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Literally eating a crow is traditionally seen as being distasteful; the crow is one of the birds listed in Leviticus chapter 11 as being unfit for eating. Scavenging carrion eaters have a long association with the battlefield, “They left the corpses behind for the raven, never was there greater slaughter in this island,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Along with buzzards, rats, and other carrion-eating scavenging animals, there is a tradition in Western culture going back to at least the Middle Ages of seeing them as distasteful (even illegal at times) to eat,[5] and thus naturally humiliating if forced to consume against one’s will.

In the modern figurative sense of being proven wrong, eating crow probably first appeared in print in 1850, as an American humor piece about a rube farmer near Lake Mahopack, New York. The OED V2 says the story was first published as “Eating Crow” in San Francisco’s Daily Evening Picayune (Dec. 3, 1851),but two other early versions exist, one in The Knickerbocker (date unknown),and one in the Saturday Evening Post (Nov. 2, 1850) called “Can You Eat Crow?”.All tell a similar story: a slow-witted New York farmer is outfoxed by his (presumed urban) boarders; after they complain about the poor food being served, the farmer discounts the complaint by claiming he “kin eat anything”, and the boarders wonder if he can eat a crow. “I kin eat a crow!” the farmer says. The boarders take him up on the challenge but also secretly spike the crow with Scotch snuff. The story ends with the farmer saying: “I kin eat a crow, but I be darned if I hanker after it.” Although the humor might produce a weak smile today, it was probably a knee slapper by 19th-century standards, guaranteeing the story would be often retold in print and word of mouth, thus explaining, in part, the idiom’s origin. In 1854 Samuel Putnam Avery published a version called “Crow Eating” in his collection Mrs. Parkington’s Carpet-Bag of Fun.

A similar British idiom is to eat humble pie. The English phrase is something of a pun—”umbles” were the intestines, offal and other less valued meats of a deer. Pies made of this were known to be served to those of lesser class who did not eat at the king’s/lord’s/governor’s table. Another dish likely to be served with humble pie is rook pie (rooks being closely related to crows). “Pie” is also an antiquated term for the European magpie, a type of crow. There is a similarity with the American version of “umble”, since the Oxford English Dictionary defines crow as meaning “intestine or mesentery of an animal” and cites usages from the 17th century into the 19th century (e.g., Farley, Lond Art of Cookery: “the harslet, which consists of the liver, crow, kidneys, and skirts).”