在適應和維持熟悉的習慣之間：19世紀加勒比海的早餐

Between Adaptation and the Maintenance of Familiar Habits: Breakfast in the Nineteenth-century Caribbean

這篇文章探討了在歷史學中較少被研究且明顯邊緣的主題：早餐。由飲食、食材、菜餚和早餐等面向的分析，協助我們去發現19世紀加勒比海地區在文化和社會不為人知的一面。文中以殖民者與旅行者的筆記中關於餐食以及認知性飲食不和諧（cognitive dietary dissonance）的紀錄為主要研究素材，當中闡述在當地所品嘗的多樣化早餐與其原有早餐概念的差異性。此篇文章展現殖民地日常生活的兩個面向。第一，不管是英國的政治菁英還是美國的經濟菁英，不論他們是心甘情願抑或是逼不得已來到這裡，都必須了解並接受不熟悉的飲食以及在早餐時需與當地奴隸食用相同的食材。第二，他們持續在熱帶氣候的環境中，努力在維持健康和保持熟悉習慣之間找尋平衡點。

"This article discusses the relevance of an understudied and apparently marginal topic for historical research, the topic of breakfast. In order to evaluate how the analysis of diet, ingredients, dishes and meals such as breakfast can help us to discover hidden aspects of the cultural and social environment of the nineteenth-century Caribbean, it focuses on colonists and travellers’notes about their meals and on their cognitive dietary dissonance, that is, the difference between their ideas, perceptions, and the reality in the ways they described the various breakfasts they met. The essay mainly reveals two aspects of daily life in the colonies: on the one side, both the British political elite and the US economic one had to accept that, willingly or not willingly, they had to stick to an unknown diet and a breakfast that had the same ingredients as that of the slaves. On the other one, they continuously struggled to find a balance between their health, familiar habits and the tropical climate."