Where did the Cannibal image of people in a cooking pot originate?

Una’s cartoon got me to thinking about people in cooking pots.

I recall old movies from the 1930’s & 40’s with scenes like this. I think there was even a cooking pot scene in Sharon Stone’s early movie King Solomon’s Mines or maybe a movie in the 70’s based on Allan Quatermain.

I’m curious when this appeared in literature. I’m thinking it must be either H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain stories or Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series. There were other lesser know authors that wrote adventure stories based on Africa.

It’s a given that these early adventure books had unpleasant racial and gender overtones. My teachers discussed this extensively in my junior high literature classes. I’d prefer focusing on the cooking pot myth in this thread.

It is an odd myth because anyone that hunts knows a large animal must be field dressed before cooking. Otherwise the intestines will spoil the dinner. Even nicking the intestines will spoil deer meat when you field dress it.

Any ideas when the cooking pot with live people first appeared in literature?

This article may give some clues.

http://daha.best.vwh.net/boiled/history.html

More from the same site. Illustration may be NSFW so I’ll make the link not live.

http://daha.best.vwh.net/boiled/main.shtm

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of criminal execution by boiling. I can see how that could get transferred to cannibals boiling & eating missionaries.