Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter you should have developed a knowledge and understanding of the health, dietary, socio-economic, cultural and religious factors that affect people’s choice of food, including:
* availability, cost, personal preferences, storage, cooking facilities, and the effects of advertising, promotions and food scares
* how cultural preferences, religion, lifestyle, health and multicultural factors have influenced food production
* the implications that sustainability, food miles, seasonality, local food, genetically modified foods, organic and free-range foods, Fairtrade and Farm Assured have for the environment.

Factors affecting your choice of foods



A range of factors affect your choice of foods. These include the foods available, costs, personal preferences, storage and cooking facilities, the effect of advertising, promotions and food scares.

Availability

Choice depends on the type of food available in the country and place where you live. In developing countries, such as in parts of Africa, there is very little choice and often insufficient food available, and they may not be able to grow produce because of climate, or because they cannot afford expensive agricultural equipment.

In the UK there is a wide variety of food because of technological developments and improvements in the growth, transport, preservation and storage of food. Food technologists have also created many new foods, such as Quorn®. We can import foods that we cannot grow ourselves. In the UK we can go to the supermarket at any time of the year and buy whatever food we want, as long as we are prepared to pay for it.

Cost

One of the most important infl uences on food choice is what people can afford to spend. People have to think of ways they can save money on their food bill, for example:
* using cheaper protein foods, for example, eggs, cheese and pulses
* buying locally grown vegetables or even growing your own
* buying special offers, such as ‘buy one get one free’
* using a variety of supermarkets and planning meals around their special offers
* buying foods with a short shelf life that have been reduced in price
* not wasting foods – the average family in the UK throws away £600 worth of food in a year
* following the advice of the eat-well plate and using more carbohydrates (which are cheaper) in meals
* adapting recipes by swapping expensive ingredients for cheaper ones, for example, yoghurt instead of cream
* planning meals and shopping carefully
* using ‘own-brand’ economy-range products
* buying loose produce, which is often cheaper than the pre-packaged varieties
* using economical methods of cooking.

Better-off people tend to buy more protein foods, so their starch and fi bre intake tends to decrease, while those on lower incomes tend to buy less fruit and vegetables, thus having a lower intake of vitamins and minerals.

Personal preferences

We all have our personal likes and dislikes and are influenced by our senses. We use all of our five senses when we eat. These give us information about the food.
The five senses are:

* Sight– the appearance (aesthetics) of food can make it look more or less appetising. Aspects such as colour, size, shape, age, texture, garnish and decoration will all affect how you feel about the product.

* Sound– some food products make sounds during preparation, cooking, serving or eating. For instance, the crackle of popcorn, the sizzle of bacon, the crunch of crisps and raw carrot.

* Smell– you can detect the aroma of foods, such as ripeness and freshness of apples and cabbage. Aroma stimulates the digestive juices and makes the food seem more appetising.

* Taste– taste buds detect four groups of flavours: bitter, sweet, sour and salt. Flavour develops when the food is combined through chewing and mixing with saliva.

* Touch– the surface of the tongue is sensitive to different sensations, such as moist, dry, soft, sticky, gritty, crumbly, mushy. As we bite and chew food we can feel how hard or soft it is through our teeth and jaw. These qualities are known as ‘mouthfeel’; if they are missing, food is considered to be unpalatable.

Key points

* The characteristics of food that affect our organs are known as organoleptic qualities.
* Smell and taste work together to develop the flavour of food.
* The sensitivity of the tongue is reduced when the food is either very hot or very cold.

Storage and cooking facilities

Food technologists are continually developing new food products that require little preparation and are easy to store and cook.

Most households have a microwave to reheat convenience foods. A refrigerator is considered an essential item of equipment to ensure food safety – if you do not have a refrigerator, your choice is restricted to canned and dried foods.

Many households have a freezer, which means that that they can shop weekly.

If you do not have the skills to prepare ingredients, you can buy them ready-prepared, such as frozen vegetables. Students at university and the elderly, for instance, often have limited cooking facilities. However, these can be expanded through the purchase of a wide range of cooking equipment that will perform different tasks, including low-fat grilling machines, electric woks and electric barbecues.

Advertising and promotions

We are strongly infl uenced by our peer group and by the media. Manufacturers spend many millions every year on advertising, especially on chocolate, crisps, snacks and sweets. Also, manufacturers may promote the product by special offers, free gifts and competitions.

Ways of advertising and promoting food products include:
* advertisements on the television and the internet, in cinemas, newspapers and magazines, and on posters and fl yers
* displays in supermarkets and shop windows
* special money offers, such as ‘buy one get one free’ (bogof) or money-off coupons
* celebrity endorsements by sports or pop stars
* competitions
* free samples or tasting in supermarkets
* free gifts
* eye-catching, attractive packaging.

We watch chefs on the television and see advertising all around us. This influences our choice of food.

Advertising must be legal, decent, honest and truthful, and this is monitored by the Office of Fair Trading.

Food scares

Food scares in the media have a dramatic infl uence on food choice and sometimes result in product sales dropping so dramatically that the company involved ceases to exist. Recent food scares include:
* salmonella in eggs
* hazelnut yoghurts
* listeria in chilled foods
* dioxins in Coke (in 1999)
* E. coli in meat products
* food contamination during production, for example, metals, insects, glass, fabric
* BSE.

Cultural, moral and social influences

Culture

The word culture is used to describe our way of life. A cultural group is a group of people who share the same norms, beliefs and values.

We adopt the eating patterns of our parents from infancy; we learn to like the foods that our families like. Styles of eating and cooking tend to be determined by the availability of cheap, locally grown food products. Rice is the staple crop in India, China and Japan, the potato in Britain and yams in parts of Africa.

Wheat is grown in many countries, but is used in a variety of ways.

In some cultures and religions certain foods are not permitted because they are considered ‘dirty’ or ‘unclean’ or sacred. Manufacturers are influenced by cultures – if there is a demand for a certain type of food they will respond. Certain foods have become an important part of celebrations in many cultures, such as:
* special events in the year, for example, Christmas, Divali
* birthdays
* weddings
* retirements
* special achievements
* celebrating someone’s life.
There are many more.

Religious and moral issues

Religious beliefs influence eating habits, as religions often have laws related to foods.

Hinduism

The cow is sacred to Hindus, so they will not eat beef or any product from slaughtered cows. They avoid foods that may have caused an animal pain, so are usually vegetarians and have many days of fasting.

Sikhism

Sikhs have similar eating habits to Hindus. Again, many are vegetarian. Some do not drink alcohol, tea or coffee.

Islam

Muslims have a set of dietary rules. The pig is considered unclean, so Muslims do not eat pork or any pork products. Other meats and poultry must be slaughtered in a particular way so that no blood remains. This is called Halal meat. Unlawful foods are called ‘haram’ and include alcohol and caffeine.

Judaism

Food is an important part of the Jewish religion. Kosher food is food that Jews are allowed to eat. Meat must be specially slaughtered, soaked and then treated with kosher salt. Jews do not eat pork. Meat and dairy produce must not be eaten at the same meal.

Rastafarianism

Rastafarians eat food that is natural and clean. They do not eat pork and only eat fish that is longer than 30 cm. They cook with coconut oil and do not drink alcohol, milk or coffee.

Buddhism

Most Buddhists are vegetarian.

Lifestyle

Eating habits have been affected by social changes within households during the past 30 years. Changes in lifestyle due to both parents working and the consequent increase in income (two wages) have resulted in people spending less time in the kitchen preparing food from raw ingredients, choosing to buy more foods that are ready to eat or just need reheating, and an increase in eating out. In some homes, due to different members of the family eating at different times, some of the traditional mealtimes of breakfast, lunch and dinner are being replaced by snack meals and takeaway dinners.

Lifestyle factors that affect eating habits include:
* More mothers are employed outside the home.
* More people live alone.
* People travel greater distances to work.
* People have social activities outside the home.
* The use of convenience foods and ready meals, and the availability of takeaways allow people to have more flexible lifestyles.
* There has been an increase in snack foods available.
* There is a wide variety of foods available to choose from.
* There are many types of restaurants in most cities.
* There is less emphasis on the family meal, and family members eat when they want to (grazing).

Health

The nutritional needs of individuals and groups of people are affected by their health. Eating for health means making small changes to the meals that we already eat.
We should all choose foods carefully:
* Overweight people should choose lowcalorie, low-fat foods.
* People recovering from an injury or illness should choose high-protein foods.
* Someone recovering from a heart attack should choose products lower in fat.
* Anyone suffering from high blood pressure is usually advised to have a diet lower in salt.

Many people are in hospital because of diet-related conditions. We do not have deficiency diseases in the UK, but there is a problem because of people eating the wrong foods.

Sustainability issues

Your choice of food products affects the environment. This includes moral issues, seasonality, local food, organic and free-range foods, genetically modified foods, sustainable design, food miles, Fairtrade foods and Farm Assured foods.

Moral issues

Some people may make moral decisions, for example, vegetarians who decide that it is morally wrong to kill animals to eat their flesh. Other current moral issues affecting food production include: intensive farming, genetically modified foods, animal welfare, factory farming, selective breeding.

Factory-farmed animals are often kept in very distressing conditions – cramped, with limited lighting and no room for the animals to move or exercise.

Free-range animals are allowed to live and grow in natural surroundings. Products from these animals will cost the consumer more because the farmer will not produce as much.

Selective breeding has resulted in egg-laying hens that will produce 300 eggs a year. A broiler chicken, reared for meat rather than eggs, will reach its slaughter weight in about 40 days.

Seasonality

This relates to the availability and use of products when they are in season. We have become accustomed to going into supermarkets and buying anything at any time, but the production of crops in the UK is limited to short seasons during the year. The range of products and ingredients available for us to buy is a result of globalisation. This has been made possible by improved storage, preservation and transportation of foods. Our food products travel many miles to reach our table. Think about the effect on the environment of the miles that food travels. This is called the carbon footprint of the product, or food miles.

Key terms

Organic – grown or reared without the use of artificial aids/fertilisers/pesticides/antibiotics

Genetically modified – describes crops in which the genetic structure of the cells has been changed

Sustainability – this means reducing the impact of a product on the environment

Fairtrade – guarantees that disadvantaged producers get a fair deal

Farm Assured – guarantees the highest standards of food safety and hygiene, animal welfare and environmental protection

Globalisation – process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural and political means

Carbon footprint – the amount of carbon emissions produced in the growing, processing and distribution of our food

Local food

Local products means that you are getting quality products with a low carbon footprint. We can eat with the seasons.

A new trend is for households to have boxes of organic local produce delivered to the door.

Organic foods

Most farming relies heavily on artificial chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Around 350 pesticides are permitted in the UK, and it is estimated that 4.5 billion litres of them are used annually. There can be concerns about their long-term effect on us and they can harm the environment too, for example, chemicals in pesticides leach into rivers and pollute the water.

Organic agriculture is carried out to a set of legally defined standards. Producers then pay to have their produce monitored and certified by one of several organic organisations, of which the Soil Association is the largest in the UK. The Soil Association was founded in 1946 by a group of farmers, scientists and nutritionists who observed a direct connection between the health of the soil, food, people and the environment. Today the Soil Association is the UK’s leading organic organisation, with over 200 staff based in Bristol and Edinburgh. It is an educational charity with some 27,000 members and its certification subsidiary, Soil Association Certification Ltd, certifies over 80 per cent of organic farming and food processing in the UK.

Organic farming strictly limits the use of artificial chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Antibiotics for animals are kept to an absolute minimum. Genetically modified crops are forbidden. Organic bodies also demand more space for animals and higher welfare standards.

In Brazil thousands of children pick oranges to be made into concentrate and processed into juice. They are often exposed to high levels of pesticide and may be paid as little as 13p an hour.

So, what does organic mean?
* All food sold as organic must be approved by organic certification bodies and produced according to stringent EC laws.
* It is produced by farmers who grow, handle and process crops without synthetic fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides or any other artificial ingredient.
* It will not contain any genetically engineered ingredients.
* Organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones.
* Organic producers can only use natural fertilisers, not synthetic ones.
Organic foods are considered to taste nicer, avoid the risk of a combination of chemicals and respect soil structure and wildlife

Genetically modified foods

The use of new technology in the food industry is controversial, especially products made by modifying or engineering the genetic make-up of food. It might improve the quality of the food, for instance, blackcurrants can be modified to make them higher in vitamin C, tomatoes can be modified to improve their flavour or keeping qualities.
Advantages of genetically modified (GM) foods are:
* improvements to quantity and quality of food
* can grow in adverse conditions, for example, drought
* herbicide and insect-resistant, therefore thrive better
* high nutritional quality
* cheaper to produce.

The concerns about GM foods include:
* long-term safety is unknown
* environmental effects, as the pollen from GM crops does not stop in one place
* ethics – we need adequate labelling: if a product has over 1 per cent of GM food this must be stated on the label; if it is under 1 per cent it does not need to be stated.

Sustainable design

The choices we make as consumers and designers have an impact on other people, especially elsewhere in the world. If we buy chocolate, coffee or tea in the supermarket there are consequences for the people in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua and many other places. These consequences extend to their families, schools, communities, and so on. We have a moral dilemma whether to buy British or support developing countries in some way. By eating food out of season and from far away we are using up the world’s resources.

Eco footprint

More people are stopping to consider the impact that our food has on the environment. ‘Eco footprint’ is the term used to refer to the measurement of our actions on the environment. As a designer you must consider the effect of your product on the environment from the first stages of your design ideas through to the final making and eventual disposal or recycling of your product.

Food miles

The distance food travels from fi eld to plate is a way of indicating the environmental impact of the food we eat. Half the vegetables and 95 per cent of the fruit eaten in the UK comes from beyond our shores. Food is transported across the world because we want to buy foods out of season. Asparagus is only in season for May and June in the UK, but we want to buy it all year. It comes from Italy or Spain for a few months and the rest of the year it comes from Peru!

Planes are powered by fossil fuel oil. When the oil is burnt it gives off carbon dioxide gas emissions which contribute hugely to global warming. You can offset this by planting trees to absorb the C0² given off. This is called carbon offsetting. If we reduced the amount of packaging used in products, it might reduce costs and save energy in terms of fuel and transportation.

What can we do? Buy local! This means supporting local growers. It is much better for the environment if you grow and/or buy local organic produce.

What is Fairtrade?

Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices (which must never fall lower than the market price), Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers.

The Fairtrade Foundation has licensed over 3,000 Fairtrade certified products for sale through retail and catering outlets in the UK. The UK market is doubling in value every two years. The UK is one of the world’s leading Fairtrade markets, with more products and more awareness of Fairtrade than anywhere else. Around 20 per cent of roast and ground coffee sold in the UK retail market is Fairtrade. Stable prices mean that coffee farmers can plan for the future.
Fairtrade food products include:
* bananas
* cocoa
* coffee
* dried fruit
* fresh fruit and fresh vegetables
* honey
* nuts/oil seeds
* rice
* spices
* sugar
* tea.

Organisations such as Traidcraft use only ethically produced materials and ingredients, which helps both the producers and the manufacturers in developing countries. Adriano Kalilii, a tea plucker from Kibena in Tanzania, can afford iron sheets to roof his house thanks to Fairtrade.

Farm Assured

We all want quality food that is affordable and safe to eat. The Red Tractor is an independent mark of quality that guarantees that the food we are buying comes from farms and food companies that meet high standards of food safety and hygiene, animal welfare and environmental protection. Look for the Red Tractor Assurance logo.

Key points

* The Fairtrade mark is an independent consumer label that appears on products as a guarantee that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. It guarantees that farmers in developing countries get a fair price for their products, which covers their costs.

* Organic foods avoid health risks associated with a combination of chemicals used as pesticides and herbicides.








By Val Fehners, Meryl Simpson and Barbara Monks in "Food Technology-AQA GCSE Design and Technology", edited by Bryan Williams, advisory editor Julie Booker, Hodder Education (an Hachette UK company), UK, excerpts p.98-110. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa. 

Le invasioni barbariche devastarono l'Europa ancora legata alla cultura latina. Eppure, vi furono anche fenomeni positivi; una "cultura medica" esisteva anche presso gli invasori.

I Goti, per esempio, pur avendo una medicina assai rudimentale, possedevano in realtà una precisa legislazione in campo sanitario che proibiva tassativamente qualsiasi forma di magia o stregoneria applicate alla medicina, al punto da ritenere punibile non solo chi esercitasse pratiche magiche per guarire gli ammalati, ma anche chiunque si fosse rivolto ai maghi.

Alcuni grandi re “barbari”, su tutti Teodorico e Alarico, si dimostrarono ben più illuminati di quanto si potesse sperare e non rimasero insensibili al fascino esercitato dalla cultura classica. L'Occidente ha senz'altro un debito di gratitudine nei confronti di questi uomini, giacché, anche grazie a loro, le conoscenze passate non andarono definitivamente perdute.

In un periodo storico in cui il popolo cercava guarigioni improbabili venerando ceneri, facendo pellegrinaggi e compiendo vari riti magici, Teodorico ordinò che ad occuparsi di questioni sanitarie fosse soltanto un medico. I Visigoti, dal canto loro, stabilivano nelle loro leggi che "nessuno medico ardisca di flebotomare donna libera se non presenti padre, madre fratello, figlio, zio; od in caso di somma necessità, qualche onesto vicino od ancella: se no paghi dieci soldi al marito od ai parenti, giacché non è difficilissimo che sotto tale pretesto covi qualche insidia. Se un medico leva la cateratta e riduce l'infermo a salute, abbia cinque soldi. Se flebotomando svigorisce un libero, paghi cento soldi; se ne venga morte, il medico sia consegnato all'arbitrio dei parenti (ut quod de eo facere voluerint, habeant potestatem). Se deteriora, peggiora od uccide un servo, lo restituisca. Quando un medico è chiamato, appena veduta la ferita od i dolori, prenda in cura il malato sotto una certa cauzione: che se l'infermo muoia, non potrà ricevere il prezzo pattuito". Al contrario di quello che più comunemente si pensa, esistevano regole per il medico e garanzie per il paziente, che permettevano di intendere la medicina non come una forma di “magia” ma come un'”arte”, da praticarsi all'interno di rapporti sociali sufficientemente certi.

Già nei secoli VIII e IX, Merovingi e Carolingi promossero iniziative atte alla creazione di un servizio di medicina pubblica. Tuttavia, fin dai tempi antichi, i medici dovevano quasi sempre vivere alla giornata. A meno di non aver la fortuna di curare qualche potente: al proprio medico Antonio Musa, l'imperatore Augusto fece erigere una statua al Foro e riconobbe un onorario di 60.000 sesterzi. Da parte sua Galeno, di solito molto parco con i poveri, chiese per una guarigione “miracolosa” una cifra corrispondente agli attuali 5.000 euro. Un dipinto di Anonimo del 1400 esposto nella chiesa di S. Martino a Firenze, sembra indicare che il medico dovesse spesso accontentarsi di un onorario sotto forma di “beni materiali” da parte delle persone non abbienti, mentre, per aver escisso una dolorosa fistola anale dall'augusto sedere del Re Sole, il barbiere-chirurgo “di veste lunga” Charles de Tassy ricevette la favolosa somma di 50.000 corone.

