O PIONEERS!
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Picnics as we know them started out in the Middle
Ages, not as a diversion but as a celebration—a
pep rally of sorts before men would head out for
a hunting expedition. (I suppose, technically, man
has been picnicking since prehistoric times, but
I’m talking about dining outdoors on purpose, not
out of necessity.)
The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan
Davidson cites a 1387 work called Le Livre de
Chasse—the hunting book—which “gives a detailed
description” of a hunting expedition and the meal
beforehand. Two centuries later, an author named
George Tuberville describes a picnic after the
