginger, salt, and pepper. Cook it until it’s thick, and then spoon it over toasted bread. Chop up some fresh ginger and sprinkle it over the top.

7 Payn Ragoun

If you’ve ever wondered what medieval candy tasted like, this is it. Payn ragoun is essentially a medieval-style fudge, though they would have served it alongside meat or fish rather than as a snack or dessert.

You can find a modern version of the recipe here.^[4] But to paraphrase: Mix some honey, sugar, and water together, and simmer over a low heat. Then add ground ginger.

The recipe actually calls for the cook to dip his finger in it. If it hangs when it drips back down, it’s ready. Add pine nuts, and stir until it thickens. Then leave the mixture to harden, and cool in a bread or cupcake mold.

6 Poached Eggs

The medieval method of cooking poached eggs—or pochee, as they called them—was almost exactly the same as it is today. “Take Ayrenn and breke hem in scaldyng hoot water.” Translation: Take eggs and break them into scalding hot water.

These medieval poached eggs wouldn’t have been served on toast for breakfast, though. They were much more likely to have been cooked en masse and served at a banquet on a plate alongside a specially prepared sauce.

This No. 90 recipe in The Forme of Cury has an accompanying sauce, though it is unlike any we’d make today. Whisk together two egg yolks, sugar, saffron, ginger, and salt. Add milk, and cook until it thickens, not letting it boil. Then serve. Find a modern translation of the recipe here.^[5]

5 Verde Sawse

We all know salsa verde as a key component of modern Mediterranean cuisine. It seems that Richard II was also a fan of this popular sauce because The Forme of Cury contains a recipe especially dedicated to it—Recipe No. 140.^[6]

This medieval version of salsa verde calls for parsley, mint, garlic, thyme, sage, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, wine, breadcrumbs, vinegar, and salt to be mixed together and served as is.

4 Crepes

It seems that crepes were a popular medieval sweet food. They are mentioned in Chaucer’s writings as “crips” and in Recipe No. 162 of The Forme of Cury as cryspes. Medieval French crepes were the closest to what we think of as crepes today, but cakes called crepes also existed in England and Italy.

A French recipe for crepes from 1393 can be found here.^[7] The English version was a dough made of flour and egg whites which was rolled in sugar once it was cooled. The end result was more like a doughnut or powdered cake.

3 Compost

Recipe No. 100 of The Forme of Cury is called compost, though it had a different meaning back then. Short for “composition,” this was the medieval equivalent of throwing all your leftover vegetables in a Crock-Pot and leaving them to simmer. This was probably the closest that royal cuisine got to peasant food but with a much richer sauce.^[8]

This particular recipe called for parsley roots, carrots, parsnips, turnips, radishes, cabbage, and pears to be diced and boiled until soft. Then they were sprinkled with salt and allowed to cool before being put in a large bowl with pepper, saffron, and vinegar.

The cook would then boil wine and honey in a saucepan and simmer for a while before adding currants and spices. This was poured over the vegetables, and then the entire dish was served.

2 Payn Fondew

Bread pudding is a dessert that is commonly eaten in the United Kingdom today. Most people know that it’s old, but few know that it actually dates from medieval times. Recipe No. 59 for payn fondew is effectively an early version of bread pudding.

Fry some bread in grease or oil. Mix egg whites in red wine. Add raisins, honey, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and simmer until it thickens. Then break up the bread, add it to the syrup, and let the bread soak up the syrup. Sprinkle with coriander and sugar.^[9]

Nice to know the modern craving for sugar isn’t quite so modern, right?

1 Almond Milk Rice

Medieval people loved to cook with almonds. Many recipes in The Forme of Cury contain them, so it should be no surprise that they also enjoyed almond milk. The rice in this recipe would have come from the other side of the world, so only the richest could afford to make this recipe.

This was basically a medieval rice pudding, and you can find a recipe for it here.^[10] Cook the rice, drain it, and place it in a saucepan. Then cover it with almond milk, and simmer for a while. Add honey and sugar, cook until the whole mixture thickens, and voila! Medieval rice pudding.