Social History of Medicine Vol. 24, No. 1 pp.

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Essay Review Nutritious Foods and Consumption Choices in the Early Modern Period
Paul Lloyd*
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Mark Dawson, Plenti and Grase: Food and Drink in a Sixteenth-Century Gentry Household, Totnes: Prospect Books, 2009. Pp. 335. 30.00. ISBN 978 1 903018 56 9. Trudy Eden, The Early American Table: Food and Society in the New World, Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008; 2010. Pp. x + 193. $37.00. ISBN 978 0 87580 383 8. Joan Fitzpatrick (ed.), Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories, Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. viii + 171. 50.00. ISBN 978 0 7546 6427 7. Susan Pinkard, A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 16501800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xv + 317. 15.99. ISBN 978 0 521 13996 0. Early modern societies witnessed profound changes in the ways that physicians viewed the effects of foods on physical and mental well-being. Dietary advice, however, was just one factor affecting consumption choice. In considering evidence presented in four recently published books that discuss aspects of diet and food selection processes, this essay looks first at ideas relating to healthful eating, and then at the foods that early moderns chose to eat. Trudy Eden describes the food experiences of English colonists in North America, which drew on the ancient concept of the humoral body whereby imbalances between the four bodily humors could be corrected by ingesting appropriate foods that were thought to be either, warm, cold, dry or moist. The outward signs of imbalance could be detected by changes in temperament, and this needed to be monitored regularly, with adjustments in diet remedying any deterioration in intellectual ability and loss of virtue that were prerequisites for leadership. The perfect diet for a gentleperson consisted of light, delicate and fresh foodsthose that were also the most expensivewhich could not be bought by labourers. These people were associated with coarse foods and could therefore never attain a position of authority (Eden, pp. 1517). The ancient notion of food and health was still valid to European physicians of the early Renaissance period. Susan Pinkards book on changes in the cooking, eating and drinking habits of the French also offers a detailed explanation of the humoral body and related dietetics. As age, gender, lifestyle and social status had a bearing on the makeup of the body, eating the right foodswhich

*School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK. Email: psl6@le.ac.uk

The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/shm/hkr001 Advance Access published 14 February 2011

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was seen as an important corrective in re-establishing equilibriumwas inherently an individual and changing phenomenon. In practice, this meant that, unless one was adept at self-diagnosis or had regular access to a physician, general dietary guidelines had to suffice. These dietaries explained that foods incongruous to good health could still be eaten safely provided they were made safe and wholesome through cooking them with the addition of appropriate ingredients (Pinkard, pp. 613). One of several examples is fruit. Physicians viewed many cultivars with disdain because of their phlegm-producing qualities. These attributes did little to help the bodies of English people who were already living in a relatively cold, moist climate. Eden tells us that they circumvented the problem either by cooking fruits with meats or by processing them (Eden, p. 28). One way was to cook such foods with the addition of sugar and spices. These additives, as Mark Dawson has noted in his study of the consuming habits of the well-to-do Willoughby household, were medicinally beneficial, and the Willoughbys, who were undoubtedly aware of the theory of the humoral body, would have used them partly to counter potential imbalances in their diet (Dawson, pp. 170). These substances may sometimes have been consumed in the form of confectionary. Many dietaries explained that sweets were best eaten after meals in order to close the mouth of the stomach and aid digestion. Tracy Thong notes that this wisdom was not lost on Shakespeareexpressed, as it is, in The Taming of the Shrew (Thong in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 111). But spices possessed different qualities. Eden points out that they were humorally unbalanced and housewives arranged an assortment of humorally diverse dishes to accommodate specific individual needs (Eden, pp. 301). It should be noted, however, that many late sixteenth-century meat recipes called for the use of several spices, in addition to herbs and fruit. Thus, one must wonder about the extent to which medical opinion mattered to authors and their readers. Quantitative excess was also considered deleterious, and a diverse assortment of dishes, which theoretically appeared together on the table, often featured as a suggested course in cookbooksincluding some that Elizabeth Spiller writes about in her essay Recipes for Knowledge (Spiller in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 62). Whilst contemporaries like hack-writer Philip Stubbes have passed this off as gluttony, and some scholars have apparently agreed, Timothy Tomasik, like Spiller, has observed that the assortment was intended to offer diners a selection from which to choose (Tomasik in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 40).1 Most suggested dishes were meat-based, but cookbooks also included some meat-free recipes, and although a diet that included flesh was deemed healthier than a vegetarian option, vegetarianism was an issue in the early modern period. Fitzpatrick has noted that Shakespeare may have sympathised with those who abstained from eating meat, and that this may have seemed strange to some of his contemporaries (Fitzpatrick in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 137, p. 140). It would not, however, have seemed strange to at least one English writer (Robert Crab), or to eighteenth-century Swiss writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau.2 The latter claimed that young childrens indifference to meat and fish was because civilized people were naturally vegetarians (Pinkard, pp. 1945). Abstention from meat-eating could have been accommodated within the bounds of humoral theory in Shakespeares day by adapting the diet; but amendments to the centuries-old ideals regarding food and health were, in Rousseaus time, well under way. The new anatomical knowledge, which did not immediately replace long-established wisdom, meant that the optimal diet for a person to attain honour and virtue had to
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Stubbes 1583, fols jj3. Crab 1655, pp. 114.