Ma non v'è da illudersi. Il grande chirurgo Silvio (quello della “scissura”) guadagnava talmente poco da essere costretto a mangiare pane rifatto; e d'inverno, per riscaldarsi faceva più volte su e giù per le scale. Gli onorari presero a salire nell''800 con l'avvento delle specializzazioni: il neurochirurgo W. Shape incassò la non trascurabile somma di 50.000 dollari (di allora!) per aver operato il principe cinese Yuan-Yuan Tsi.

Un differente approccio alla “corporeità” ed al dualismo cristiano mente/corpo era dunque offerto dai cosiddetti “barbari”, i quali tenevano in grande considerazione il corpo, in quanto forte e sano, sino a manifestarne un vero e proprio culto. Particolare attenzione veniva rivolta alla cura dei capelli e delle barbe; non a caso, i Longobardi prendevano il loro nome dalle lunghe barbe (Long - Barth) . Talora, dalla lunghezza e dalla foggia delle loro chiome e della loro barba, gli uomini traevano addirittura il proprio nome. Di una fanciulla non ancora maritata si diceva "esse in capillo", in quanto, secondo l'uso longobardo, non le erano ancora stati tagliati i capelli, rito esclusivo delle donne maritate, donde, secondo il Cantù, alcuni trarrebbero il termine lombardo "tosa", da "intonsa", per indicare una fanciulla.

Di Massimo Laviani e Felice Zadra, estratti "Emarginati, Matti e Bizzarri nel Medioevo", pp.9-111.  Compilati e adattati per essere postato per Leopoldo Costa.

Quand ils ne sont pas occupés à prier, ils défrichent, innovent et se lancent dans les affaires. Du Xle au XIIIe siècle, les moines inventent la France moderne. Bien joué les frères!

Une nuit d'hiver de la fin du XIIe siècle. Il est 3h30. Le sacristain de l'abbaye de Citeaux est réveillé par le tintement d'une clochette reliée à une clepsydre. Le corps fatigué, le vieux moine va sonner l'heure du premier office de la journée, les Vigiles. Sans un mot, les ombres blanches émergent du dortoir et se saluent d'un simple hochement de tête. Dans l'obscurité presque totale, ils s'installent dans les stalles de chaque còté de la nef. Pendant une heure,  les moines cisterciens vont lire, chanter, psalmodier. Avant de se lancer dans une journée de dur labeur, à l'emploi du temps ultrarythmé. De quoi faire passer les chefs d'entreprise  d'aujourd'hui  pour des tire-au-flanc! Du XIe à la fin du XIIIe siècle, les cisterciens sont sur tous les fronts. A la différence des moines de l'ordre de Cluny, qui passent leurs journées à prier, les frères cisterciens prònent le travail manuel et le retour à la simplicité. Pour marquer leur différence, ils adoptent une  coule banche en laine (vetement à capuchon), ce qui  leur  vaudra  le  surnom  de "moines blancs", par  opposition aux "moines noirs" de Cluny, qui teignent leur coule.

LE SUCCÈS DES CISTERCIENS EST FULGURANT.

En quelques décennies,  ils détiennent les terres les plus productives, s'imposent comme d'excellents gestionnaires, investissent les circuits économiques traditionnels et entretiennent des liens étroits avec le pouvoir en place. A la fin de leur épopée, en 1300, leur empire s'étend dans toute l'Europe avec près de 700 "abbayes filles", sortes de filiales, implantées jusqu'à Istanbul, faisant d'eux la première multinationale de l'Histoire.

Les moines blancs vont inventer la France moderne. L'engouement pour les ordres monastiques s'inscrit dans une réforme de l'Eglise initiée dès la fin du Xe siècle. Ebranlée par les invasions musulmanes et scandinaves, la papauté cherche à redorer son image et surtout à restaurer son pouvoir. La vie érémitique apparait à plusieurs réformateurs comme un retour salvateur aux sources du christianisme.

Ici et là, de petits groupes de moines se retirent du monde et s'installent dans des bois pour observer la règle de saint Benoit. Les "oratores" ceux qui prient, ont alors une fonction essentielle dans la société. Avec leurs prières, ils protègent la collectivité de la peur de l'Enfer, ce qui n'est pas un vain mot à l'époque. Prêtres et moines exercent un "service public" (le mot liturgie vient du grec leitourgia (littéralement "le service du peuple". Mais les religieux savent aussi soignerleurs rapports avec l'élite politique. Tout bon noble de l'époque doit accueillir une abbaye sur ses terres, gage de protection dans l'au-delà. Au XIIe siècle, le moine  anglais bénédictin  Orderic.

Vital, grand historien du Moyen Age, écrit dans son Historica ecclesiastica: "Qui peut faire le compte des Vigiles, hymnes, psaumes, prières et des offrandes quotidiennes, des messes accompagnées de flots de larmes, que les moines effectuent! Ces disciples du Christ se consacrent entièrement à ces occupations, se crucifiant eux­memes afin de plaire à Dieu... Aussi, noble comte, je te conseille sérieusement de construire une telle forteresse dans ton pays, tenue par des moines qui luttent contre Satan. Là, les champions encapuchonnés résisteront dans une lutte de tous les instants à Behemoth", (la force animale que l'homme ne peut domestiquer, NDLR

LES MILIEUX ARISTOCRATIQUES SONT LES PREMIERS "FOURNISSEURS" DE NOUVELLE RECRUES. 

C'est ainsi que, dans les familles seigneuriales, les cadets deviennent pour la plupart des moines. Un moyen pour les abbayes de s'assurer de nouveaux dons de terres et d'asseoir leur pouvoir politique. L'ordre de Citeaux doit son succès à l'un de ces fils de bonne famille, Bernard de Fontaine (futur saint Bernard de Clairvaux). En 1112, à l'âge de2 1 ans,le jeune homme entre à l'abbaye de Citeaux, créée par Robert de Molesmes, quatorze ans plus tôt. Le lieu n'est alors qu'un village de cabanes dans une foret marécageuse de Bourgogne. Les moines, dirigés par l'abbé Etienne Harding, vivotent dans de piètres conditions et connaissent à plusieurs reprises des périodes de disette. En 1115, Etienne Harding envoie Bernard de Fontaine, à la tête d'un groupe de moines, fonder en Champagne une nouvelle  maison   cistercienne, "claire  vallée", qui deviendra "Clairvaux". Le jeune  moine convainc son père et ses cinq frères de le rejoindre. Pour tester sa foi, il passe l'année 1118 dans une cabane isolée, refusant toute nourriture selon la légende. "Cette sorte de performance devint le levier d'une 'aura médiatique' qui se répandit ensuite dans tout le monde chrétien, avec la force qu'on attribuait alors aux exploits des protégés de Dieu", analyse Jean-François Leroux-Dhuys dans son livre 'Les Abbayes Cisterciennes. Le moine devient un vrai héros!Tout le monde veut son abbaye cistercienne pour assurer le salut de son âme. Des moines sont envoyés dans toute l'Europe par la maison mère. En quatre-vingts ans, 522 abbayes sortent de terre, dessinant une nouvelle organisation du territoire.

PRIER, TRAVAILLER, DORMIR. 

Le quotidien des moines de Citeaux doit respecter le strict équilibre entre ces trois activités, comme le veut la règle de saint Benoit. Afin d'éviter tout contact avec l'extérieur et de vivre en parfaite autarcie dans leur "cité idéale", ils travaillent d'arrache-pied pour produire eux­memes tout ce dont ils ont besoin. C'est à ce prix que les campagnes françaises vont se moderniser, suivant le modèle des abbayes cisterciennes. Les moines de l'ordre de Citeaux n'inventent pas de techniques révolutionnaires, mais ils utilisent les meilleures innovations de leur époque et popularisent leur utilisation. Agriculteur, éleveur, viticulteur, sidérurgiste, rien ne les arrete, ils savent tout faire. Le choix du lieu de construction de toute nouvelle abbaye est d'ailleurs un véritable casse-tête. lls refusent souvent les sites prestigieux qu'on leur propose, préférant des clairières cultivables, bordées de rivières et de grandes forets pour s'approvisionner facilement en eau et en bois. Si le site se révèle mal irrigué, les cisterciens sont capables de se lancer dans de gigantesques travaux. C'est le cas d'une communauté d'ermites installée sur le versant d'une colline, à Aubazine, dans le Limousin, et quis'afflie à l'ordre de Citeaux en 1147.Le point d'eau le plus proche est un torrent situé en amont, à 1500 mètres. Qu'à cela ne tienne, on décide de creuser dans la roche et d'acheminer l'eau par un "canal des moines". Il permet ainsi de desservir un vivier, les égouts des cuisines et des latrines, et le moulin céréalier que la règle de saint Benoit impose à chaque monastère.

Partout où les moines s'installent, ils défrichent les terres, exploitent les ressources naturelles et créent une économie locale vertueuse. Dans les champs, ils expérimentent  le nouveau système de l'assolement triennal et utilisent des chevaux, plus rapides que les boeufs, pour les labours. lls développent l'élevage de carpes. Dans le Haut-Palatinat, en Allemagne, l'abbaye de Waldsassen, spécialisée dans la pisciculture, compre pas moins de 200 viviers,  permettant de séparer  les carpes femelles  des  carpes  de moins  d'un  an et des carpes consommables. Les cisterciens s'illustrent aussi dans la gestion des forets, avec une politique respectueuse  de  l'environnement. Ils adoptent une  politique d'affouage de vingt ans (droit de prendre du bois dans une foret sur des zones délimitées). Ce système servira de modèle aux législations protectrices de la foret, comme celle de Colbert au XVIIe siècle.

LES HOMMES DE DIEU SE RÉVÈLENT ETRE D'EXCELLENTS INGÉNIEURS. 

A  Fontenay, en Bourgogne, ils exploitent le minerai de fer, extrait de la colline qui domine le monastère. Une fois réduit et compacté en barres grossières dans des bas fourneaux, le métal est envoyé à la forge de l'abbaye pour etre modelé. Les moines inventent le système  du martinet hydraulique  pour battre le fer et fabriquer des outils et des matériaux de construction. Leurs compétences sont grandes, et leurs talents, multiples. Ainsi lorsqu'ils héritent de vignobles, ils en font des grands crus. C'est le cas de Citeaux qui reçoit en donation  les vignes du Clos-Vougeot au XIIe siècle.

Jusqu'à la Révolution, des mâitres celliers assureront la transmission des savoirs et améliorations techniques  éprouvés par les moines. Leur succès, ils le doivent aussi à une organisation  du travail très hiérarchisée. Les travaux manuels sont confiés aux frères convers :des religieux qui ne sont ni clercs ni moines, mais qui vivent à côte de l'abbaye et participent aux messes. Ils se recrutent surtout parmi les paysans locaux, encore misérables à l'époque, et ont un rang inférieur à celui des moines. Ce sont pourtant eux qui assurent le gros des travaux et qui font tourner la machine cistercienne. Au milieu XIIe siècle, il y avait 300 moines pour 500 convers à Clairvaux, et 100 moines pour 300 convers à Vaucelles, dans le Cambrésis.

Grâce à leur réussite et à la bonne gestion de leurs domaines, les abbayes    ont rapidement des excédents de production, qu'elles décident de commercialiser. Deux frères sont autorisés à se rendre au marché pour vendre leurs produits. Les transactions importantes se négocient dans les "maisons" que les grandes abbayes possèdent en ville. Certaines, décidément en avance sur leur temps, installent dès le milieu du XIIe siècle des magasins de détail. L'abbaye de Rein, en Autriche, vend ainsi son vin dans sa boutique baptisée "A la coule grise". Déjà, le mythe de la qualité des produits monastiques est un argument marketing qui fait vendre, comme pour la bière et le fromage aujourd'hui .

La fin du XIIIe siècle marque déjà le déclin de l'empire de l'ordre de Citeaux. Avec l'amélioration des conditions de vie dans les campagnes, les abbayes cisterciennes peinent à attirer  de nouveaux convers. Les paysans n'ont plus besoin d'y trouver refuge pour subsister. Peu à peu, le pouvoir se déplace des campagnes vers les villes, alors en plein développement. Le vent tourne définitivement pour les cisterciens avec la remise en question de la théorie des trois ordres, selon laquelle les 'oratores' doivent prier pour tous. Désormais, il appartient à chacun de réaliser son propre salut. L'érémitisme a fait son temps.

***

LES DIFFÉRENTS ORDRES MONASTIOUES

Au Moyen Âge les congrégations monastiques et les ordres religieux se multiplient, surtout entre le XIe et le début du XlIIe siècle. Au début de la période, tous ou presque sont bénédictins (ou apparentés), c'est-à-dire qu'ils suivent la règle de saint Benoit (v. 480-547). Au sein de cette famille, les ordres les plus significatifs sont Cluny (fondé en 910) et Citeaux (créé en 1098). Mais il y ne sont pas les seuls, il y a aussi les chartreux (un des plus austères) ou encore les antonins (qui se consacrent aux malades atteint du mal des ardents, ou feu de saint Antoine). Tous vivent à l'écart de la société, derrière une clôture, et on reprochera par exemple à Cluny d'être des segeneuries ecclésiastiques. Vers la fin du XIIIe siècle, deux ordres dits "mendiants"- car ils vivent de la charité - vont venir concurrencer les bénédictins: ce sont les dominicains (disciples de saint Dominique) et les franciscains (menés par saint François d'Assise). A la différence des bénédictins, ils s'installent dans des couvents en ville et n'exploitent pas de terres.

Par Julia Zimmerlich dans "Ça m'Intéresse Histoire",Juillet-Août 2014.  Dactylographié et adapté pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa.

Leopoldo Costa

Em 1914, efetuou-se a primeira exportação experimental de carne congelada brasileira para a Inglaterra. A Europa estava preparando-se para a Grande Guerra e precisava de suprimentos.

A carne com osso, meias-carcaças completas, foi congelada no frigorífico de Barretos, então "Companhia Frigorífica e Pastoril", que tinha como um dos maiores acionistas, o conselheiro Antonio Prado. Antonio Prado era também um dos maiores acionistas da "Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro", que ligava Jundiaí à Barretos.

No dia 25 de maio de 1909, foi inaugurado o trecho de trilhos até Barretos. Em dezembro do ano anterior, os trilhos foram testados e adentrava na estação a primeira locomotiva com o trem de lastro.

Os acionistas da 'Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro' no mesmo ano em que os trilhos alcançaram a cidade, encaminharam um requerimento, solicitando à prefeitura de Barretos, autorização para a construção de um matadouro frigorífico. A autorização foi concedida  em 16 de outubro de 1909, pela lei municipal nº 42, com exclusividade por 40 anos. Para o desenvolvimento do empreendimento foi criada em 11 de abril de 1910 a ‘Companhia Frigorífica e Pastoril'. A obra do frigorífico durou três anos e ficou a cargo de uma empresa francesa especializada na construção de indústrias do ramo.

Foi instalado o sistema de refrigeração por absorção de gás de funcionamento contínuo usando amônia gasosa, desenvolvido em 1860, por Ferdinand Carré (1824-1894).


O frigorifico foi inaugurado em 1913 e tinha a capacidade para abater 500 cabeças de bovinos por dia. Para propiciar a manutenção deste abate diário, o frigorífico contratou agenciadores de gado em Goiás e no Triângulo Mineiro que adquiriam até gado magro que era engordado nas fazendas que a empresa adquiriu na região, para esta finalidade.

Com o frigorífico funcionando foi feito um contrato com a ‘São Paulo Railway’ para conseguir usar seu trecho de ferrovia (de Jundiaí à estação da Luz em São Paulo) e assim poder trafegar com seus vagões de Barretos para a capital paulista e para o porto de Santos.

Outro contrato foi celebrado com a 'Central do Brasil' para de São Paulo, poder chegar até ao Rio de Janeiro.

Em 1919 a 'Companhia Frigorífica e Pastoril' arrendou o frigorífico para a ‘Brazilian Meat Company’, pertencente ao Grupo Vestey da Inglaterra, que em 1923 comprou o frigorífico, reformou e trocou o nome para ‘Frigorífico Anglo’, começando a funcionar com o novo nome no ano seguinte.

EMBARQUES PARA GRANDES DISTÂNCIAS

As tentativas de embarcar carne congelada para grandes distâncias preocupou as indústrias de carne de todo o mundo. Na década de 1850, foi realizado em Chicago o primeiro carregamento refrigerado de carcaças de bovinos. Elas foram colocadas em recipientes cheios de gelo diretamente em contato com a carne, o que provocava descoloração e afetava o sabor.

Em 1868,  William Davies, um comerciante de peixes de Detroit, patenteou um carro refrigerado que usava ventiladores e gaiolas de metal para manter suspensa as carcaças sobre a mistura refrigerante de gelo e sal. Pouco depois vendeu a patente para George Hammond, um magnata industrial de carne, que começou a instalar (em sociedade com Marcus Towle) o sistema em carros para transportar carne para Boston.

A grande multinacional de carnes dos Estados Unidos, a Swift, criou uma subsidiária para explorar o serviço de vagões frigoríficos, que eram refrigerados com blocos de gelo, para transportar carcaças de gado. No período de 1882 a 1890 o volume de carnes que a empresa transportou por ano entre Chicago e Nova York alcançou 44.000 toneladas de carcaças abatidas.

O sistema da Swift é o que foi usado pela "Companhia Frigorífica e Pastoril" para o transporte até Santos do seu primeiro lote de carcaças congeladas.

De Santos, as carcaças seguiram para a Inglaterra em um navio da "Blue Star Line" companhia de transporte marítimo do Grupo Vestey. Os navios da companhia foram os pioneiros no uso de refrigeração artificial para o transporte de carnes e outros alimentos.

A REFRIGERAÇÃO EM NAVIOS

Tudo começou em 1871, quando o engenheiro francês Charles Tellier (1828-1913), aproveitando a ideia de John Gorrie (1802-1855), instalou um sistema de refrigeração (aperfeiçoado por ele) num navio, denominado 'Le Frigorifique'. Em 19 de setembro de 1876 esse navio zarpou de Rouen, na França, levando uma pequena quantidade de carne com osso congelada francesa com destino a Buenos Aires. Chegou no dia de Natal. A carne foi examinada por diretores da Sociedade Rural Argentina, que observaram algumas manchas escuras na superfície e um gosto desagradável.

O ‘Le Frigorifique’ partiu de retorno à França levando carne congelada argentina. Depois de uma viagem de 104 dias aportou em Rouen em 14 de agosto de 1877. Parte das carcaças não chegou em boas condições e para ser usada teve que ser efetuada uma limpeza a faca.

Em 1877, o navio ‘Le Paraguay’ partiu de Marselha (França) com destino a Argentina com quatro quartos bovinos e dez carcaças de ovinos, chegando à Buenos Aires com a carga em boas condições. No retorno, partiu do porto de Buenos Aires com um carregamento de 5.500 carcaças de ovinos destinadas ao porto de Le Havre na França, que foram carregadas resfriadas para serem congeladas à bordo. O sistema de refrigeração usava compressores de amônia de Carré, conseguindo nas câmaras frias, durante o percurso, uma temperatura estável de -25°C. As carcaças, embora o navio  atrasasse a viagem, em razão de uma colisão, chegaram em boas condições e foram usadas durante uma semana no sofisticado restaurante do ‘Grand Hotel’ de Paris, sendo bastante apreciada.

