"In old time these north Britons did give themselves universally to great abstinence, and in time of wars their soldiers would often feed but once or twice at the most in two or three days (especially if they held themselves in secret, or could have no issue out of their bogs and marshes, through the presence of the enemy), and in this distress they used to eat a certain kind of confection, whereof so much as a bean would qualify their hunger above common expectation." --A Description of Elizabethan England
Written for Holinshed’s Chronicles 1577, Book III., Chapter 1; 1587, Book II., Chapter 6
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