What We Don’t Eat

There’s a fun article at Smithsonian on foods that used to be popular in the United States but aren’t any more. These include roasted beaver tail, perry, and syllabub.

The three basic factors seem to be cost, a long-term trend away from foods whose sources are too obvious, and marketing. For example, there’s no particular reason that hard cider has made a comeback in recent years while perry, also known as pear cider or “baby cham”, hasn’t.