Em 1879, alguns industriais da Austrália liderados por Andrew McIlwraith, sabendo do sucesso do ‘Le Paraguay’, decidiram fretar o navio 'Strathleven' e embarcar com destino a Londres um carregamento de 40 toneladas de carne bovina e ovina. O navio primeiro carregou em Sydney e depois, em Melbourne chegando a Londres em 2 de fevereiro de 1880. Todas as carnes foram carregadas resfriadas para serem congeladas à bordo. O carregamento chegou em boas condições, sendo uma carcaça de cordeiro enviada como presente para a rainha Vitória (1819-1901), outra para Eduardo VII (1841-1910), o príncipe de Gales, e o restante vendido no mercado de Smithfield.

"Marie Madeleine" by Roger van der Weyden

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” – 
GEORGE (MARY ANNE EVANS) ELIOT

am well aware that many of my readers will have picked up this book to see what I have to say about a literal wife of Jesus. While the topics covered in these pages have been much broader in scope, I have tried to offer my best arguments for and against the possibility of a married Jesus. This chapter will offer a summary of these arguments and tie together several threads that have run throughout. My hope is that I can provide a clearer picture of my answer to the question “Was Jesus married?”.

If you skipped ahead to read this chapter first, shame on you and bless you! Shame on you for your impatience, and bless you for skipping all of the sordid and scandalous stories revealed over the course of this book. You’ve missed my reading of the pillow talk between Jesus and Salome. You’ve missed my discussion of ritual kissing between Jesus and Mary. You’ve missed my take on the recently publicized Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. You’ve missed my analysis of Jesus the polygamist and the gay Jesus. Shamefully and happily, you’ve missed my argument that Jesus offered a subversive alternative to “civic masculinity.” This book, in large part, has been about ancient and modern attempts to project sexual identities onto Jesus.

Much of what follows in this chapter will rely on the research put forth in chapters 6 through 9 of this book. By way of warning, if you have not followed my explanations of collectivism, civic masculinity, and eschatology, my summary here might be hard to follow. Nevertheless, this chapter will draw together the key themes of the second half of this book.

THE CASE FOR A HISTORICAL WIFE OF JESUS

Historians of ancient cultures and figures must not succumb to the desire to fill in every gap left by historical memory. In keeping with one of the key themes of chapters 2 through 4, sometimes the problem of silence must remain a problem. Conjecture can damage the very legacies that we hope to commemorate. In keeping with one of the key themes of chapters 3 through 5, there is always the risk of projecting our own agendas and aspirations onto the figures of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

As a case in point, there is very little we can say with confidence about Mary Magdalene. What of her family? What of her social status? If she was among the wealthy supporters of Jesus’ mission, does this imply an elite social standing? I cannot make any such claim with confidence. A historical fiction from the thirteenth century may portray Mary Magdalene as a wealthy princess, but I must take that for what it is: fiction. Even if some of our early evidence hints that Mary might have been wealthy, there is still no warrant for making such a claim.

Mary’s social status is an example of a particular point of data that defies any confident assertion. But not every gap in historical memory is of this ilk. Some gaps can be filled in – with confidence – without specific data. Sometimes, historical memory is fortified by our knowledge of common practices within a society.

For example, consider the question: Was Jesus breastfed? It might seem like an odd query, but it is relevant to this chapter in multiple ways. Its primary relevance is that it is a query that can be answered positively without any data specific to Jesus. Indeed, while the nursing Madonna became prominent in fourteenth-century Italy,1 historians have very little data on this particular point of fact that is specific to Jesus. The Proto-Gospel of James portrays the infant Jesus breastfeeding. In this narrative, Jesus “went and took the breast from his mother Mary.”2 But, of course, this second-century text is a historical fiction and cannot be read as history (in our usual sense of that genre).

The Gospel of Luke contains this exchange between Jesus and a woman who called out from his audience:

"One of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.” But he said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”3

The Gospel of Thomas conveys a related conversation:

"In the crowd a woman says to him: “Blessed is the womb which bore you and the breast which fed you!” He said to her: “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and keep it! In truth, days are coming when you will say: Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!”4

In my view, this saying very plausibly reflects Jesus’ downplay of blood relationships and biological progeny. In other words, this conversation cannot be reduced to mere fiction; it reflects history. Here the anonymous woman assumes that Jesus was breastfed and (indirectly) blesses Mary, his mother. Even so, assumptions do not always represent historical facts. Jesus does not confirm or deny her assumption. Even if he did, should we imagine that Jesus remembered his own infancy?

In the case of the question “Was Jesus breastfed?” our earliest and best sources do not convince us of any fact specific to Jesus. But we can conclude, on other grounds, that Jesus was, in fact, breastfed. This we can claim as historical fact for the simple reason that socio-typical study tells us so.5 We should imagine that all first-century Galilean children who survived infancy were breastfed, unless we have reason to think otherwise. There is no reason to think that Jesus was an exception to the rule in this case. It is, then, ironic that the fictional portrait in the Proto-Gospel of James of Jesus being nursed conveys a historical probability. In spite of its genre – that being fiction – it corroborates a historical fact. Here I underscore a matter of historical method: we tend to fill in the gaps. While novelists do so with the tools of fiction, historians do so with the tools of sociology, anthropology, archeology, and so on. We can arrive at historical facts based on what we know of common practice in a given culture.

The question Was Jesus married? is very much like the question Was Jesus breastfed? The two questions are not perfectly analogous, but the comparison might be helpful to convey how foundational marriage actually was for Jesus’ culture and religious integrity. To underscore a key theme of chapters 6 and 7: marriage was a cultural given. It was ubiquitous. It was seen as a foundational element of honoring one’s parents and the lifeblood of one’s ancestors. It was a path to economic integrity and manhood. Marriage was considered necessary for the survival of one’s people in a culture where the survival of one’s people was the highest ideal, the greatest good. We should imagine that almost every first-century Galilean who lived to age thirty was married, unless we have reason to think otherwise. Both breastfeeding and marriage were practiced to ensure survival.

Awkward as it might seem to us in the Christianized West, our default setting has been wrong. Our default setting has been to assume that Jesus was celibate because he was too holy for sex. But most people in Jesus’ culture would have considered celibacy to be altogether unholy. Multiple rabbis recite and comment on a sermon called “In Praise of a Wife”:

"There are twelve good measures in the world, and any man who does not have a wife in his house who is good in her deeds is prevented from enjoying all of them. He dwells without good, without happiness, without blessing, without peace, without a help, without atonement, without a wall, without Torah, without life, without satisfaction, without wealth, without a crown."6

While the form of this sermon postdates the time of Jesus, the sentiments of the sermon are quite ancient. Marriage was a path to holiness, it was an avenue to civic contribution and economic stability, and it was a way to extend the lifeblood of one’s patriarchs into the future. In Jesus’ culture, honor was bound to marriage and family. Indeed, the first divine blessing and command to humanity implies marriage and progeny. God instructs the man and the woman, “Be fruitful and multiply.”7 As an extension of God’s fruitfulness in creating, the creatures made in the divine image are commanded to be fruitful in progeny. This fundamental feature of Judaism made marriage a given for holiness and (oftentimes) a requirement. Some rabbis instructed men to find a match for their sons while the father’s hands were “still on the neck” of their sons.8 The practice of early matchmaking allowed the father to receive honor by extending the longevity of his family (and of Israel at large) through his sons.

While this ideal does not necessarily reflect the thinking of Jesus’ parents, it reminds us that Jesus was subject to the will and wishes of his family when he was young. We should be aware that Jesus’ parents would have been expected to find a wife for him. Jesus’ thoughts about his marital status would have been only one factor in a family decision. For the sake of illustration, it would be much more likely that Jesus was married in early adulthood and that his wife died in childbirth (as was all too common); it would be far less likely that he would have dishonored his father and mother and rejected the Abrahamic blessing of progeny.

If the New Testament was truly silent about Jesus’ sexuality, our most cautious move would be to settle at the default setting. Given no further clues about Jesus’ views on marriage and family, we would be compelled to conclude that Jesus was married based on socio-typical practice.

JUDAISM AND JESUS 

I must say a word about Jesus’ lifelong commitment to Judaism and the well-being of the Jewish people. My argument against a married Jesus is primarily found in chapter 8 of this book, where I demonstrate how strange Jesus’ views on marriage, family, honor, and economics must have seemed to his kinsfolk. Moreover, I suggest that Jesus’ lifestyle would have run contrary to some very foundational Jewish beliefs and practices. I did not foresee such an unexpected turn in my research when I began writing this book. I am surprised that the Jesus revealed to me in my research has, at times, seemed so “anti-family.”

So I reiterate a point that I made in chapter 1: in Jesus’ day there was a wide variety of Jewish expressions. The fact that Jesus challenged some of these expressions does not make him any less Jewish. In fact, it probably situates him quite comfortably within the line of Jewish prophets and wisdom teachers. I have no doubt that some of his contemporaries accused him of being an outsider and a foreigner, but the earliest followers of Jesus – those who knew him best – knew that he was from and for the people of Israel.

The historical Jesus does not transcend or outmode the religious expressions of Israel. I think Jesus knew that his teachings about marriage and family were subversive, but he did not think of himself as “anti-Jewish.” For that matter, I doubt that he saw himself as “anti-family.” My perspective, no doubt, is limited by my own cultural categories, and the category “anti-family” is probably an egregious misstep. At the same time, I can only see with my own eyes.

I will offer one more point along these lines. Many of Jesus’ subversive statements about masculinity, economics, progeny, and so on, would have scandalized most gentiles in the ancient Mediterranean. Romans who continued to support the marriage and family incentives of Caesar Augustus would have been especially scandalized by Jesus’ teachings. If Jesus was an iconoclast, he was a Jewish iconoclast first and foremost.

THE CASE AGAINST A HISTORICAL WIFE OF JESUS

In chapter 7, I observe that the age of twenty is an important transitional point for Jewish men concerning their readiness for marriage. I suggest that most first-century Jewish men were married between the ages of twenty and thirty. This emphasis on the ideal age (while not always indicative of practice) seems to survive into the rabbinic period. While the rabbis vary in their instructions, the chief virtue of the age of twenty was that it represented the upper limit of puberty.9 Jesus’ parents would have probably started to consider a marriage for Jesus soon after this transition.

What I did not discuss at length was the rabbinic significance of the age of thirty. This list of “life stages” is probably too late to offer much help, but it will assist in illustrating an important point:

At 5 years old one is fit for the Scripture,  
At 10 for the Mishnah,  
At 13 for the fulfilling of the commandments,  
At 15 for the Talmud,  
At 18 for the bride-chamber,  
At 20 for pursuing a calling,  
At 30 for authority,  
At 40 for discernment,  
At 50 for counsel,  
At 60 to be an elder,  
At 70 for grey hairs,  
At 80 for special strength,
At 90 for bowed back,
At 100 a man is as one that has already died.10

At first glance, this list seems to confirm what we generally assume about ideals for marriage shortly after puberty. The two-year gap between the bride-chamber (age eighteen) and pursuing a calling (age twenty) suggests that a young man would live with his bride within his parent’s house even before he was ready for the demands of full-fledged adulthood.

But a closer look at this list reveals two things that caution us against any definitive argument on the basis of life stages. First, notice how idealized and generalized these numbers are. After the age of eighteen, these stages are represented in generic decades. Second, as discussed in chapter 7, studies of life expectancy suggest that very few people lived past sixty years. Are we to imagine that there were so few qualified elders? Probably not.

The better solution is to see these numbers as symbolic.11 The ages of thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty are symbols of maturity of mind. Perhaps they were seen as milestones, as they are understood in many cultures, but they are not to be taken literally. We should not read this list and imagine that people would literally obtain “discernment” ten years after they obtained “authority,” or that their hair wouldn’t grey earlier than age seventy.

If so – if life stages were generally symbolic – the Gospel of Luke’s general assertion that Jesus was “about thirty” may well be symbolic.12 Perhaps Jesus was closer to his mid-twenties, and Luke simply means to convey that Jesus was ready for authority. Conversely, Jesus may have been in his early to mid-thirties. This qualification is important because any argument about Jesus’ marital status based on typical marriage practices and typical marriage ages must remain tentative without a firm assertion of Jesus’ age.

If we are cautious, no firm conclusions can be drawn concerning Luke’s motives for the generality “about thirty.” Likewise, we should be cautious not to give too much weight to the assumption that Jesus was close to the upper limit of marriage expectations. It would be safe to say that Jesus was firmly within the marriage-age range when he began his preaching career, but we cannot say exactly how old Jesus was when he began his subversive teachings about marriage and family.

This is where the analogy with the question “Was Jesus breastfed?” must be qualified. We can say with confidence that Jesus was an infant and was nourished like an infant. Jesus would have had no choice in this. He would, however, have had more to say about a potential marriage match (although the will and wishes of the young man should not be overstated). Marriage, like mother’s milk, was a cultural given, and the burden of survival would have been on the shoulders of the parents of the clan. But, in Jesus’ time and place, we do have precedents for celibacy.13

Striking to the heart of the matter, we cannot say when Jesus first decided to downplay the importance of what I have termed “civic masculinity” (biological family, economic responsibility, religious continuity related to land ownership, and so on). Could it be that Jesus inherited his nonconformist views of civic masculinity from John the Baptist? The Gospel of Luke portrays the preaching of the Baptist like this:

"He said therefore to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”14

In Luke’s portrait, John the Baptist commands his audience to birth the metaphorical fruits of repentance to prepare for judgment day. Is this metaphorical bearing of fruit to be heard in contrast to literal childbearing? Did the Baptist mean to say that the biological fathers and sons of Israel were as unimportant as rocks? Or did he mean to say that the fathers and sons of Israel were defined by the land, not owners of the land?15 Whatever the case, John the Baptist seems to be challenging a traditional understanding of patriarchy and progeny.

Did Jesus grow up in a traditional household, with traditional views of marriage and family, until he met John the Baptist? Perhaps it is impossible to disentangle the influence of Jesus, the Baptist, and the Lukan editor in our accounting of this unique ideology. Who influenced whom is a question that must remain open-ended. What can be asserted with confidence is that Jesus was remembered for his nonconformity concerning marriage and family.

As seen above, Jesus was remembered for saying something along these lines: “In truth, days are coming when you will say: Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!”16 Even if Jesus never phrased the sentiment in exactly these terms, this saying fits well with the general impression that he left.

The Jesus we find in the Gospels had a very strange interpretation of “honoring” of one’s father and mother. I will here set together a variety of sayings (some of which have been discussed in chapter 8). Again, I’m more interested in illustrating the general impression left by Jesus:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”17

Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”18

And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” And he said to them, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”19

And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”20 And Jesus said to [his mother], “O woman, what have you to do with me?”21

These statements and others like them are found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and suggest that Jesus valued his eschatological mission over and against his own family relationships. Given the social implications of such a subversive stance, many of Jesus’ contemporaries would have thought him insane. Indeed, when Jesus brought his new “family” of disciples to his hometown, his family “went out to seize him, for people were saying, ‘He is beside himself.’”22 In this portrait, Jesus looks to be the sort of son who brought shame upon his biological family.

These (sometimes embarrassing) impressions of Jesus indicate that he acted independently from the wishes of his family, particularly his parents. So when the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Thomas depict a woman calling out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed,”23 and depict Jesus contradicting this blessing of Mary, we are given further evidence that Jesus had a strange idea about what it looked like to honor one’s parents.

According to Luke, Jesus says, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”24 This saying conveys a feature characteristic of Jesus’ teaching: the true family of God is tied together not by blood but by faithfulness to the instructions of Israel’s scriptures.

This might seem an ironic statement coming from Jesus. As I discussed in chapter 8, Jesus seems to have an awkward relationship with Moses’ fifth commandment: “Honor your father and mother …” But perhaps the key here is the emphasis on metaphoric family. If Jesus’ “true family” is his eschatological community, he cannot be accused of dishonoring his biological father and mother. If this reading is close to the mark, Jesus may well have brought shame upon his biological family (from one perspective) yet still thought of his mission as honorable.25

The Gospel of Thomas appends this statement to Jesus’ contradictory blessing: “Blessed is the womb that has not brought forth and those breasts which have not given suck!” This dubious blessing probably reflects Jesus’ view of final judgment. Jesus’ mission seems to have been focused on the return of God as judge and a final utopia. This “blessing” of barren wombs and breasts might reflect Jesus’ belief that God’s judgment is very near. But what is most telling is that Jesus has not rendered this teaching in the in the form of a curse.  For example, the prophetic book of Hosea proclaims the curse of “no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!” The prophet asks the Lord to give the indicted people a “miscarrying womb and dry breasts.”26 In a culture where progeny meant survival and honor, such a curse would be heard as a death sentence – and, even worse, a fatal shaming.

For Jesus to call barren wombs and breasts a “blessing” indicates a subversive notion of family and honor. Recalling my argument in chapter 8, Jesus’ subversion of “civic masculinity” suggests that he was the rare example of a Jewish religious leader who encouraged celibacy. It could be that Jesus’ vision of Israel’s utopia did not include marriage. When Jesus was asked about this by fellow Jews who did not believe in life after death, Jesus said that people who rise from the dead “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”27 In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:

"The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection."28

In proclaiming that the heavenly rule of God was close enough to touch, Jesus began to enact certain symbols that pointed to his prophetic vision. He promoted eschatological feasts, formed a spiritual “family,” and he (most likely) forsook literal marriage in favor of his mission. This may well provide us with the necessary context for his praise of “eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”29 Jesus encouraged his followers to accept this teaching, knowing that it would have seemed a subversion of the norms of civic masculinity. As I have argued in chapter 8, Jesus’ subversive message about marriage and family was part and parcel of his teaching about economic and patriarchal honor systems:

Peter said, “See, we have left our own and followed you.” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”30

In short, our earliest and best sources for the life of Jesus do not give us the portrait of a teacher who instructed men to become civic patrons. Given all of this evidence, the pertinent question remains: Did Jesus practice what he preached? I think that he probably did.

This, of course, does not prove that Jesus was unmarried before his preaching career. It does, however, make it very difficult to imagine that he was married to Mary Magdalene or to any of his followers. In his career as a religious leader – short-lived as it was – Jesus was a sexual nonconformist. Specifically, he had invested in the two-sided coin of economic disobligation and celibacy.

CHALLENGES 

In my introduction and chapter 1, I surveyed the evolution of Christian thinking about Jesus’ sexuality. As misogynistic and fear-driven notions of sexuality evolved, the sexual identity of Jesus devolved. The second-century ascetics, I argued, arrived at a celibate Jesus with weak reasoning. Their ascetic Jesus – the Jesus who never defecated, left footprints, or wed – was a fiction of their own projections. While they may have been unwittingly correct about Jesus’ marital status, their rationale was illegitimate.

We in the Christianized West inherited our iconic Jesus from Christian asceticism. And here we arrive at an irony too thick to ignore: even though our assumptions about Jesus were wrong all along, we were unwittingly close to the right answer about Jesus. The celibate Jesus of our iconographic imagination was a fiction. But, in spite of ourselves, we were probably right about Jesus’ marital status, at least concerning his public career.

This little book is just one step along the way toward a better solution. The quest for the wife of Jesus will be ongoing and will produce a variety of conclusions. On this point I am certain. But perhaps some of the talking points raised in this book will serve as a guide for future historical constructs.

While this might seem an anticlimax for a book titled The Wife of Jesus, I would challenge my readers to remember that the “why” questions of history are just as important as the “what” questions. Jesus was not celibate because sex is sinful or because the Church has claimed status as the wife of Jesus. If true – if our most celebrated and despised icon was celibate for other reasons – we in the Christianized West will do well to reconsider our misogynistic and fear-driven notions of sexuality. Perhaps our notions of civic masculinity will become causalities on our continued quest for the wife of Jesus.