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change. This ideal diet, which Eden describes as the golden mean, was neither coarse nor overly delicate or sophisticated. Whilst slow-maturing, oily or strong-flavoured foods were considered potentially harmful, light and tender foods were salutary. Quantitatively there was a difference in bodily requirements depending on age, sex and activity levels (Eden, pp. 946; Pinkard, pp. 16671). This mechanical schema meant that the body needed neither constant fine-tuning, nor the exotic foodstuffs that the English elite had used as identity markers. This was not a major concern of American colonisers, for these people ate wholesome and uncomplicated meals (Eden, pp. 96104, p. 132). One way of imparting dietary and culinary knowledge to the middling-sort was through the medium of print, and Spiller explains that by the mid-seventeenth century these two topics had diverged in England (Spiller, pp. 5662). English cookbooks featuring French culinary methods were aimed largely at middle-ranking households, and rank is identified by Fitzpatrick as one of the factors that conditioned early modern diet (Fitzpatrick in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 127). There is no shortage of evidence to substantiate this claim, for, as I have shown recently, examples of foods being chosen for their roles as identity markers can be uncovered with a little exploration.3 Tomasik notes that in seventeenth-century France, the translator of Platinas De honesta voluptate et valetudine maintains the problematic relationship between medical doctrine and culinary pleasure (Tomasik in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 27). This scenario could only occur if mealtime preferences were based on alternative agendas to nutritionally-sound eating, and one of these was status-marking. Ken Albalas empirical research in recreating dishes from cookbooks shows that one needed access to specialist equipment and expensive ingredients to reproduce, without improvisation, the authors tasty meals. Thus, to do the job properly, the housewife (or her cook) needed to be relatively well-to-do (Albala in Fitzpatrick (ed.), pp. 7388). This is not to say that no labourers sampled exotic dishes, for Thong has identified two Shakespeare plays in which servants availed themselves of opportunities to eat their superiors leftovers (Thong in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 114, p. 116). But whilst cookbooks and literary works can usefully indicate culinary and dining practices, household accounts, diaries and other sources can reveal what actually was eaten. In Plenti and Grase, Dawson points out that the raw materials entering the Willoughbys kitchen say little about the exact nature of meals reaching the dining table. But by comparing the familys acquisitions with foods eaten by families of similar status, the author effectively constructs a model of likely consumption of household members. His evidence suggests that diet was based on a strict hierarchy, with estimable foods being reserved for family, guests and high-status servants. Sugar, dried fruit and spices would have flavoured their food, whilst low-status employees would have tasted these exotics perhaps only in seasonal delicacies. It is likely, Dawson writes, that meat served at the top table was marked by variety, and that this contrasted with the daily fare of boiled or roasted beef or mutton fed to lower-level servants (Dawson, pp. 22237). Vegetables and fruit became fashionable with the well-to-do towards the end of the century, and Dawson notes that the Willoughbys were consuming more of these by the late 1500s. But he also identifies a reduction in the quantities of sugar and spices purchased, and this might seem curious given the prevailing medical advice on how best to prepare and eat fruit (discussed by Fitzpatrick in Fitzpatrick (ed.), pp. 12932). Perhaps it was because some of these fruits, such as cherries and strawberries, were enjoyed as Queen Elizabeth had enjoyed them at Kenilworthpicked and eaten straight from their stalks. Other fruits, however, were relatively exotic (Dawson, pp. 13950). In France too, fruits
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Lloyd 2009.

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were sometimes eaten cold for dessert (Tomasik in Fitzpatrick (ed.), p. 30). Eating some cultivars in this way went against dietary advice. Although their harmful effects could be offset by cooking thema process associated with culture and refinement (Meads in Fitzpatrick (ed.), pp. 1478, Fitzpatrick in Fitzpatrick (ed.), pp. 1312), or by processing themcertain questions ought to be asked: why were they not simply left alone? And why was it deemed necessary to cultivate a taste for them? If an answer may be found in people seeing food as an identity marker, it should be noted that this also applied to some English colonisers of America. Eden has found that some colonies endeavoured to reintroduce English foods into their lives rather than eat local produce and risk becoming Indianized. Although not all colonists agreed, some worried about eating savage trash that caused character mutation and undermined social superiority (Eden, pp. 1721). By the mid-eighteenth century, despite food losing its ability to transform a person into someone else, Edens interesting example of the case of Dr Hamiltons Tuesday Club shows that supplying elaborately prepared, tasty meals could still be used as a means to effect socioeconomic or political advancement. At that time, food was still used to express a preferred identitysuch as middling Americansand the luxury foodstuffs purchased by at least one yeoman family suggests that conveying ones relative status through the medium of food still held currency in some quarters (Eden, pp. 13349). Whereas the American diet had improved markedly in the seventeenth century, the popular diet in France had remained poor compared with that enjoyed in medieval times (Pinkard, pp. 199). Although the staple of peasants was grain-based, as it was in England, with dark varieties of bread becoming associated with those described as unthinking labourers (Purkiss in Fitzpatrick (ed.), pp. 1220), the fare of the well-to-do became marked by its variety, delicacy and luxury, as cheap foods were replaced by exclusively prepared exotic alternatives (Pinkard, pp. 218, pp. 71107). It was not only the elite, however, who sought out novel and fine foods. Like the English middling-sort, upwardly-aspiring French bourgeois families wished to mark their chosen identities by eating luxurieseven if these included foods that were considered detrimental to health (Pinkard, p. 62, p. 78). Eighteenth-century medical opinion still viewed fruit-eating as potentially harmful, due to its association with abdominal problems. Despite this, however, buffets of the well-to-do could feature decorative pyramids of fruit reaching several feet in height, and these apparently were consumed with great enjoyment (Pinkard, p. 128, pp. 18891). Another example is the consumption of bouillon. This was becoming more fashionable due to the dietary emphasis on lightness and simplicity; and although it was thought to aid digestion, it was also understood to have a salt content incompatible with promoting good health (Pinkard, pp. 99101, pp. 1612, p. 172). Pinkard also notes the irony that whilst oily and spicy foods were, in the 1700s, thought to be incongruous to good health, and the latter were now considered unfashionable, there was a shift towards drinking slightly viscous beverages such as fortified wines and brandy, and chocolate flavoured with exotic substances such as sugar, vanilla and cinnamon (Pinkard, pp. 2226). Thus in France, as elsewhere, diet was based partly on the need to express association. To summarise, in the early modern period there were great but gradual changes in the ways that physicians viewed the effects of diet on the body. It seems clear, however, that in France, England and North America, diet was based not only on contemporary medical wisdom that considered some foods wholesome and others to be nutritious only after appropriate preparation, but also on the desire to mark ones preferred identity through the selection of exclusive foods and drinks.

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Bibliography
Advance Access published February 2011

Crab R. 1655, The English Hermite, London: S. N. Lloyd P. 2009, Diet, Luxury and Social Identity in England, 15401640, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leicester. Stubbes P. 1583, An Anatomie of Abuses, London: Richard Iohnes, London.

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