Arago (brother of the physicist and politician Francois Arago) was the official draughtsman on Louis de Freycinet's circumnavigation on the Uranie (1817-1820) visiting South America, Cape Town, East Timor, Australia, many Pacific islands and Hawaii before being ship-wrecked in the Falklands in February 1820.  Best known for his Promenade autour du monde (1822) Arago wrote several other books mostly drawn from his time on the Uranie. 

Here Arago provides first, an amusing collection of anecdotes of Parisian dining habits and experiences in restaurants and at home, in what Oberle describes as "the human comedy and mysteries of Paris", and second, an amusing account of the dining habits of a number of peoples he met on his circumnavigation including the Patagonians & Gauchos of Argentina, the Aborigines of New South Wales, the Chinese, the Papuans, the Negres-Sorciers (Martinique & Reunion), the Marianas Islanders (Guam), Hawaiians, Brazilians, Hottentots and Kaffirs before finishing with a chapter  Repas d'anthropophages, a study of the cannibalistic habits of the Ombaise, the people of the Alor islands, near Timor.