NOTES

1.  Marilyn Yalom, History of the Breast (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 5.   
2.  Proto-Gospel of James 19.   
3.  Luke 11:27−28.   
4.  Gospel of Thomas 79.   
5.  Compare Yalom, History of the Breast, pp. 27−28. A variety of practices were discussed in the ancient world relating to wet nurses and emergency use of animal milk, but the common practice of breastfeeding was not questioned.   
6.  Mosseri 7.68.A; adapted from Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity, p. 3.
7.  Gen. 1:28.   
8.  Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity, p. 112. 
9.  As discussed, puberty was probably entered between the ages of fourteen and twenty for boys, depending on nourishment. 
10.  Mishnah, Aboth 5.21. 
11.  Examples of symbolic ages are common in the Hebrew Bible, but to point to an example from Jesus’ time, consider this instruction from the Dead Sea Scrolls: “The men of the army shall be from forty to fifty years old. The commissioners of the camps shall be from fifty to sixty years old. The officers shall also be from forty to fifty years old” (War Scroll 7.1−2). Taken literally, this instruction for battle is absurd. Most men would have been dead or declining by fifty; able-bodied soldiers would have been much younger than forty. 12.  Luke 3:23. 
13.  John P. Meier lists a handful of examples including Greek Philosopher Epictetus (55–35 B.C.E.) and philosopher and wonderworker Apollonius of Tyana (Marginal Jew I, pp. 342, 367). 
14.  Luke 3:7−8; compare Matt. 3:7−9. 
15.  To Semitic ears (either Hebrew or Aramaic) there is a wordplay happening here. The phrase “sons” is either alliterative or homophonic to the word for “stones.” One wonders if John the Baptist’s Jewish audience would have heard this saying as humorous. 
16.  Gospel of Thomas 79. 
17.  Luke 14:26; compare Matt. 10:35−36. 1
18.  Matt. 8:21−22. 
19.  Luke 2:48−49; the narrator attempts to smooth over this obvious tension between Jesus and his parents in the verses that follow. 
20.  Mark 3:32−34. 
21.  John 2:4; the phrase “what have you to do with me?” sounds even more hostile in the Greek and Aramaic. This idiom is used by “demon-possessed” men to violently rebuke Jesus in Mark 1:24 and 5:7. It is the hostile protest of someone who is about to be tormented or forcibly made to do something against his or her will. 22.  Mark 3:21. 
23.  Luke 11:27; Gospel of Thomas 79. 
24.  Luke 11:28. 
25.  It is also important to remember the portrait of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Gospel of John: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26−27). In this portrait, Jesus reinforces his followers as a metaphorical family. The beloved disciple and the mother of Jesus were bound together, but not biologically bound. 
26.  Hosea 9:11, 14. 
27.  Mark 12:25; compare Matt. 22:30; Luke 20:35; Jewish lore gives the general impression that angels are male. 28.  Luke 20:34−36. 
29.  Matt. 19:12 
30.  Luke 18:28; compare near, he said to Matt. 19:27.





By Anthony Le Donne in "The Wife of Jesus - Ancient Texts and Modern Scandals", Oneworld Book, London, 2013, excerpts chapter 10. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Food aid is a resource provided on concessionary terms in the formof, or for the provision of, food. In accounting categories, international food aid is a cross-border flow that is an entry into a country’s balance of payments. National governments do provide food aid within their own borders, however. Generally, food aid is thought of as assistance provided by donor governments and humanitarian agencies to address the problems of hunger, food insufficiency, and malnutrition and indeed some food aid is expressly for this purpose. Over the history of modern food aid, however, substantial amounts of food aid have had little to do with addressing hunger.

History and Origins 

Food assistance throughout history has included attempts to address famine Venezuela in the 1830s, Ireland in the 1840s, and the Ukraine in the 1930s all of which involved significant shipments of food. The India Famine Codes in the late 19th century may have been the first systematic attempt to balancemarket forces and free food distribution. But the origin of large-scale contemporary food aid traces to the post World War II period in North America, when technological advances led to dramatic increases in production that resulted in significant surpluses and declining prices for farmers. Politically obligated to purchase the surpluses, the U.S. and Canadian governments found it less costly to give away the surplus food than to store it. United States Public Law 480, enacted in 1954, formalized this process. Hence the origin of modern food aid was a means of addressing domestic surplus production not a means of addressing hunger or poverty. Over the past 50 years food aid has served multiple objectives: disposing of surplus production, supporting farm income, maintaining a maritime shipping fleet, supporting domestic agribusiness and food processing industries as well as addressing hunger in foreign countries.

Types of Food Aid 

Classically there have been three kinds of food aid. Program food aid, for almost 40 years the largest single category, is subsidized deliveries or free grants of food on a government-to-government basis. The recipient government usually sells the food and uses the proceeds for many purposes not necessarily for food assistance or anything to do with addressing hunger. The main purpose of program food aid has been to provide budgetary support or balance-of-payments relief for recipient governments.

"Project food aid" provides support to field-based projects in areas of chronic need through deliveries of food, usually on a grant basis, to a recipient government, a nongovernmental organization, or the U.N. World Food Programme. The recipient agency then uses the food either directly in projects such as mother and child health, school feeding, or food-for-work projects that provide an employment guarantee using food for wages, or by ‘‘monetizing’’ the food aid selling it in the recipient country market and using the proceeds for project activities that require cash as an input rather than food.

"Emergency or humanitarian food aid" consists of deliveries of free food to populations affected by conflict or disaster, with a host country government, the World Food Programme, or a nongovernmental organization acting as the distributing agency.

Trends in Food Aid 

The total annual flow of food aid in the years 1981 through 2005 was around 8-10 million metric tons a relatively tiny amount compared to themore than 300 million tons of commercially traded food of the same commodity groups. Since 1980, humanitarian food aid has become the most dominant form, amounting to about 60 percent of the total, whereas prior to 1980, it was in the range of 10 15 percent. Since the beginning of the 21st century, program food aid or government-to-government food assistance has declined sharply, and by 2007 seemed likely to be phased out altogether soon. Project food aid tended to be relatively stable in volume terms in the period 1980-2005. In the post World War II years, food aid comprised as much as 15 percent of total overseas assistance in the early 21st century, by contrast, it accounted for only 2 3 percent of the total.

Food Aid Policy Debates 

International food aid has been subject to weak regulatory mechanisms, many of which are outdated or dysfunctional. As a result, many of these mechanisms were being renegotiated as of 2007, or their roles were being taken over by other, newer institutions. The Food Aid Convention originally signed in1967 and renewed in 1998 existed on one-year extensions for several years in the first decade of the 21st century, and was up for a major renegotiation by 2007. Much of the impact of food aid on trade has come up for negotiation at the World Trade Organization.

The extent to which food aid undermines international trade or local incentives for agricultural production is also a subject of controversy. Overall, there appears to be no significant impact of food aid on domestic production, but different kinds of food aid have different effects well-managed emergency food aid can actually lead to an increase in food production (with a lagged time effect, because well-managed emergency food aid can enable farmers to cultivate a crop when they might otherwise be unable, thus resulting in a greater harvest available at the end of the season). But poorly targeted food aid that ends up being consumed by people who would otherwise be able to grow or purchase food may undermine production or trade incentives. Open ‘‘monetization’’ (the sale of food aid in the recipient country) is thought to be one example that causes trade or production displacement.

Traditionally food aid was provided in kind by donor governments, to be used or distributed either by recipient country governments or by humanitarian agencies. Beginning in the 1990s, food aid from some donors has been ‘‘untied’’ from market sources in donor countries, meaning that a proportion of food aid budgets are now in cash for purchasing food either within the country where food aid is needed, or in a nearby developing country called local and regional purchase. European donors and Canada devote significant proportions of their funding to local or regional purchase of food, which is believed to save both time and expense when responding to acute need, thus enabling more rapid response and a relatively greater volume of response within fixed budgets. United States food aid continued to be tied to procurement in U.S. markets as of late 2007, and the extent to which ‘‘aid-tying’’ of food assistance continued to be allowed was a subject of considerable controversy in World Trade Organization negotiations over a new Agreement on Agriculture. In addition to pressure for untying food assistance, there was also considerable evidence that cash transfers are a more effective and efficient means of ensuring access by poor or disaster affected populations to adequate food under some circumstances.

By Daniel Maxwell in "The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy", edited by Kenneth A. Reinert, Ramkishen S. Rajan, Amy Jocelyn Glass and Lewis S. Davis; Princeton University Press; USA; 2009; excerpts p. 37-39. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

 THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

The Mediterranean Sea was the center of cuisine and culture for the Greeks and Romans. The word Mediterranean means middle (medi) of the earth (terra), and the sea connected the earth of three continents: Europe to the north, Africa to the south, and Asia to the east. To the west was the Atlantic Ocean and the unknown, so to ancient people, the lands surrounding the Mediterranean were the known world. The Mediterranean climate is subtropical, with dry, sunny summers and mild wet winters. This type of climate is found between thirty and forty degrees north and south latitude: central and southern California, South Africa, central Chile, and southwestern Australia.

The ancient cuisine of the Mediterranean was based on the trinity of bread, wine, and olive oil. These were not just the basic foods of everyday life; they were also sacred. The gods and goddesses who provided these foods were worshiped, and the foods themselves were the substance of religious ceremonies — both polytheistic Greek and Roman, and monotheistic Jewish and Christian ones.

GREECE

Geography

The geography of Greece strongly influenced its culture and cuisine. Greece is a rocky, mountainous country surrounded by the sea on three sides. Since only fifteen to twenty percent of the land was flat enough or fertile enough to farm, they couldn’t grow enough grain to feed themselves. When a country is faced with this situation, it has three choices: (1) trade, (2) colonize, or (3) conquer. Greece did all three. It traded its staple crops, olive oil and wine. It founded colonies like Sicily to produce grain. But when it tried to conquer other territories, it was defeated and was conquered itself. Geography affected government in Greece by keeping it small and local, because travel over steep peaks and down deep valleys was difficult and time consuming. Each city was like a small country and ruled itself. It is from the Greek word for these city-states — polis — that we get our word politics. The city-state of Athens was the birthplace of democracy, the form of government in which the citizens rule by voting. The United States and all other democracies are based on this. However, Greece was no political paradise: only free males were allowed to be citizens and to vote. Women had no say in the government and neither did much of the labor force, which was slaves.

The Greeks were a nation of sailors who lived on the abundant variety the sea provided: fish like mullet, turbot, grouper, sea bream; and eels, octopus, and squid. The measure of an ancient Greek cook was what he could do with fish.1 The first chef we know by name in history was a Greek man named Mithekos, from the city-state of Syracuse, in Sicily. His book of recipes — ingredients and instructions — mostly for fish, has disappeared. We know about it only because mention of it survives in other writings.

Especially popular was the dark-fleshed bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus, native to the Mediterranean. These large fish —  they can weigh almost a ton — were preserved in salt or olive oil, as they still are today in the Mediterranean. Bonito, the bluefin’s ten-pound relative, was wrapped in fig leaves and slow-cooked in the ashes.

Food, too, was democratic in Greece, at least until the fifth century B.C. Everyone ate the same modest meals based on olives and figs, goats and sheep, barley pounded into a paste, porridge, or unleavened bread. More than any other food, bread represented civilization because it was a completely human product, controlled by humans every step of the way. Vinegar was a favorite ingredient of the Greeks. Black pepper was also used, but was considered a medicine. Cows were not kept because of the shortage of pasture land, so a man who owned oxen was considered rich.2 However, he didn’t kill them because he needed them to plow his fields and for transportation. Goats and sheep were kept, but the young ones were reserved for ritual blood sacrifices to the gods. It was a matter of economics, too: goats and sheep produced milk to drink and to make into cheese, and mohair and wool, so they were only killed when they were very old and had outlived all their other purposes. The Greek diet was also heavy in sweets. They ate fruit, which the philosopher Aristotle observed caused their teeth to rot: “Why do figs, which are soft and sweet, damage the teeth?”3

That was the diet in Athens, in northern Greece. In the southern part of Greece, Sparta was a rigid militaristic society. Infants that were not born healthy and physically perfect were tossed off a cliff. Girls and boys ran and played rigorous sports to toughen them up. When they were seven years old, the boys were sent away for military training. They lived in barracks and slept on hard wooden benches. Spartan food matched the Spartan life. Although cheese, barley, and figs were food fundamentals in Sparta,4 the staple food was a black broth made from pork stock, vinegar, and salt. It is from their denial of what they considered luxury that we get the word spartan.

Geography also influenced human relationships in Greece. Because the land made travel so difficult, the guest-host relationship was sacred. If a stranger, even a poor man, appeared at your door, it was your duty to be a good host, to take him in and shelter him, share your food and wine with him. “We do not sit at table only to eat, but to eat together,” said the Greek author Plutarch.5 Dining was a sign of the human community and differentiated men from beasts. In return, the guest had obligations to his host. These included not abusing his host’s hospitality by staying too long, usually not more than three days. A violation of this relationship by either side brought justified human and divine wrath. An example is in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. After the Trojan War, which lasted ten years, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, wandered for another ten years trying to return to his home. In his absence, his house was filled with men who drank his wine, ate his roasted meat, and pressured his wife to choose one of them as her new husband because they kept assuring her Odysseus was dead. When he finally arrived home disguised as a lowly swineherd, the suitors refused to give him food or shelter. Then Odysseus revealed himself and justifiably killed them all.

Demeter, Goddess of Grain: The “Good Goddess”

A powerful goddess was Demeter, the goddess of all growing things — mother earth. Barley was sprinkled around her temple as an offering to ensure that the earth would be fertile. As time passed, the barley was replaced by wheat, then rice. The custom of scattering rice spread from the temple to the wedding ceremony to guarantee fertility in marriage. This is why we still throw rice at the bride and groom. (Now, however, in an effort to be environmentally sensitive, many people sprinkle birdseed because birds can’t digest rice.)

Demeter had a beautiful daughter named Persephone [per SEH fuh nee6] who she kept hidden from the roving eyes of the male gods. One day, the thing Demeter feared the most happened: Persephone let out a scream that shook heaven and earth and vanished. Demeter was devastated. She left Mt. Olympus and wandered the earth disguised as an ordinary human, looking for her daughter. She would not eat or drink the food of the gods, only the little bit of food the reapers ate: barley-water with mint; or water, meal, and pennyroyal.7 Finally, the Sun told her that Hades, the god of the dark kingdom of the dead, had seen Persephone picking flowers and thought she was so beautiful that he opened the earth and captured her. Demeter grieved when she heard this, and so did the earth. Everything stopped growing. Zeus finally stepped in and negotiated a compromise because all the humans were going to starve. Persephone could be with her mother, but only part of the time. She had eaten a pomegranate seed that Hades had given her, which meant that she had to return to the underworld to be with him. That is how Persephone came to be both the goddess of springtime and of the dead. During Persephone’s eight months aboveground, joyous Demeter lets things grow and flourish. But when Persephone is in the world of the dead for four months every year, Demeter mourns and nothing grows.

And that is where winter comes from.

Dionysus: God of the Grape

Each winter in Greece, grape vines seemed to die, only to be miraculously reborn in the springtime. Just as the Nile represented resurrection to the Egyptians, Dionysus, the god of the vine, was the sacred symbol of resurrection and immortality to the Greeks. Grapes were plentiful; wine production began by 1500 B.C.8 The Greeks drank it sweetened with honey, because the amphoras — the ceramic vessels they used to store wine — were waterproofed with resin, a sticky secretion from trees that tasted like turpentine, also a resin. The taste persists today in the Greek alcohol retsina. Like the wine he represented, Dionysus had many sides: he could lift men out of their ordinary state of mind and inspire them, but men also sometimes committed terrible acts under his influence. Women were rarely allowed to have wine. For instance, public banquets were usually restricted to men. On the rare occasions when women were invited, they didn’t get the good, strong, aged wine the men got. They were served “sweet wine or barely fermented grape juice.”9 Drinking wine was regarded as sacred because it altered human consciousness and brought men closer to god. At one of the most sacred Greek ceremonies, it was not consumed with dinner as a beverage, but after, at what the Greeks called a symposium.

The Symposium

The symposium was an elaborate ceremony that usually took place in a ruler’s dining hall or public building, often a temple. By the seventh century B.C. it was an accustomed practice. The best sources from ancient Greece are paintings on vases; the best current source is Massimo Vetta’s essay, “The Culture of the Symposium.”10 As Vetta states, the symposium was “a meeting of men that only took place following a meal” to consecrate a special public or private event like a wedding or to thank the gods for a victory in games or to make a political decision.11 It began with a blood sacrifice — a religious offering to the gods of an animal, usually a young lamb or goat, that had been ritually killed. “The slaughter of animals in sacrifice and the butchering of the meat was the task of the mageiros (the Greek word for chef, butcher, and sacrificer of animals): he divided the meat between the worshippers.”12 After the gods got the best portion — thigh meat and fat — the humans ate. Slaves served the guests, who took their sandals off and reclined on couches propped up on one arm. When the eating was over, tables were cleared, hands were washed, floors cleansed of the scraps thrown on them during dinner. The men were given garlands to put on their heads and chests. Then poetry was recited, flutes played, decisions made. The sense of community was further reinforced because all the men drank from the same cup.13 Except for a few drops of sacred wine at the beginning of the ceremony, the wine was diluted, often at the ratio of one part wine to two or three parts water. The Greeks regarded diluted wine as a symbol of civilization. It also helped to avoid drunkenness.

Athena: Goddess of the Olive

There was gold in Greece — olive oil. Olives, the fruit of the Olea europaea tree, had been cultivated and pressed for their oil in the eastern Mediterranean by Palestinians and Syrians since about 5000 B.C. The dusty graygreen trees are slow growing but live to be hundreds of years old. Prized for cooking, as medicine, and as fuel, olive oil was one of the basics of trade in the ancient Mediterranean. It was also used as a body lotion sometimes scented with perfume. For example, in the Olympics, which began in 776 B.C., naked men greased with olive oil competed in the earliest sports: running, the long jump, the discus and javelin throws, wrestling, boxing, and a combination of five events called the pentathlon — all still part of the modern Olympics, which began in 1896. (The winner wasn’t totally naked: he was crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves from the god Apollo’s sacred tree.) When it was discovered that olive trees, which are very sensitive to cold, grew well in Greece’s mild climate, they became a staple crop. However, their deep roots let the topsoil wash away, finishing off the erosion that had begun centuries earlier when the Greeks started chopping down trees to build houses and ships. Unripe green olives and even ripe black ones are bitter. Before they can be eaten they must be cured in brine, in oil, in water, or dried in salt. If they are going to be crushed to extract the oil, it must be done very carefully with just the right amount of pressure to force the oil out of the olive, but not smash the pit into it. In ancient times:

The olives were first crushed in basins. The resulting mash was then transferred to straw baskets for the actual pressing to be done. Several baskets were stacked in a press. Various methods of producing a graduated pressure were developed over the early centuries, chiefly a long, extremely heavy beam counterpoised with weights. The crushed fruit yielded a liquid comprised of water and oil. It had to be allowed to settle before oil could be skimmed off at successive intervals.15

Ancient people didn’t have the levels of labeling that came into existence at the end of the twentieth century, but “virgin” means first pressing; “extra virgin” means less than one percent acidity; “cold-pressed” means that heat, which would alter the chemical composition and taste of the oil, was not used.16

The olive tree is highly symbolic in Western culture. Jews and Christians know it from the Old Testament story of Noah’s Ark and the flood. When the dove that Noah sent out to see if the world was still flooded flew back to the ark with an olive branch in its mouth, everyone knew that the floodwaters had receded and that there was peace again. The dove and the olive branch have symbolized peace ever since. To the Greeks, the olive was the symbol of the goddess Athena, who created it. She was the warrior goddess, helmeted and carrying a shield, who also represented peace and wisdom. She protected Athens — the city named after her —  and helped the Greeks win the Trojan War in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.

