The great Sweetmeats debate!

Aidantwab16_ESO

What exactly are those lumpy little fleshy colored blobs of things Elves occasionally pop into their mouths? I've heard several different theories including:

Brains
Lungs
Candy
***

Though in the Daggerfall Covenant, I encountered a female Khajiit who said (paraphrased) "You like what you see? Well no sweetmeats for you!" which may or may not suggest something entirely different...

crowfl56

sweetmeats have always been a reference to human meat.

babylon

Leftovers from when we get our khajiits neutered.

Nestor

Sweet Meats, or Sweetbreads, are the organs of a harvested animal. So, it's the glands, kidneys, liver etc of the animal. They are packed with vitamins and nutrients and people in the middle ages craved these parts of the animals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetbread

Reason they were probably called sweet is they were considered a treat back in the day before farming was providing us vitamins and minerals. They were the most sought out items after an animal was slaughtered. They also were the most perishable as they can not be salted like meat can be.

nerevarine1138

You guys are getting confused.

Sweetmeats are candied fruit.

Sweetbreads are generally offal.

Counterintuitive, right? But they're two different things. And I have no idea where anyone got the idea that it refers to human meat.