Humboldt did not eat according to a single menu but according to two worlds that his existence connected. In the American field, the rhythm was that of the traveler: a hot drink at dawn before the march, a cold ration of dried meat and corn cake at midday near the fogón (campfire), a medicinal herbal tea in the evening as a precaution. In Europe, it was the mesa, the regulated table of the learned dinners of Berlin and Paris. Each recipe is therefore named by its place in one or the other of these structures, rather than by the starter-main course-dessert grid.

Two American plants that Humboldt observed and described with a naturalist's attention: cacao, which he studied in Venezuelan plantations and whose trade he discussed, and cinchona (cinchona) from the Andes of Loja, the febrifuge bark that fascinated the scholars of his time. One nourishes and warms, the other heals — both speak to the scientific gaze Humboldt cast upon what he brought to his mouth.