Even though the gods did not eat human food, they were very human in their behavior. They fought among themselves, lied, cheated on their spouses, got angry, and were not above disguising themselves to get what they wanted, frequently a beautiful young girl. The husbandand-wife team of Zeus and Hera headed up the gods. Both a goddess and a god were connected to fire. Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, the only sister of Zeus, and a virgin, was worshiped in public and in private every day because every city had a sacred fire that was kept burning constantly. In this case, the goddess paralleled what the humans did, since the daughter of the household was responsible for keeping the fire going. Hestia also received offerings at the beginning and end of every meal. One of the rituals of founding a new colony was to take fire from the old city to the new one to guarantee continuity. It survives today in the ceremony of the Olympic torch, which has to be carried by hand from Athens to the site of the Olympic games every four years.

The god connected with fire was Hephaestus. Like many Greek gods, he had both a positive and a negative side. On the positive side, he was a blacksmith, which showed the power of fire to create and be useful to mankind. The negative was that he also represented the power of fire to destroy, because he lived in a volcano (his Latin name is Vulcan). In another typically Greek contrast, Hephaestus, the only god who was ugly and deformed, was married to beautiful Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She gave her name to foods and other substances that are thought to stimulate the senses or improve performance sexually — aphrodisiacs. Some foods that are considered aphrodisiacs now are oysters, caviar, Champagne, chocolate, and snails.

Food played a large part in Greek mythology, too. Hunger was used as a punishment for the crime of cannibalism. Tantalus, the only mortal who had ever dined with the gods on nectar and ambrosia, invited the gods to a banquet at which he served a peculiar dish. He had killed his son, boiled him, and now was feeding him to the gods. They figured it out before they started eating (except for one bite of his shoulder) and gave Tantalus a punishment to fit his crime — eternal agonizing hunger and thirst. He was forced to stand in a pool of water, but every time he bent down to take a drink, it disappeared. He reached up to pluck the ripe apples, pomegranates, pears, and figs dangling just over his head, but the wind blew the branches out of his reach. It is from Tantalus that we get our word tantalize—to drive somebody crazy with desire.

The Golden Age of Greece and the Professional Chef

In the fifth century B.C., Athens and Sparta allied and defeated the Persian Empire in a series of wars. The peacetime that followed was the Golden Age of Greece. Athens grew to between 300,000 and 500,000 people and created the buildings, paintings, and sculptures that are the hallmarks of Greece and Western civilization, like the Parthenon, a hilltop temple with a forty-foot statue of Athena. The Golden Age was the great age of theater in Greece, the comedies of Aristophanes and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that are still performed today.

The Golden Age was also the beginning of a wealthy class and a split in the culture between rich and poor, which was reflected in Greek cuisine. The poor continued to subsist on barley heated up to remove the chaff and ground into cakes called maza, wheat pastes or unleavened bread, some sheep or goat cheese, and olive oil.19 The wealthy had more elaborate meals, with more variety in diet. They consumed legumes like chickpeas, lentils, and vetch, and seeds from flax, sesame, and poppies. They also ate the meat of domesticated animals, including dogs, after observing sacrificial rituals. The forests provided large and small game: boar, deer, hare, and fox. The vegetables commonly eaten were turnips, leeks, watercress, onions, garlic, and purslane.20 The new profession of bee-keeping made honey more available.21

The rise in urbanization, wealth, and trade produced a need for more than the free guest-host hospitality of earlier times. City-run inns provided professional hospitality for traveling merchants and businessmen throughout the Greek world, often in waterfront areas.22 All of these people needed food; cooking became a profession in Greece. In addition to being able to afford chefs, the wealthy could afford to buy imported wines. They also drank much more wine than the poor. Cuisine was not as elaborate as it later became in Rome, but some of the chefs became known. One, Archestratus, from Sicily—either Syracuse or Gela — wrote much about food but it wasn’t a cookbook. He wrote food poetry, parodies that made fun of the epic poems like The Iliad or The Odyssey, that were recited — sung to a lyre, a kind of harp  —  as entertainment at a symposium. Guests expecting a song about heroic deeds must have been surprised when instead they got verses about fish. Only fragments survive, partly because Greek philosophers like Plato didn’t think cooking was an art, or food writing was worth preserving in libraries.

Greece’s Golden Age ended when it went to war with Sparta. Starting in 431 B.C., Athens and Sparta waged a twenty-seven year war for control of the Greek peninsula. Much of Sparta’s strategy was to cut Athens off from its food supply. Knowing this, Athens tried to invade Sicily in 415 B.C. to turn it into a grain-producing colony. Two disastrous years later, the Sicilians emerged victorious after destroying Athens’s navy and onethird of its total military force.23 The war finally ended in 404 B.C. when Sparta blocked Athens’s sea route to its grain supply. Without food, Athens was forced to surrender. The Golden Age of Greek civilization was over.

Alexander the Great and the Magic Golden Apples

A new conqueror appeared, from Macedonia, just north of Greece. Alexander was not Greek but he loved Greek culture. His tutor was the philosopher Aristotle, who had been the student of Plato, who had been the student of Socrates. Alexander’s goal was to conquer the known world, and he did. His empire stretched east from Greece through Persia (modern-day Iran) and Iraq to the Indus River on the western border of India, north through what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan, and south into Africa. His conquering created a new culture, Hellenistic, that was a combination of four cultures: Greek, Persian, Indian, and Egyptian. This had an impact on the cuisine of Greece, because new methods of food preparation and new foods were introduced. One writer bemoaned all the changes that were occurring with food: “Do you see what things have come to? Bread, garlic, cheese, maza—those are healthy foods, but not these salted fish, these lamb chops sprinkled with spices, these sweet confections, and these corrupting pot roasts. And by Zeus, if they aren’t simmering cabbage in olive oil and eating it with pureed peas!”24

Alexander established cities everywhere he conquered and named at least fifteen after himself. The center of learning in the world shifted from Athens to Alexandria, Egypt. It had a library with 700,000 volumes of Greek writing, a zoo, a botanical garden, an observatory, and a great lighthouse more than 400 feet high to keep the ships safe, many of them carrying wheat from the Nile River valley to feed the Mediterranean world.

Alexander was on a quest for immortality — the legendary Water of Life or the magic Golden Apples. He didn’t find either one, but he did find other apples that were supposed to let him live to be 400 years old.25 He didn’t live to be forty. He died of a fever, maybe malaria, one month short of his thirty-third birthday. Still seeking immortality, he arranged to have himself preserved in honey and placed in a glass coffin in Alexandria, Egypt. After his death in 323 B.C., as usual after the death of a powerful leader, there were wars of succession and his empire was split up into smaller areas ruled by several generals. But Alexander’s vast empire would soon appear small. Power in the Mediterranean was shifting to a fast-rising country located west of Greece on a peninsula shaped like a boot — Italy.

Notes

1. Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 299–301.
2. Tannahill, Food in History, 61.
3. Farb, Consuming Passions, 62.
4. Amouretti, “Urban and Rural Diets in Greece,” in Food, 82.
5. Montanari, “Introduction: Food Systems and Models of Civilization,” in Food, 69.
6. In Greek, the final “e” is pronounced like the double e in “beet.” For example, the Greek goddess of victory, Nike—“Nigh kee.”
7. Depending on which translation. Handbook of Greek Mythology says pennyroyal; Hamilton’s Mythology says barley-water and mint.
8. Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 10.
9. Flandrin and Montanari, Food, 94.
10. Vetta, “The Culture of the Symposium, 96-105, in Food.
11. Ibid., 97.
12. Archestratus, The Life of Luxury, 21.
13. Vetta, “Symposium,” in Food, 100.
14. Asimov, Words of Science, 20; Oxford English Dictionary.
15. Taylor, Olive in California, 7.
16. Davidson, Oxford Companion, 551–553.
17. Taylor, Olive in California, various.
18. Davidson, Oxford Companion, 553
19. Tannahill, Food in History, 65.
20. Amouretti, “Urban and Rural Diets in Greece,” in Food, 82.
21. Brothwell, Food in Antiquity, 201.
22. Flandrin and Montanari, Food, 288.
23. Grant, Founders of the Western World, 68.
24. Flandrin and Montanari, Food, 87, quoting Antiphanes in Apud Athenaeum, 370e.
25. Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, 622.









By Linda Civitello in " Cuisine and Culture - A History of Food and People", Wiley, USA, 2008, excerpts p. 25-34. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Terminal de contâineres do porto de Santos em 1995

Leopoldo Costa

Panorama Macroeconomico

A abertura da economia ao mercado internacional e a estabilidade monetária, proporcionada pelo Plano Real, marcaram a atividade econômica em 1995.

O PIB do ano foi de US$ 560 bilhões. A participação dos setores na formação do PIB, foram respectivamente, agropecuária com 13,3%, indústria com 34,4% e serviços com 52,3%.

A renda per capita anual era de US$ 3.596, havendo um crescimento de 2,8% sobre o ano anterior.

No ano de 1995 o Brasil exportou US$ 46,51 bilhões e importou US$ 49,66 bilhões gerando um deficit de US$ 3,15 bilhões.

A dívida externa era de US$ 159,2 bilhões (28% do PIB) e a dívida interna de R$ 170,3 bilhões (25,5% do PIB). O pagamento de juros sobre a dívida externa, representou US$ 21,4 milhões no ano.

Principalmente pela alta taxa de juros, o desequilíbrio  das contas públicas, gerou um deficit de 5% do PIB.

A inflação do ano de 1995 foi de 14,78% (contra 909,70% em 1994). Com isso, os mais pobres, que tinham uma participação de 0,7% da renda total em 1993, passaram a ter uma participação de 1,1%.

Bancos e Finanças

O setor financeiro que em 1994 participava com 13% do PIB, reduziu-se em 1995 sua participação para 7%.

A diminuição dos ganhos com a inflação provocou uma grave crise bancária. Houve o fechamento do Banco Econômico e a compra do Banco Nacional pelo Unibanco. Essa crise gerou um clima de desconfiança e o medo de que os correntistas comparecessem em massa nos bancos pra sacar o seu dinheiro.

Dos 50 maiores bancos brasileiros apenas o Banco do Brasil teve prejuízo (US$ 4,4 milhões). Os demais bancos tiveram um lucro de US$ 3,4 bilhões (queda de 17% sobre os resultados de 1994)

Para tentar amainar a crise, em novembro o governo federal criou o Proer (Programa de Estímulo a Reestruturação e ao Fortalecimento do Sistema Financeiro Nacional), que emprestou ao sistema bancário, até meados de 1996, R$ 13,3 bilhões. Metade (R$ 6,7 bilhões) foi destinada ao Unibanco para a aquisição do Banco Nacional. Outras 5 instituições receberam R$ 6,6 bilhões.

Os cinco maiores bancos, classificados pelo patrimônio líquido eram: Bradesco (R$ 4,7 bilhões), Caixa Econômica Federal (R$ 3,6 bilhões), Itaú (R$ 3,5 bilhões), Brasil (R$ 3,1 bilhões) e Unibanco (R$ 1,5 bilhão).

Agricultura

Foi um dos setores mais sacrificados no ano, pela escassez de financiamento. Não havia recursos para o crédito rural e os juros elevados descapitalizava os produtores.

Existia 3,4 milhões de propriedades rurais que totalizavam 325 milhões de hectares. Menos de 1% dos proprietários rurais detinha 35% da área total. Segundo o Incra, na época, 47% das propriedades eram improdutivas.

Segundo a Conab a área cultivada para a safra 1995/1996 foi de 37 milhões de hectares (redução de 4% sobre o ano anterior) que gerou uma produção de 74,2 milhões de toneladas de cereais, leguminosas e oleaginosas (8,5% menor do que o ano anterior).

Energia Elétrica

Foram produzidas 288.770 GW de energia elétrica. A energia produzida por usinas hidráulicas era a mais importante fonte, responsável por 44% do total produzido, a lenha por 14%, bagaço de cana por 13%, petróleo por 21% e outra fontes por 8%.

O país produziu 12.500.000 m³ de etanol.

Salário e Emprego

Em 1993 os brasileiros recebiam em média R$ 195 por mês e passaram a receber R$ 254 em 1995.

O salário mínimo era de R$ 121,62 mensais.

Os cinco maiores empregadores na época eram, a Petrobrás (46.226 empregados), a RFFSA (37.458 empregados), a Volkswagen (32.000 empregados), a Telesp (23.269 empregados) e a GM (22.200 empregados).

Panorama Empresarial

O setor industrial, afetado pela restrição ao consumo, cresceu apenas 2% em 1995. Com a abertura da economia, as multinacionais, principalmente do ramo automobilístico, iniciaram grandes projetos, atraídas pelo dinamismo do mercado. Em 1995 foram produzidos 1,3 milhão de veículos.

A revista "Exame" na sua edição especial de agosto de 1996 "Melhores e Maiores", publicou o ranking por faturamento das 500 maiores empresas em 1995. A somatória do faturamento das empresas listadas foi de US$ 262 bilhões (queda de 2% sobre o ano anterior). 230 das empresas aumentaram as vendas e 48 tiveram prejuízo.

Das 500 maiores empresas 43,6% eram privadas nacionais, 33,3% eram privadas de capital estrangeiro e 23,1% eram estatais. 53% das empresas tinham sede no estado de São Paulo, 12% no estado do Rio de Janeiro, 8% no estado do Rio Grande do Sul, 6% no estado de Minas Gerais e 21% nas demais unidades federativas. A participação das empresas sediadas no estado de São Paulo e no estado do Rio de Janeiro. Era de 63% (em 1993) do estado de São Paulo e 20% do estado do Rio de Janeiro.

O setor que mais aumentou as vendas foi o de Bebidas e Fumo, com 30%, seguido pelo setor de Papel e Celulose (+20%) e o setor de Higiene e Limpeza (+15%). A maior redução nas vendas foi do setor de Construção com 33%, seguido pelo setor de Comércio Atacadista (-13%) e pelo setor de Automóveis e Peças (-11%).

Sairam da lista das 500 maiores, empresas  importantes como a Atlantic, a Fleischman Royal, a Mendes Júnior, a União, a C & A, a New Holland, a Cutrale, a Krupp e a Ultrafértil.

As 10 maiores empresas do setor público eram respectivamente: Petrobrás (vendas de US$ 21,20 bilhões), Petrobrás Distribuidora (vendas de US$ 8,55 bilhões), Eletropaulo (vendas de US$ 4,83 bilhões), CESP (vendas de US$ 3,41 bilhões), Telesp (vendas de US$ 3,39 bilhões), Furnas ( vendas de US$ 2,98 bilhões), Vale do Rio Doce (vendas de US$ 2,73 bilhões), Cemig (vendas de US$ 2,25 bilhões), Sabesp (vendas de US$ 2,10 bilhões) e Embratel (vendas de US$ 1,93bilhões).

O complexo Petrobrás/Petrobrás Distribuidora (estatal), a maior empresa brasileira com o faturamento de US$ 29,77 bilhões em 1995, representou 97% da soma dos faturamentos individuais das cinco maiores empresas do setor privado (US$ 30,81 bilhões). O complexo teve o maior lucro do ano (US$ 809 milhões) equivalente a 3,8% do patrimônio.

Das vinte empresas com resultado negativo no ano de 1995, 16 eram empresas estatais. O maior prejuízo foi da FEPASA que perdeu US$ 1,3 bilhão. A DERSA com US$ 753 milhões foi a segunda colocada.

As 50 maiores empresas estatais reduziram suas dívidas em US$ 10 bilhões entre 1994 e 1995.

As 10 maiores empresas do setor privado eram respectivamente: Volkswagen (vendas de US$ 7,22 bilhões), GM (vendas de US$ 6,39 bilhões), Fiat Automóveis ( vendas de US$ 6,22 bilhões), Souza Cruz (vendas de US$ 5,67 bilhões), Shell (vendas de US$ 5,3 bilhões), Carrefour ( vendas de US$ 4,13 bilhões), Ipiranga (vendas de US$ 3,86 bilhões), Mercedes-Benz (vendas de US$ 3,39 bilhões), Nestlé (vendas de US$ 3,37 bilhões) e Gessy Lever (vendas de US$ 3,36 bilhões).

Nota-se que ramo automobilístico e de combustíveis, ocupava 6 posições entre as 10 maiores empresas. A Volkswagen, após a dissolução da Autolatina (Volkswagen + Ford), que durou de 1987 a 1994, voltou individualmente a ocupar a liderança. Seu antigo parceiro ocupou no ano a 16ª posição (vendas de US$ 2,8 bilhões). O lucro da Fiat Automóveis (US$ 475 milhões) foi o maior das 500 maiores empresas brasileiras. Representou um resultado superior aos faturamentos individuais de 373 (75%) das empresas listadas entre as 500 maiores.

Setor de Alimentos

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Nestlé com vendas de US$ 3,37 bilhões, seguido pela Copersucar com vendas de US$ 2,07 bilhões, Ceval com vendas de US$ 1,73 bilhão, Santista Alimentos com vendas de 1,57 bilhão e Sadia Concórdia com vendas de US$ 1,53 bilhão.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 5,6%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 8% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 2,2%.

Embora na 17ª colocação do setor, a Danone se destacou no ano de 1995. O faturamento cresceu 58% sobre o ano anterior e a empresa conquistou 30% do mercado de iogurtes, roubando parte do mercado da líder de então, a marca Chambourcy da Nestlé.

Entre as cinco empresas que mais cresceram em faturamento, três eram do setor: a Santista Alimentos com 29%, A CCGL com 24% e a J. Macedo com 22%.

Setor de Automóveis e Peças

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Volkswagen com vendas de US$ 7,22 bilhões, seguido pela GM com vendas de US$ 6,39 bilhões, Fiat Automóveis com vendas de US$ 6,73 bilhões, Mercedes-Benz com vendas de 3,39 bilhões e Ford com vendas de US$ 2,81 bilhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 10,8%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 1,6% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 0,5%.

Setor de Bebidas e Fumo

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Souza Cruz com vendas de US$ 5,67 bilhões, seguido pela Antarctica com vendas de US$ 3,26 bilhões, Brahma com vendas de US$ 3,05 bilhões, Coca Cola com vendas de 1,92 bilhão e Philip Moris com vendas de US$ 1,17 bilhão.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 29,7%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 16,7% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 9,4%.

Setor de Comércio Atacadista

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Coimex (importadora de veículos do Espírito Santo, antes especializada em café) com vendas de US$ 1,74 bilhão, seguido pela Makro com vendas de US$ 1,48 bilhão, Martins com vendas de US$ 1,23 bilhão, Coamo (cooperativa agro-industrial sediada no Paraná) com vendas de 641 milhões e Glencore (commodities) com vendas de US$ 512 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 13,2%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 2,6% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 0,4%.

Setor de Comércio Varejista

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Carrefour com vendas de US$ 4,13 bilhões, seguido pelo Pão de Açúcar com vendas de US$ 3,26 bilhões, Lojas Americanas com vendas de US$ 2,37 bilhões, Casas Bahia com vendas de 1,75 bilhão e Sendas  com vendas de US$ 1,48 bilhão.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 11%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 9,9% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 1,7%.

O Pão de Açúcar, que em 1986 era a 5ª maior empresa brasileira, iniciou no ano de 1987 o processo de derrocada (segundo o próprio dono Abílio Diniz, "causada por baixa produtividade e ineficiência"). Ocupou a 20° nos anos de 1991 e 1992 (em 1992 chegou a ser superada até pelo Paes Mendonça da Bahia). A partir de uma completa reestruturação, com a desvinculação familiar nos negócios, fechamento de lojas deficitárias e profissionalização da administração,  a partir de 1993 (era a 16ª colocada) foi recuperando espaço, ocupando a 13ª posição em 1994 e a 11ª posição entre as 500 maiores em 1995 (vendas de US$ 3,26 bilhões).

Setor de Computação

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a IBM com vendas de US$ 1,91 bilhão, seguido pela Compaq com vendas de US$ 382 milhões, Hewlett Packard (HP) com vendas de US$ 381 milhões, Unisys com vendas de 377 milhões e Personal Computer Company  com vendas de US$ 320 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 3,7%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 10% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 0,7%.

Setor de Confecções

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Azaléia com vendas de US $559 milhões, seguido pela São Paulo Alpargatas com vendas de US$ 517 milhões, Hering com vendas de US$ 264 milhões, Grendene com vendas de 213 milhões e Penalty com vendas de US$ 206 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 3,7%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 4,5% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 5,7%.

Setor de Construção

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Encol com vendas de US$ 1,07 bilhão, seguido pela Andrade Gutierrez com vendas de US$ 697 milhões, Norberto Odebrecht com vendas de US$ 571 milhões, Camargo Corrêa com vendas de 465 milhões e OAS com vendas de US$ 454 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 33,1%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 3% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 3%.

Quatro empresas com maior capital de giro próprio eram do setor. A Andrade Gutierrez com US$ 1,9 bilhão, vindo em seguida a Camargo Corrêa com US$ 1,1 bilhão, a Norberto Odebrecht com US$ 581 milhões e a CBPO (também do grupo Odebrecht) com US$ 566 milhões.

Setor de Eletroeletrônica

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Multibrás (Brastemp e Consul) com vendas de US$ 2,0 bilhões, seguido pela Philips com vendas de US$ 1,8 bilhão, CCE com vendas de US$ 966 milhões, Itautec Philco com vendas de US$ 922 milhões e Prosdócimo com vendas de US$ 884 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 4,6%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 11,7% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 2,9%.

O destaque do ano foi para a Semp-Toshiba, a 8ª colocada no ranking. Teve um lucro de US$ 155 milhões, ou seja, 41% sobre o patrimônio líquido. Fabricou 910.000 televisores, 15% do total de 6.100.000 televisores que o país produziu.
Setor de Energia Elétrica

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Eletropaulo com vendas de US$ 4,83 bilhões, seguido pela CESP com vendas de US$ 3,41 bilhões, Furnas com vendas de US$ 2,98 bilhões, Cemig com vendas de 2,25 bilhões e Light com vendas de US$ 1,91 bilhão.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 3,9%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de -1,6% e uma margem sobre as vendas de -5,9%.

Setor Farmacêutico

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Aché com vendas de US$ 412 milhões, seguido pela Roche com vendas de US$ 393 milhões, Bristol-Myers Squibb com vendas de US$ 365 milhões, Biogalênica com vendas de 326 milhões e Schering-Plough com vendas de US$ 279 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 2,9%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 27,5% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 8,2%.

Setor de Higiene e Limpeza

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Gessy Lever com vendas de US$ 3,37 bilhões, seguido pela Avon com vendas de US$ 1,08 bilhão, Johnson & Johnson com vendas de US$ 594 milhões, Bombril com vendas de 490 milhões e Natura com vendas de US$ 475 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 15,1%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 13,2% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 4,1%.

Setor de Materiais de Construção

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Santa Marina com vendas de US$ 477 milhões, seguido pela Votorantim com vendas de US$ 461 milhões, Duratex com vendas de US$ 390 milhões, Cebrace com vendas de 327 milhões e Cimento Rio Branco (do Paraná) com vendas de US$ 289 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 7%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 5,3% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 5,6%.

Setor de Mecânica

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Embraco com vendas de US$ 532 milhões, seguido pela ABB (antes Asean Brown Boveri) com vendas de US$ 471 milhões, Villares com vendas de US$ 308 milhões, WEG com vendas de 304 milhões e Voith com vendas de US$ 198 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 10,3%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de -1,4% e uma margem sobre as vendas de -1,2%.

Setor de Mineração

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Vale do Rio Doce com vendas de US$ 2,73 bilhões, seguido pela MBR com vendas de US$ 412 milhões, Magnesita com vendas de US$ 296 milhões, Ferteco com vendas de 265 milhões e Nibrasco (do grupo Vale do Rio Doce) com vendas de US$ 254 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 10,4%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 4,6% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 6,7%.

Setor de Papel e Celulose

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Klabin com vendas de US$ 956 milhões, seguido pela Aracruz Celulose com vendas de US$ 753 milhões, Susano com vendas de US$ 390 milhões, Champion com vendas de 536 milhões e Bahia Sul com vendas de US$ 454 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 20,5%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 4,9% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 0,8%.

Setor de Plásticos e Borracha

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Pirelli com vendas de US$ 868 milhões, seguido pela Goodyear com vendas de US$ 859 milhões, Bridgestone/Firestone com vendas de US$ 636 milhões, Tigre com vendas de 390 milhões e Petroflex com vendas de US$ 357 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 3,4%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 1,1% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 0,7%.

Setor de Química e Petroquímica

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Petrobrás com vendas de US$ 21,20 bilhões, seguido pela Copene com vendas de US$ 1,43 bilhão, Basf com vendas de US$ 1,14 bilhão, Hoechst com vendas de 874 milhões e Rhodia com vendas de US$ 834 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 5,4%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 0,7% e uma margem sobre as vendas de -0,1%.

Setor de Serviços de Transporte

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Varig com vendas de US$ 3,20 bilhões, seguido pela Vasp com vendas de US$ 1,15 bilhão, RFFSA com vendas de US$ 955 milhões, Transbrasil com vendas de 895 milhões e TAM com vendas de US$ 413 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 12,9%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de -1,6% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 4,2%.

O endividamento de duas companhias aéreas se destacou. A Transbrasil, que devia o equivalente a 132% dos seus ativos, seguido pela Vasp com 121% dos seus ativos. Eram as empresas mais endividadas das 500 maiores empresas do Brasil.

No ano foi destaque a TAM dirigida pelo comandante Rolim Amaro. Teve um crescimento de 34% no faturamento e 34% no lucro. A tônica de empresa era saber agradar o cliente. O próprio Rolim Amaro e toda a tripulação do voo recebiam os passageiros no embarque, cumprimentando-os com um gesto e sorriso. Cobrando tarifas até 20% mais caras do que as da Varig e da Vasp conquistava cada dia mais clientes. Tinha 9% do mercado.

A Varig foi a única grande empresa aérea a apresentar prejuízo (US$ 7,1 milhões) repetindo os desastrosos resultados dos anos anteriores. A empresa, que monopolizava o transporte aéreo em outra época, não soube lidar com a concorrência e nem se adaptar a nova realidade do mercado.

Setor de Siderurgia e Metalurgia

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a CSN com vendas de US$ 2,64 bilhões, seguido pela Usiminas com vendas de US$ 2,17 bilhões, Cosipa com vendas de US$ 1,50 bilhão, Alcoa com vendas de 1,32 bilhão e CST com vendas de US$ 995 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 1,9%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 3,4% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 8,8%.

Setor de Telecomunicações

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Telesp com vendas de US$ 3,39 bilhões, seguido pela Embratel com vendas de US$ 1,93 bilhão, Telerj com vendas de US$ 1,22 bilhão, Telemig com vendas de 958 milhões e CRT com vendas de US$ 685 milhões.

O setor teve um acréscimo nas vendas de 15,4%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 4,1% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 8,3%.

Setor de Têxteis

As cinco maiores empresas por faturamento do setor eram a Alpargatas-Santista com vendas de US$ 512 milhões, seguido pela Rhodia-Ster Fipack com vendas de US$ 337 milhões, Teka com vendas de US$ 303 milhões, Vicunha com vendas de 281 milhões e Artex com vendas de US$ 215 milhões.

O setor teve um decréscimo nas vendas de 8,9%, uma rentabilidade sobre o patrimônio de 1,4% e uma margem sobre as vendas de 1,3%.

Capital Estrangeiro 

Capitais de oito nacionalidades tinham investimentos de porte no Brasil em 1995.

Os investimentos da Alemanha representado  principalmente pela Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Basf, Hoechst, Bayer, Siemens e Mannesmann.

Os investimentos da França representado  principalmente pelo Carrefour, Santa Marina, Danone, Coinbra, Rhodia, Alcatel e L'Oreal.

Os investimentos dos Estados Unidos representado principalmente pela GM, Texaco, Esso, Ford, IBM, Xerox, Alcoa, Cargill, Philip Morris e Avon.

Os investimentos da Holanda (Países Baixos) representado principalmente pela Gessy Lever, Philips, Fiat Allis, Dow Elanco e Polyenka.

Os investimentos do Reino Unido representado principalmente pela Souza Cruz, Tintas Coral, Reckitt & Colman, Plascar e Glaxo Wellcome.

Os investimentos da Itália representado principalmente pela Fiat Automóveis, Parmalat, Pirelli, Bombril, Olivetti e Orniex.

A rentabilidade média  dos maiores negócios italianos no ano foi de 23%, enquanto dos maiores negócios de empresas de capital nacional foi de 4,6%.

Os investimentos do Japão representado principalmente pela Bridgestone-Firestone, Toyota, Yakult, Furukawa, Panasonic, Fujitsu e Toshiba.

Os investimentos da Suíça representado principalmente pela Nestlé, Glencore, Ciba, Roche, Sandoz e Ciminas.

Indicadores Sociais

O Brasil em 1995 tinha uma população de 155.822.440 habitantes, segundo estimativa do IBGE. A taxa de fecundidade foi de 2,52. 75,5% vivia nas cidades e 24,5% na zona rural. O IDH (Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano) era de 0,797. Brasília teve o melhor índice (0,858) e Alagoas teve o pior (0,500).

Tinha 38.969.714 domicílios permanentes, sendo 81% nas cidades e 19% nas zonas rurais. 72% eram domicílios próprios. 76,2% tinham água encanada, 39,5% tinham acesso a rede geral de esgoto, 91,7% tinham acesso a iluminação elétrica e 22,3% ao telefone.

Havia rádio em 88,8% dos domicílios, geladeira em 74,8% dos domicílios, televisão em 75,8% dos domicílios e máquina de lavar roupa em 26,6% dos domicílios.

Educação

O Brasil tinha cerca de 32 milhões de alunos matriculados no primeiro grau. A taxa de analfabetismo entre a população de mais de 15 anos era de 17,2%, a taxa de escolaridade entre crianças entre 7 a 14 anos era de 92%. A taxa de repetência era de 32% no ensino médio e a taxa de evasão de 5,2%.

Saúde

A saúde pública do Brasil consumia 2,6% do PIB (US$ 14,8 bilhões), ou seja, um investimento de US$ 95 per capita.

Existiam 509.662 leitos hospitalares. Haviam 207.747 médicos, representando 13,3 médicos por grupo de 10.000 habitantes.

Ocorreram 716.000 mortes. As principal causa de mortalidade no ano foi as doenças circulatórias com 231.558 óbitos (32% do total).

A taxa de mortalidade de crianças abaixo de um ano foi de 40 por 1.000 nascimentos.

Existiam 120.414 dentistas no Brasil, representando a taxa de 1 para cada 1.294 habitantes.


Panorama Político

Tomou posse no primeiro dia do ano o novo presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso (que tinha sido ministro da Fazenda de Itamar Franco), eleito, embalado pelo sucesso do Plano Real no controle da inflação, no primeiro turno pela coligação PSDB, (na época, Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira) e PFL, (Partido da Frente Liberal), com 54,3% dos votos válidos. Lula foi o segundo colocado com 27,0% dos votos, e os outros 7 candidatos (dentre os quais nomes de políticos conhecidos como Orestes Quércia, Leonel Brizola e Espiridião Amin), tiveram 18,7% dos votos.

Com ampla maioria no Congresso Nacional, Fernando Henrique Cardoso conseguiu durante o primeiro mandato, a quebra dos monopólios estatais nas áreas de comunicação e Petróleo, com a eliminação das restrições ao capital estrangeiro.

Nos dois mandatos de 1995 a 2002, o governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso privatizou a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (em 1997) pelo valor de US$ 3,2 bilhões e outras 108 empresas, sendo 23 empresas do setor elétrico, 9 empresas do setor ferroviário, 12 empresas do setor químico e petroquímico, 4 empresas do setor portuário, 5 empresas do setor de gás, 39 empresas do setor de telecomunicação, 10 empresas do setor financeiro e 6 empresas de setores diversos.

O Poder Executivo contava com 24 ministérios, sendo destes, três extraordinários (Reforma do Estado, Coordenação de Assuntos Políticos e  de Esportes). O presidente da república era Fernando Henrique Cardos e o vice-presidente Marco Maciel.

O Senado Federal, composto de 81 membros (três por unidade federativa),tinha 24 senadores do PMDB, 22 senadores do PFL, 13 do PSDB, 5 senadores do PT e 17 senadores de outros 6 partidos.

A Câmara Federal, composta de 513 membros, tinha 101 deputados do PFL, 97 deputados do PMDB, 91 deputados do PPB (depois apenas PP - Partido Progressista), 84 deputados do PSDB, 50 deputados do PT e 90 deputados de outros 5 partidos.

O Poder Judiciário estava representado no âmbito federal pelo Superior Tribunal Federal (presidido por José Paulo Sepúlveda),Superior Tribunal de Justiça (presidido por Romildo Bueno) o Tribunal Superior do Trabalho (presidido por Ermes Pedro Pedrassani), o Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (presidido por Carlos Maria da Silva Veloso) e o Superior Tribunal Militar (presidido pelo almirante-de-esquadra Luiz Leal Ferreira).

Generalidades

Em 1995 a internet chegou ao Brasil e os brasileiros passaram, ainda de forma precária e cara, a participar da rede mundial de computadores.

A Microsoft lançou no mercado brasileiro, o novo sistema operacional, o Windows 95, usado até hoje por muita gente.

Faleceram em 1995 personalidades como Adolpho Block (Grupo Manchete), Agepê e Ivon Cury (cantores), Costinha e Paulo Gracindo (atores), Agnelo Rossi (cardeal da Igreja Católica), Abgar Renault (intelectual) e Ibrahim Sued (cronista).

A "Imperatriz Leopoldinense" foi a campeã do carnaval do Rio de Janeiro e a "Gaviões da Fiel", a campeã do carnaval de São Paulo.

O Botafogo do Rio de Janeiro foi o time campeão brasileiro de futebol e o Grêmio de Porto Alegre foi o campeão do torneio Libertadores da América. Numa partida do campeonato paulista, entre Palmeiras e São Paulo, a briga entre as torcidas provocou a morte de um torcedor.

***

Ellen Wartella was never one for processed foods. She took cooking classes, and both she and her husband loved to spend time in the kitchen. Together, they plied their two sons with homemade dinners, and while she tolerated their fondness for junk food and things that came in a box, she didn’t exactly encourage it. “When my kids were growing up, we bought Kraft Macaroni & Cheese because they loved it,” she said. “And I remember being appalled by that.”

In middle school, she recalled, one of her sons swooned for another of Kraft’s mega-hits, Lunchables, especially the version with pizza. His crush, however, soon extinguished itself. By the time they reached high school in the late 1990s, both boys had been exposed to the dark side of public health and marketing. They came to loathe the cigarette companies, in particular, for deliberately hooking the country on a habit that killed people in horrible, untimely ways.

Wartella worked as the dean of the College of Communications at the University of Texas in Austin, where she had amassed some opinions of her own regarding industrial marketing. She had spent thirty years researching the affects of media on children, including TV violence and advertising, and her twelve books and 175 reports and papers had made her one of the country’s leading experts on the subject. In 2003, she got a call, out of the blue, from a senior executive from Kraft. He asked her if she would join a panel of health and marketing experts that the company was putting together for guidance on how to deal with obesity. The panel sounded to Wartella like something the august Institute of Medicine might assemble to examine a health crisis: Kraft had recruited two medical doctors versed in diabetes and public health, a psychologist who studied behavior and obesity, and a food nutrition researcher who specialized in obesity and heart disease — nine experts in all, with Wartella being asked to make it an even ten.

At the time, Kraft had two people acting as CEO, and both issued statements when the panel was formed explaining why the largest food company in the world was undertaking a mission that heretofore had fallen squarely within the domain of government, not private industry. “The council will give Kraft access to a range of important voices from outside the company,” said Betsy Holden, one of the CEOs, “who can play an invaluable role in helping us develop our response to the global challenge of obesity.” To which her partner, Roger Deromedi, added: “We welcome the council’s knowledge, insight, and judgment, all of which will help us strengthen the alignment of our products and marketing practices with societal needs.”

Wartella was heartened by the notion of a publicly traded company talking about society’s needs and actually taking steps to learn how it might better serve them. Companies, after all, existed to make money for their stockholders, and Kraft was tied to one of the biggest moneymakers of them all: Philip Morris. The tobacco giant had owned Kraft for fifteen years, and this was a problem for Wartella’s kids. When she told them she’d been invited to join the panel, they responded with outrage. “Both my boys were appalled at the idea of my joining an advisory board for Kraft, because both my children are very antismoking,” she told me. “They said, ‘How could you work for a company that is pushing cigarettes?’ ”

Wartella, however, had an inkling she might be able to do some good. She was no expert on obesity, but Kraft was a principal player in a recent development she had been tracking with increasing dismay: the targeting of vulnerable kids through the use of online games and various social media marketing schemes. “My early research was all on helping young children distinguish between the editorial content of TV and the persuasive intent of the advertisements, which they have difficulty separating,” she told me. “Now, these new strategies were comin g along that completely erased that.”

And kids were responding. Obesity was setting all sorts of records in 2003. The average adult was 24 pounds heavier than in 1960. One in three Americans—and nearly one in five kids, aged six to eleven—were classified as obese. As scientists poked at and measured the obesity crisis, one fact emerged from their studies that shocked people more than any other: Obesity was a lasting, seemingly incurable affliction. Kids who were overweight tended to stay that way for life.

Despite the proclamations from Kraft’s CEOs and her conversations with the Kraft executive who wanted her to join the advisory panel, Wartella had her doubts about the sincerity of Kraft’s undertaking. How could she not? Expert after expert was pointing the finger at processed food, and until now, Kraft had joined the rest of the industry in ducking blame. Why should she believe all this talk about society’s needs? Wartella finally decided to join the advisory group, but only after making a vow to herself and her kids: She would quit if it turned out to be more of the same old obfuscation.

