Every Food and Drink Mentioned in Tolkien's, 'The Lord of the Rings'

I decided upon my re-read of The Lord of the Rings to keep a tally of every food and drink mentioned and their frequency. This proved trickier than I first thought. What defines food or drink? Is every mention of water-- undeniably something people drink!-- a valid tally on the graph? Or would it only count if it was in the context of drinking, and not any and every stream they crossed? Likewise, my instinct was to limit the entries to those reasonably consumed by humanoid characters (elves, hobbits, dwarves) and not say, grass nibbled on by the horses. But then, what of certain characters like Gollum, a humanoid character, who eats unappetizing tidbits such as blood and bones and the odd baby?

I have put together a set of rules to guide myself on what makes the list:

• Must be either something: intrinsically associated as 'food/drink' (i.e, bread, tea, cake) OR commonly and automatically regarded as food/drink in most contexts (i.e., potatoes, milk, strawberries). If it could reasonably be on a grocery list, then it makes the cut.

• The proximity of an item to food is important. I could argue that any mention of a common fruit and vegetable, such as the aforementioned potato and strawberry, counts as 'food', as these are cultivated crops, and more often than not mentioned in the context of 'fields' and 'tilled' and 'garden' (implying they are being grown for consumption). However, if the characters come across a fish, a deer, or water on its own, this would not necessarily count as food/drink. Context! A fish in the river alone is not food, but a fish on a line is. Water in a stream is not drink, but water in a cup is. Only animals mentioned textually for the intention of meat are considered food; mutton, a chicken on the dinner table, a pig intended for slaughter, etc. A cow simply mooing in the field is not food-- who's to say it's for meat and not a milking cow or the family pet?

• Some items may be very well be edible, and even delicious, but would be very unlikely to be found in any supermarket or recognised by the average civilian as 'food'. These might be things like forageable plants such as sloe, dandelions, primrose, acorns, etc. Unless a character is specifically said to forage for or consume these things (or the previously mentioned 'implied context of food', such as a pantry, a store, a larder, a basket), then they shall not be counted.

• Things that are restrictively animal feed (grass, silage, hay) do not count, unless they also happen to reasonably be humanoid food (sugar cubes, oats, an apple).

• Passing mentions of things that are technically edible/ingestible but are not commonly regarded as food do not count. (E.g., Skin, blood, people). This rules out much of Gollum's diet. However, if Gollum is mentioned to eat something reasonably edible (e.g, fish, mushrooms), then it will count.

• If a food is very specific, e.g, 'honey cakes', it will be entered as such and not 'honey' and 'cakes'. Conversely, if the food is vague in its title/descriptive in its components, 'a salty stew of green herbs and mushrooms', then it will be tallied as 'salt', 'stew', 'herbs', and 'mushrooms'.

• Food/drink in proper nouns, such as names of people and places, do not count. For example, Hamfast is not a valid mention of ham, as it does not reference the food at all; instead, the word 'ham' here linguistically means 'home'. After much consideration, I will also NOT count 'Brandy' in names like Brandywine River, Brandy Bucky, Brandy Hall in my tally. The name of the river in Sindarin is Baranduin -- far from any food/drink connotation, as it means 'golden-brown river'. I do concede that, noted in Appendix F, to the hobbits the river conjured up the pun Bralda-hîm which meant "heady ale", which Tolkien "translated" into Brandywine for the sake of the reader. I 'control F'd' a PDF I have of The Fellowship of the Ring and it brought up over 70 matches for 'brandy' which I'm sure were due mostly to names and not actually the delicious drink. This, I think, would skew my data terribly and be very annoying for me to log so it has not made the cut.

• Many mentions are made of eating and drinking, with vague words like 'dinner/tea/supper' and 'vittles' and 'dainties' that don't really specify WHAT they're eating or drinking. Unless an actual food/drink or 'genre' of food/drink (nuts, meat, fruit) is named, I won't count it.

• I shall count every mention of the food/drink, whether it is a unique mention or not. For example, if on page 40, wine is mentioned at dinner, and then again on page 41, we may infer it is the same wine being drunk moments ago, BUT both instances will be counted as a tallymark. This relieves me of confusion ("Wait...is this the same wine as five pages ago?") but is also helpful to see the data of the most common occurrences of each food word.

• To avoid a ridculously long list, I will group very similar items/synonyms into the same category, but be sure to make note of the different terms used. E.g: Wine/old vintage/glass of red/claret.

• When it comes to metaphors: this really does come down to my individual discernment. A voice that is 'oily' would not count, but fields the colour of butter would.

• Magical food/drink such as lembas, miruvor, etc., of course count towards the tally (an exception to the rule of being found commonly in the supermarket).

• Pipe-weed: Not food, even if it is a type of 'consumable' in some sense.

• To cover all bases, I will note at the bottom any cases of items that I did not count but almost made this list or were worth mentioning.

Unique Mentions of Food and Drink: