Onboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, there's no fine dining: the crew splits into small "messes" of five or six men who share a single mess bowl filled from the great common cauldron. The cook—often a crippled sailor unfit for duty—boils the salted meat in the galley. The menu follows no starter-main-dessert order but the rhythm of the sea: everyday salt rations on sea days, a feast on a good prize day, fresh meat boucan when they make landfall, and rum at all hours to wash it down. Everything is eaten straight from the board, with a knife, balancing on the rolling deck.

Two hallmarks of the golden age of piracy: West Indian rum—currency, courage, and pleasure of the outlaws—and "boucan," the greenwood grill on which the buccaneers smoked meat, a technique that gave them their very name. To spice it all up, Jamaica pepper (allspice), abundant in the islands.