After the group’s first two meetings at Kraft’s headquarters near Chicago, Wartella’s fears about the company’s sincerity seemed to be justified. The talks roamed across the landscape of obesity, but only broadly, touching on nutrition, exercise, and portion sizes. Always, the conversation was deferential toward Kraft, the $35 billion elephant in the room. This changed, however, in the third session. Wartella had been asked to discuss marketing, and she arrived having done her homework. The session started out with Kraft officials presenting a rosy view of the company’s practices, which included a policy of not advertising to children younger than six. Wartella begged to differ.

In truth, she said, Kraft’s own websites were riddled with tricks that lured young kids to their sweetest and fattiest produ cts. She cited games that entailed counting up Oreos, or going on hide-and-seek missions to find Barney Rubble, whose role in the game was to tout the company’s Fruity Pebbles cereal. These were marketing tricks that clearly circumvented the self-imposed advertising ban on children, she said, as did the company’s use of cartoon characters to hawk its mac and cheese and cookies. Even its packaging was decorated with Shrek and Dora the Explorer, the better to seduce young kids.

“I pointed this out, and I said, ‘You are at best disingenuous, and at worst you’re outright lying.’ The nutrition scientists and the other people on the advisory board were kind of appalled by the strength of my statements. One or two people came up to me afterwards and said, ‘They’re going to get you off this thing.’ ”

But that did not happen. The officials at Kraft listened. Not only that, they asked Wartella to dig even deeper into the company’s marketing practices and come back with more stinging critiques, which she did. Wartella came to believe that her original fears were unfounded. The panel was making a difference, and Kraft seemed to be, incredibly, starting to address the ways its own practices were contributing to the obesity crisis.

This was no small thing. For the processed food industry, 2003 was shaping up to be a furious, competitive race to boost America’s consumption of its products. Not only were wars taking place in which the sole objective was to flood the grocery aisles with items with ever higher loads of salt, sugar, and fat, a huge new player in groceries had accelerated the competition for space on the shelf. Wal-Mart had begun selling food, and just since 2000 the retailing giant had boosted its grocery, candy, and tobacco sales by 46 percent to $39.4 billion, sending food manufacturers rushing to the company’s headquarters in Arkansas to pitch their wares. The big manufacturers were in a separate race to the bottom when it came to the economics of food, seeking out new ways to cut their ingredient costs, lower the price of their food, and thus turn processed food into the only logical choice shoppers could make.

Kraft was no stranger to this contest. Its product managers were turning out some of the most enticing, supersized, and cheapest items of all, from the fruit drink called Capri Sun (later “up-sized” to the Big Pouch) to the fat-laden Lunchables (expanded into the Maxed Out size) to the Cheese Stuffed Crust Supreme DiGiorno frozen pizza (with three meats added to with the extra cheese, delivering more than two days’ worth of the recommended maximum of saturated fat and sodium in a single pie weighing nearly two pounds). “Build and defend,” was the rallying cry in Kraft’s internal pep talks. “Drive consumption.”

Inside this same company, however, a heretical view had emerged. Starting in the late 1990s, a small group of senior Kraft officials had been watching America’s massive weight gain with growing alarm. They didn’t buy the industry’s view that consumers were to blame for the obesity crisis by being slothful or lacking in willpower. The small group of insiders had a different take on America’s gluttony. Some were emotionally vested, believing that they had an ethical and moral imperative to help resolve the epidemic of obesity, for which their industry was in large part responsible. Others made a more practical argument: The consumer backlash on processed foods, when it came, would exact a heavy toll on the company’s profits. “We were trying to convince senior management that we would be better off in the long run if we gave up a little to save a lot, in terms of our long-term business reputation and success,” said Kathleen Spear, a senior vice president and member of this cabal at Kraft.

The group got Kraft to empanel the experts, and it then used their testimony as ammunition in convincing Kraft to act. At first, the steps the company took were modest in scope, starting with urging restraint in the company’s marketing strategies. But that was just window dressing. In order to change the company, these Kraft officials quickly realized, they had to confront the fundamental nature — the heart and soul — of processed food.

Since its earliest days, Kraft had directed every last shred of its talent and energy toward making its products as enticing as possible. Central to this mission were the formulations of salt, sugar, and fat that made the products attractive. The bliss point was no abstraction. Kraft’s legacy was built on doing this bigger and better than any other manufacturer. Yet this was precisely where the Kraft officials concerned about obesity saw they would have to go: into the actual product formulations, and their loads of salt, sugar, and fat. What if these formulations were causing people to buy and eat too much? they asked. Could they find a way to help people ease up without killing off their own company?

Had federal regulators dared to ask these questions, they would have been branded as traitors to free enterprise. This was, after all, the most sacrosanct part of the business, the most staunchly defended. The insiders who worried about obesity had to tread very carefully in how they parsed the issue at hand: the desire created by their products. “We’re a food business,” Spear recalled thinking. “We wanted people to delight in the taste of everything we made, particularly when it came to snacks and cookies. We were mindful that we were selling confectionaries and snacks and not rice cakes. It was never, ‘Gee, we ought to cut back on the allure.’ Rather, it was, ‘We ought to make sure we’re not directly or indirectly or subliminally encouraging overconsumption.’ ”

However the equation was approached, the idea of a food giant exploring the question of how to get people to eat less was astonishing, and in the coming months Kraft would dive more deeply into the psychology of overeating than any manufacturer had ever gone before. But as I examined this extraordinary moment at Kraft, it became apparent that there was yet another force at play influencing the company’s decisions. For years, much of Kraft’s motivation in getting people to eat more of its convenience foods had come from the bosses at Philip Morris. The tobacco executives encouraged them to find ever more potent ways to attract consumers and then applauded the victories when sales surged. They even supplied Kraft with their own marketing apparatus and strategies that had been so successful in selling cigarettes—precisely the relationship that Ellen Wartella’s boys had disdained in trying to stop her from joining the panel on obesity.

But behind the scenes, in the private rooms where the most senior officials gathered to account for their actions and receive their guidance for going forward, a dramatic shift occurred. In this confidential setting, I discovered — from secret documents and interviews with officials who spoke publicly for the first time on these matters — the same tobacco-steeped overlords in New York who had spent their own careers promoting cigarettes and denying addiction did the unthinkable: They fell in with the cabal and began urging Kraft to make changes in response to the growing epidemic of obesity.

Salt, sugar, and fat may have been the formula that carried Kraft to the apex of the processed food industry, the tobacco men said. But just as nicotine had turned on them, becoming a yoke that sunk their profits, so too would salt, sugar, and fat become Kraft’s millstones, dragging the whole company down with them.

In 1925, an advertisement began appearing in newspapers and magazines across America. It depicted a slim woman with short hair standing on a diving board, clad in a one-piece bathing suit, looking pleased with her herself. But next to her, in shadow, stood her future self: dowdy and obese. “This Is You Five Years From Now!” read the caption. “When Tempted to Over-indulge, Reach for a Lucky  Instead.”

The ad, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, was made by American Tobacco, which was the first cigarette manufacturer to realize that obesity could be used as a marketing cudgel. Until then, smoking had been an overwhelmingly male pastime. But in looking to expand sales, the cigarette manufacturers began pitching tobacco to women as an appetite suppressant. The industry eventually stopped making all health claims, deciding at a 1953 summit that some of the ads — especially those touting filtered smoke as “better for your health” — were hurting sales by implying that smoking posed risks. So when Philip Morris introduced its own brand for women, Virginia Slims, in 1968, it took the more subtle route of associating the cigarette with women of style, women who were elegant, successful, slim. Only internally did Philip Morris spell out the unspoken allures, which included the brand’s weight-loss appeal. The marketing slogans it tested on focus groups included concepts like this: “A satisfying cigarette, specifically made to curb your appetite for food.”

As the health risks in smoking became more apparent, there was even a brief time when cigarette makers saw fat as a potential ally. Researchers had begun connecting lung cancer to diets high in fat, and the interest this generated among tobacco executives was understandable, given how it might take some of the heat off cigarettes. One study — funded by the National Cancer Institute—examined the dietary and smoking habits of people in forty-three countries and found a correlation between fat and lung cancer that might help explain why Japan — with its high level of smoking but low-fat diets—had less lung cancer than the United States. “High fat diets may promote lung tumors by decreasing normal ability to destroy new cancer,” the study said. Any comfort this might have been to the tobacco industry, however, was especially short-lived for Philip Morris. When this study came out in 1986, executives there marked their copy “very confidential” before adding it to their files. Philip Morris was no longer just a tobacco company. It was on the way to becoming the country’s largest manufacturer of processed foods as well. This gave it a much different view of fat. The firestorm that would later envelop the tobacco industry was still only a string of scattered lawsuits and pesky critics that Philip Morris felt confident it could contain. In the 1980s, when it started buying the food giants, Philip Morris saw them less as a replacement for tobacco than as an opportunity to supplement its own burgeoning stable of blockbuster brands. That said, the food brands did have an issue the Philip Morris executives quickly recognized as something they would have to deal with, just as they were having to deal with nicotine: saturated fat, which was starting to rival sugar as a public health concern. Within a few years, the top Philip Morris officials began referring to fat not as an ally but as a matter of concern that, like nicotine, needed careful tending.

In 1990, the battalion of attorneys who worked for Philip Morris gathered for a retreat in La Jolla, California, where the company’s general counsel, Fred Newman, issued a call to arms. The Marlboro brand, he said, “ranks as one of the great product success stories of all time,” having skyrocketed from a 1 percent share of the cigarette market in 1954 to 26 percent that year; the number of smokers it had attracted equaled the population of New England plus the cities of Dallas, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. But as an expanding conglomerate, he added, Philip Morris was saddled with a slew of new consumer issues. “These concerns involve not just tobacco, but also alcohol, red meat, dairy products, saturated fat, sugar, sodium, caffeine, and other common ingredients in many of our products,” he said. “You already know a great deal about the challenges we face in the tobacco business—challenges ranging from excise taxes and disputes over labeling, marketing, and advertising restrictions to product liability. In the future, we can expect these challenges to also confront us in alcoholic beverages and food. And, as these brand categories come to represent larger and larger parts of our business, our need to protect our interest in them will also rise proportionately. Clearly, many of the people in this room will have a key role to play in building and maintaining our interests in these areas. Your actions on that ultimate battleground—the courtroom—will have impact all over the country. Growth from working together is the cornerstone of the future success of all the companies and brands of Philip Morris.”

That same year, in addressing the food-side managers at Philip Morris, the chief executive, Hamish Maxwell, said that they — like the company’s attorneys — would also have to be sensitive and responsive to a wide range of public concerns. “As new management coming into our companies, I’m sure you also have thought about public health concerns and some of the more controversial aspects of our business,” he said. “We want to respond to the whole range of consumer concerns. We’ve modified our food products to remove fat or lessen the calories, and we’ve developed lighter cigarette products.”

To be sure, in these early days of handling fat, Philip Morris viewed the public’s worries as entirely manageable. It merely had to deploy a strategy, used by the entire consumer goods industry, known as the line extension: When people clamor loudly enough for healthier products, enough so that they are willing to sacrifice some of the pleasure these products provided, companies produce a better-for-you formulation. Whether it’s low-tar cigarettes, low-calorie beer, or lower-fat potato chips, these healthier versions are no threat to the mainline products. In fact, if done right, they can boost sales for the original full-calorie and full-fat versions by attracting new shoppers to the overall brand. The food managers working for Philip Morris put line extensions in motion throughout the grocery store.

As for the mainline versions of its brands, Philip Morris showed little inclination to do anything but market these products with all the skill and vigor that had once made Marlboro such a resounding success. Having learned with cigarettes that being first was not as important as being quick and aggressive in responding to trends, Philip Morris urged this same tactic upon its food managers. If Americans were craving foods that were fast and convenient, Philip Morris wouldn’t try merely to best its competitors in the grocery store; it would aim to capture a piece of the huge market owned by the fast food chains, adopting their formulations and, in some cases, even their mega-brands. Among these achievements was an ultra-convenient meal called the Taco Bell dinner kit — a boxed set of tortillas, cheese sauces, and recipes that Kraft started selling in 1996 after acquiring the rights to the brand name. With clinical precision, Philip Morris touted these efforts to Wall Street.

“In order to continue to deliver strong financial performance, Kraft will need to respond to several major environmental trends,” the chief operating officer, William Webb, told a gathering of investors and analysts in 1999. “First, consumers are becoming busier. Seventy-seven percent of women in the U.S. age 25 to 54 are now in the work force, versus 51 percent in 1970, and this is expected to increase to about 80 percent by the year 2010. As consumers have gotten busier, the number of meals prepared at home has declined. Since 1990 the average consumer is preparing one half of a meal less per week at home, preferring instead to eat out or take-out from restaurants or other food-away-from-home venues. Kraft is responding to this trend. For example, we’re helping busy consumers with an extensive lineup of easy-to-prepare meal products like Taco Bell dinner kits, Easy Mac single-serve macaroni and cheese, and Lunchables lunch combinations; ready-to-eat snacks like Jell-O pudding, Handi-Snacks gels and Kraft cheese cubes; and ready-to-drink beverages like Capri Sun, Kool-Aid Bursts and Kool-Aid Splash. We also know that the number one question in America at 4 P.M. is not, ‘How did the market do today?’ It’s, ‘What’s for dinner?’ And most consumers don’t have a clue.” The Taco Bell kits, he noted, had quickly reached $125 million in annual sales.

But even as Philip Morris pushed more fatty products into the American diet, its executives were tracking the public’s concern about how fat, as well as salt and sugar, related to obesity. And on this front the news was growing increasingly worrisome. Between the 1960s and 1980s, obesity rates had held fairly steady. Among children, it hovered around 5 percent. In 1980, however, the rates had begun to surge for all ages. Moreover, the media was starting to draw the public’s attention to the implications of the country’s weight gain. Philip Morris had long used tracking surveys to monitor issues of public concern, and when obesity was added to the list of questions in 1999, the company’s polling identified it as a significant threat to the manufacture of processed food: Eight in ten people viewed obesity as a serious risk to public health. And while one in three cited “lack of exercise” as a cause, a far greater number of people, nearly half of the respondents, blamed “unbalanced diets.” In other words, too much fatty and sugary food.

“Obesity is literally an epidemic in this country, and some people’s ideas for addressing this public health issue could directly or indirectly affect the entire agriculture industry, from farm to consumer,” a Philip Morris vice president, Jay Poole, warned an agricultural economics group that year. “They’re talking about punitive taxes on certain foodstuffs, limits on marketing of certain foods, regulation of others.”

Just as Philip Morris was gearing up to defend its food from attacks like these, however, the nature of its battle over cigarettes took a sudden turn, an event that altered the company’s view on how Kraft should deal with obesity. Through much of the 1990s, the tobacco giant had remained steadfast in its determination to fight the antismoking lawsuits being brought by individuals and the government alike. It might not win every case, the company would tell investors, but the damage would be contained. Then a lawsuit emerged to end all tobacco lawsuits. It was brought by more than forty states, whose health-care systems were buckling from having to cover the growing numbers of people made sick by smoking-induced illnesses. The states accused the tobacco industry of a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent practices, and they rallied behind Mississippi’s formidable attorney general, Mike Moore, who said that the lawsuit was “premised on a simple notion: You caused the health crisis, you pay for it.” In 1998, the states won. Philip Morris joined the other big tobacco manufacturers in settling the litigation by agreeing to pay the states a stunning $365 billion to revive their moribund health care systems. They also agreed to endure possible regulation of cigarettes by the FDA and to add stronger warnings on their cigarette packs.

What worried Philip Morris even more than this states’ case, however, was the sea change in public opinion that seemed to arise from the accusations of fraud and deception. Where people used to see smoking as a willful decision by individuals, they were now starting to hold the industry responsible, given their marketing tactics and the foreknowledge they had about smoking’s risks. In the months after the settlement, tacticians at Philip Morris conducted a sweeping review of the company’s operations, producing a 1999 strategy paper that they dubbed “Lessons from the Tobacco Wars.”

This manifesto called for a new accommodation to consumers on the part of Philip Morris: “Pay close attention to public concerns and, most important, address them. Denial is not enough, think about solutions. It’s like good marketing. Don’t argue with the customer. Respond to the customer’s need and belief. Our business interest lies with public acceptance.” While nicotine had become a yoke around the tobacco industry’s neck, the strategy paper warned, the food divisions were saddled with more than just one big potential disaster. They had three, or more. “The media are ready and eager to write alarming stories about fat, salt, sugar, or biotech products in people’s diets,” it said. “And just because your critics are shrill or even slightly nuts — and just because some reporters are irresponsible — does not mean you can afford to ignore them. They won’t go away by themselves. If your opponents do enough shoveling — while you just stand there shaking your head — some of the stuff they throw at you will stick. And before long, the public may not be able to see you through the muck.”

The person in charge of Philip Morris during this tumultuous period was Geoffrey Bible, who was also the one tobacco executive who knew the most about the company’s food business, having spent eighteen months at Kraft’s operations center near Chicago. Now, in 2001, as the chief executive of Philip Morris, he drew on this experience in handling the food managers as they faced the growing public concern about the health effects of their foods. “We’d been through a pretty hard time,” Bible told me. “You need to have been there to understand it. Eyes were being focused upon food, and so we were asking, ‘If we are working hard to align our tobacco business with what we call society’s needs, how does the food industry look?’ Because we don’t need to go through the ringer again.”

One of the main lessons from the tobacco wars had to do with Philip Morris’s relations with other tobacco companies — or, rather, the lack thereof. Instead of relations, there was growing suspicion and alarm. When Philip Morris took the step of publicly accepting some responsibility for the public health crisis caused by smoking, its rivals looked darkly upon its motives. They saw it at best as a public relations gambit, and at worst, a ploy to buy time so that Philip Morris could shift more of its focus to selling tobacco overseas, where there was less public concern about lung cancer. For this reason, Philip Morris also assumed that it would be on its own — nay-sayed and nit-picked by its rivals — when it came to handling the food division’s problem.

So Bible did not try to engage the whole food industry on obesity. Nor did he simply come out and order his food managers to act, having learned from his time in Chicago that they did not have the same depth of loyalty to the company as did executives in the tobacco industry. “The food people were a different breed,” he said. “There’s not the same sort of allegiance that we had in our company. It’s also very hard to convince them of things. They’d say, ‘Well, you don’t understand, it’s what the consumer wants, and you’ve got to make it.’ So it’s balancing your business objectives and targets with what’s the right product for the consumer.”

Rather, Bible began to talk more subtly about salt, sugar, and fat—about the high levels to which Americans had become accustomed; about how “the right product for consumers would probably have no sugar, and no fat, but you’d have no sales”; about how Kraft could perhaps best position itself by straddling the line between junk and health foods, “finding something in the middle.” He began speaking like this in private discussions with Kraft officials, including a man named John Ruff, a Kraft executive and food product developer who had joined General Foods in 1972. World-wise and savvy, Ruff listened with mixed emotions, finding it difficult at first to swallow Philip Morris’s sudden about-face on food. It was hard not to think begrudgingly, Who are you to be telling us about corporate responsibility? “Most of us had lived through and watched Philip Morris for many, many years, basically saying, ‘We make a legal product and we inform people of the risks, and it’s not our fault, blah, blah, blah,’ ” Ruff told me. “That was the defense, for many years, and Geoff Bible, initially that was his perspective.”

The more Bible talked, however, the more his message began to resonate. Ruff recalled one moment in 2001 when Bible explained in some detail the company’s change of heart on tobacco. “He talked about why Philip Morris had gone through this mental mind check,” Ruff told me. “And he said, ‘For many years we had had this “not our fault” point of view. But what we started to see is that more and more consumers were feeling like we were partly to blame, and we needed to do something about that.’ ”

That a company’s own loyal customers would suddenly turn against it was a nightmarish concept that riveted the Kraft officials. Then Bible, having described the price being paid by tobacco for ignoring the public sentiment for so many years, cut to the chase. The same day of public reckoning was now likely to befall processed food, he said. The only difference was the nature of the public health concern. For cigarettes it had been cancer. “My prediction,” Bible told his food executives, “is it’s going to happen in the food industry around obesity.’ ”

In 2003, six years before he retired from Kraft as a senior vice president, John Ruff paid a visit to his orthopedist to see about the pain he’d been having while he exercised. The cartilage in his knee, the doctor told him after his MRI exam, was nearly gone. Daily workouts had long been his strategy to avoid getting fat, and even at that he was failing. He had run at least three miles a day for twenty years to “offset the excesses in diet and travel, and I was still overweight,” he told me. Now, on his doctor’s advice, he could only walk and bike, which would burn fewer calories. “I had to do something about my intake, and that’s when I started to change all my eating habits,” he said.

His new diet called for avoiding his own company’s products in the grocery store.

Ruff knew about the emerging research in nutrition that found that the body’s weight control systems were much less adept at handling liquid calories than solid food, so he stopped drinking anything with added sugar. He also dropped high-fat, high-calorie snacks. “I used to come home from work and get one of those giant bags of potato chips,” he said. “The little bags are two servings, so god knows what the giant one is. There’s probably 800 calories in there, and twice the amount of fat you need. Along with a martini, I would consume half that bag. On a good day I could eat the whole damn thing.” Instead, Ruff swapped the martinis for diet ginger ale and the chips for a handful of nuts. “I lost forty pounds in forty weeks,” he said. “I went from 210 to 170, and I’ve been 170 pounds ever since.”

By happenstance, Ruff was in the midst of reforming his personal eating habits when Kraft put him in charge of the company’s own anti-obesity effort, and this couldn’t have been a better fit. Ruff, as a worried consumer, was already walking around the grocery store muttering to himself, “I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that.” Now, as a Kraft executive, he could walk around the same store saying, “We shouldn’t sell this, we shouldn’t sell that.”

Joining Ruff on the obesity team was Kathleen Spear, the Kraft attorney and senior vice president who sought to distinguish products that were merely alluring from those that compelled overeating. Another member was the company’s senior vice president for external affairs, Michael Mudd. It was Mudd who, back in 1999, had stood before the chief executives of the largest food companies in America and tried to enlist them in the war on obesity. When, instead, he got a scolding from these men, he had regrouped and was now making a new, more improbable proposition: that Kraft go it alone. Thus, it was Mudd who organized the panel of outside experts to advise Kraft on obesity in 2003, and it was Mudd who convinced Ellen Wartella, the kids marketing expert, to join the panel.

That fall, as the panel met, the three Kraft executives — Ruff, Spear, and Mudd — lost little time in advancing their agenda. No longer a mere cabal of company insiders conspiring on their own, their mission had been officially sanctioned by Kraft. They now had permission to roam through the company’s entire operations, with an eye toward challenging any practice or policy that contributed to the obesity epidemic. When Wartella presented her damning evidence of Kraft’s aggressive marketing to kids, the three executives championed that as their first reform. They urged Kraft to put the brakes on its advertising, which it did. No longer would Kraft pitch products to kids that lacked nutritional value. Now, these products had to have substantial amounts of whole-grain fiber, fruits or vegetables, and key vitamins and minerals.

The anti-obesity team turned next to Kraft’s labeling, with the intention of making it honest. Their primary concern was the fine print known as the “nutrition facts,” which the FDA had required starting in the 1990s. This information is usually listed on the back or side of the package, framed by a thin black line, and while it doesn’t say “Warning,” that is precisely how the obesity team came to view these disclosures: warnings to consumers about the ingredient loads inside. The nutrition facts tell you how many calories are inside, as well as how much salt, sugar, and fat.

As the obesity group saw it, the problem for consumers was the way the FDA let Kraft and other companies do the math. All this critical information was couched in terms of a single serving. Instead of telling consumers how much the whole package contained, the nutrition facts said only how much there was in a serving. This gave the manufacturers an obvious advantage: It shrank all the numbers and downplayed the nutritional risk. Take a bag of potato chips. Instead of saying 2,400 calories and 22.5 grams of fat, which were the true contents, the nutrition facts said 160 calories and 1.5 grams of fat, which were the contents per serving. Moreover, these things called serving sizes had been established by the FDA in the early 1990s, based on surveys from the 1970s, and had little to do with the way people really ate, especially when it came to junk food that compelled overeating.

This matter of serving size was made all the more deceptive by the super-sizing trend, which swept first through the fast food chains and then grocery stores, packing more and more food and soda in each container so people would buy more and consume more. Kraft’s own boxes and bags of snack food were among the offenders. Many of its packages contained two or more of what the government defined as a reasonable serving, and there was nothing inherently wrong with that, the obesity team argued. But the formulas for these foods were engineered so perfectly to create bliss that almost no one stopped at just one serving. Kraft knew this from its own research. A 2003 survey of nearly 1,600 adults found that nearly a third acknowledged that they practiced John Ruff’s own pre-diet mode of snacking: When opening a bag containing multiple servings, they would eat the whole thing.

The obesity team toyed with the idea of splashing the biggest warning — how many calories the whole package contained — right on the front of the label, to better alert consumers. But when the Nabisco managers complained that this would put them at a huge disadvantage in the cookie aisle, where no other company would be doing the same thing, Kraft settled on putting this number — along with the calculations for salt, sugar, and fat in the whole box or bag — in the nutrition facts. It added a second column of figures next to the single-serving set, to spell out the whole package’s contents.

Kraft couldn’t make this change without the FDA’s permission, so in May 2004, company officials met with the agency to explain the idea and their reasoning for having a dual listing. The company showed the FDA photographs of its own products to illustrate what Kraft now considered to be a deceptive practice. Among these was a ninety-nine-cent bag of Mini Chips Ahoy! cookies, which weighed only 3 ounces but contained three servings, with all the critical nutrition information shrunk accordingly. One impetus to overeat was readily apparent right on the package: In big, brightly colored lettering, the marketing people at Kraft had blazoned “Indulge.”

Some consumers could restrain themselves when they opened a bag like this, sharing the cookies or saving some for later, Kraft told the FDA, citing its polling. But many people could not. “These products can reasonably be consumed as a single serving,” Kraft told the FDA. “What is the best approach to labeling products showing 2–4 servings? ‘Do the math’ for consumers.”

The honest labeling move by Kraft would have a powerful ripple effect. Within months of the 2003 meeting, the FDA was urging the entire industry to consider adopting Kraft’s whole-content listing for foods with multiple-serving foods that were conducive to overeating, and by 2012, the food industry was discussing even more changes. These included the reform that Kraft wanted to make but could not do without risking big losses in sales: putting a total calorie count on the front of food packages.

John Ruff had been forthright with me in discussing the team’s work. We met twice, and we also spoke on the phone, and he walked me through Kraft’s initial steps, noting the company’s willingness to restrain itself in marketing to kids and to be honest about the portion size deception. So I asked him about the bigger, much thornier problem with processed foods and obesity: the huge loads of salt, sugar, and fat that so many products bear.

I asked him if anybody asked the question, “ ‘What if some of these products are so tasty, people can’t resist eating them?’ Is it possibly part of the problem that you have just made this stuff taste so good that people can’t help but eat too much?”

“That was in constant discussion, and came up in many different forums,” Ruff replied. It was, he said, the toughest issue of all for the team to wrestle with. No one at Kraft, in his experience, had ever talked about formulating the company’s foods to be “addictive,” he said. But then, they didn’t have to use that particular word. It was a well-known and accepted fact that the entire company — from the food technicians to the package designers to the advertising copywriters — were pulling together to achieve one goal and one goal only. “You’re looking for the product tha t people like best,” Ruff told me. “We would talk about people ‘desiring’ foods, and at the end of the day, you make the best-tasting food you possibly can.”

Thus, it was with considerable nerve that Kraft in 2004 broached the topic of its product formulations.

Since its beginnings more than a century ago, the processed food industry has viewed these formulations as a matter of inviolable corporate rights. The company chiefs, and the chiefs alone, could determine how much salt, sugar, and fat to put into their products, and if they deferred to anyone, it was their food scientists, who handled the specifics on bliss. But now, rethinking their culpability in the obesity crisis and wanting to do the right thing by consumers, Ruff and his colleagues pressed Kraft to act. The initiative they proposed in late 2003 was nothing short of heretical: In developing new products, Kraft’s food scientists and brand managers could no longer add all the salt, sugar, and fat they wanted. Kraft, in fact, set caps on each of these ingredients, along with calories, across every category of food it produced. The idea was to start shrinking the salt, sugar, fat, and calorie loads of its entire $35 billion portfolio.

Today, Kraft insists it remains committed to these caps. To get a closer look at this, I visited the company in 2011, toured its research and development laboratories, and sat down with top officials to discuss the status of the anti-obesity campaign, eight years after the launch. Among the people I talked to was Marc Firestone, the company’s general counsel, who came to Kraft from Philip Morris and returned to the tobacco company in 2012. The cabal of Kraft insiders who were pressing the company to fight obesity had considered Firestone an ally, but in our meeting he was restrained. For competitive reasons, he said he could not provide me with details on the caps Kraft placed on salt, sugar, and fat — either their actual amounts or any specifics on how the ingredient caps have held up over time.

But skeptics abound, especially among competitors who viewed Kraft’s anti-obesity initiative as a cunning maneuver — or as the vice president for communications at General Mills, Tom Forsythe, put it to me, “a bit of a stealing of a march by Kraft. I will say that was a nice PR play, but it put the company in a difficult spot. Let’s be honest, they’re a cheese company, and there’s a whole bunch of products that they were not going to make spiffy new healthy. So that was artfully written in a way that made them look good, but it had a lot of asterisks and or’s in key places.”

So I tried another approach with Firestone.

Back in 2004, I said, Kraft was saying it had managed to get something like 30 billion calories out of two hundred products. Do you know if there’s a corresponding figure now?

“In Capri Sun alone we took out 120 billion calories,” Firestone said. “But across the whole portfolio I can’t say, because I don’t think we’ve racked it up. We’ve looked at the amount of sodium we’ve taken out. Last year was six million pounds, and we’re going to add nine billion servings of whole grain between now and 2013, so those are things where we’ve got major initiatives.”

If those numbers sound impressive, consider what Michelle Obama managed to wrestle out of the entire processed food industry in 2010, after asking for their help in fighting obesity. “I am thrilled to say that they have pledged to cut a total of one trillion calories from the food they sell annually by the year 2012, and 1.5 trillion calories by 2015,” she announced. “They’ve agreed to reformulate their foods in a number of ways, including by addressing fat and sugar content, by introducing lower-calorie options, and by reducing the portion sizes of existing single-serve products.”

The math on all this, however, is less compelling. If everyone in America consumed the standard 2,000 calories a day, or 730,000 a year, the 1.5 trillion in saved calories would reduce our collective eating by not quite 1 percent. It’s actually bleaker than that, according to some health policy experts. In reality, many of us consume far more than 2,000 calories, and processed foods make up a large part, but not all, of our diets. So the real drop in consumption from those 1.5 trillion calories is likely much less than that 1 percent. Still, it’s a start.

One of the most enthused supporters of Kraft’s anti-obesity initiative was the co-CEO, Betsy Holden, in what seemed like a striking turn in her career. Holden had risen quickly in the company after joining the desserts division of General Foods in 1982. She impressed everyone by her handling of brands like Cool Whip, and later, she was credited with innovations in the DiGiorno brand that turned the company’s pizza business into a $1-billion-a-year behemoth. By late 2003, however, Kraft was slumping on numerous fronts. Some new products, like Chips Ahoy! Warm ’N Chewy, had flopped altogether. Reliable standbys, like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, were falling below expectations. That summer, a conference call with Wall Street analysts turned hostile when Kraft delivered the news that its operating income had come in below expectations and that the company would need to spend $200 million trying to regain its competitive position.

“Do you think there’s a bigger problem?” a Morgan Stanley analyst asked. “Because clearly you’re underperforming your peers.”

And what about all this talk about fighting obesity? asked an analyst from Prudential Securities. How was the company going to meet its projected sales growth of 3 percent if it was worrying about people’s waistlines? “You’ve obviously made a statement on obesity,” this analyst added. “But can you clarify the company’s efforts in achieving a volume increase? You’re going to try to grow your volume 2 to 3 percent domestically, it’s almost got to make us fat.”

Holden gamely replied that increasing the company’s profits and fighting obesity were not necessarily mutually exclusive. She evoked the industry concept of stomach share. Kraft, she said, was trying to get a larger share of what people ate, not get them eating more food per se. But Wall Street was not assuaged. Just as the anti-obesity initiative at Kraft was gathering steam, through the summer and fall of 2003, the price of Kraft’s shares started to fall, tumbling 17 percent for the year, compared with a 5 percent gain for its competitors.

Kraft’s financial slump came at the worst moment for one key player: the parent company, Philip Morris. After nearly two decades of ownership, starting with General Foods, the tobacco giant had decided to start pulling out of the food business, but it did not want to sell its millions of shares at the battered price. (The slumped stock and other considerations would lead Philip Morris to delay selling the last of its shares until 2007, when Kraft, once again, became an independent company.)

Holden’s career track at Kraft ended much faster than that. On December 18, 2003, Holden was removed from her job as CEO and put into the less prestigious position of president for global marketing. The Kraft officials I met held Holden in high regard and said that her removal stemmed in part from the awkwardness of having two CEOs, but eighteen months into the demotion, Holden left Kraft to spend more time with her kids.

Michael Mudd, the obesity initiative’s biggest champion and spearhead, would leave the company at the end of 2004 as well. The panel of experts he organized, including Ellen Wartella, had done its job well, helping him and his colleagues put the company on the road to doing the right thing by consumer health. This was a path-breaking achievement of which he was hugely proud. But Mudd felt increasingly frustrated by the rest of the industry’s refusal to follow suit, which isolated and put new pressures on Kraft — pressures that involved not thinking more about overweight kids but rather thinking more about returning to the basics of processed food. Namely, boosting the value of the company stock by selling more of the foods that people liked best.

On March 3, 2011, Kraft announced that a new era of fatty, sugary foods had come to India. The Oreo, which had never been marketed there before, was headed to the shelves of hundreds of thousands of stores throughout the subcontinent, backed by a media tour de force of TV commercials, billboard ads, and a brightly colored blue bus that roamed the country, from New Delhi to Mumbai, hailing kids to come aboard for Oreo games. The marketing had an educational theme: teaching the country’s population of 1.2 billion how to eat an Oreo properly. “The ‘Twist, Lick and Dunk’ ritual has brought fun-filled moments of bonding to countless families across the world,” the company’s president for Southeast Asia and Indo-China said in a statement.

Fast on the Oreo’s heels was Tang, which Kraft introduced to India the following month with a campaign slogan: “A refreshing drink that makes children happier and think more creatively.” Next up, in July 2012, was Toblerone, the triangular chocolate bar that Kraft made in Switzerland and now sold in 122 countries. To understand how these blockbuster items arrived on the shores of India, where a surging rate of obesity is now worrying health care officials as much as malnutrition, we must go back to a time when things were looking decidedly bleak for Kraft’s cookies in American stores.

The year was 2002, and cookie sales were falling precipitously. Kraft hired researchers to find out what was wrong, and the word it got back was just short of cataclysmic: Shoppers confided that they were avoiding the entire cookie aisle, scared to death they would lose control, load up their carts, and rush home to, well, gorge.

“There was a broad market change, for which the Oreo had become the poster child,” said Daryl Brewster, the executive who ran Kraft’s Nabisco division at the time. “The consumers who loved Oreos, who loved Chips Ahoy!, who loved all our cookies, were finding themselves afraid to go down the cookie aisle because they might buy some and eat it all. So we learned all we could about it, this buy-and-binge behavior. Sometimes what happens in snacking is people get overhungry. They open up the package and it could be Oreo’s, or it could be Lay’s potato chips. They open it up, they start eating and they don’t stop at one. They finish the bag. They have just consumed hundreds or thousands of calories, and now they’re guilty. They feel awful.”

This was no small matter for Kraft and Philip Morris. In its last food acquisition, in 2000, Philip Morris had paid $18.9 billion to acquire Nabisco, including the company’s debts, and Wall Street had applauded the move. Nabisco had $8.3 billion in annual sales from a lineup of rock solid heavy hitters, from Chips Ahoy! to Ritz Crackers to the mother of all cookies, the Oreo. Three years later, however, there was only doom and gloom.

The shopper’s fear of losing control was only part of the trouble, Brewster said. The Oreo was the subject of a lawsuit that took Kraft to task for continuing to rely on trans fats, a form of fat that was considered even more pernicious than saturated fat. (Today, trans fats have been widely reduced by the processed food industry.) Also, much of the country suddenly seemed to be on the Atkins diet, which disdained anything sweet or otherwise loaded with carbohydrates — with cookies at the top of the things to be avoided.

But all would be lost if Kraft couldn’t get people to stop hurrying past the cookie aisle, so its Nabisco division got to work, and in late 2003 it came up with a move calculated to ease the minds of consumers who felt guilty just looking at Oreos. One of Brewster’s marketing specialists had the idea: Why not create a cookie package that seemed less threatening, that promised to give the eater some self-control? This concept of empowerment became known as the 100-calorie pack.

Starting with the Oreo brand, Kraft reformulated the cookie so that a handful amounted to only 100 calories. From a technical standpoint, this took some doing. The creamy filling was so rich they couldn’t make a dent in the fat. So they ditched the filling altogether, and added some creamy filling flavors to the chocolate wafers. Sales took off like a rocket. Not only that, but people returned to the cookie aisle in droves and started buying not just more Oreos but more of everything, including the full-fat versions. “People who otherwise didn’t want to go down the aisle because they might buy Oreos also didn’t buy Wheat Thins or Triscuits, because they were afraid to go down there,” Brewster said. “All of a sudden now, they went down the aisle to get the 100-calorie pack, and were picking up some of the other products.”

But the 100-calorie packs worked a little too well for Kraft. Some of these other products from rival companies started selling so well that Kraft, to put it bluntly, started gnashing its teeth with envy and fear. The main threat came from Hershey, the chocolate company. When cookie sales slumped in 2002 and beyond, Kraft may have concluded that the solution lay in easing the guilt that consumers felt when they overindulged. But Hershey wasn’t worried about that. After all, it made most of its money in the candy aisle, where guilt-ridden consumers were par for the course. Consider its strategy with the Hershey’s Kiss, which has reached the status of a retail colossus, with 12 billion of the teardrop-shaped chocolates sold each year. Whenever their sales started to flag, the company simply introduced a new variety that was so tempting no one could resist. Thus, the basic Kiss begat the Chocolate Truffle Kiss, which begat the Special Dark Kiss, which begat the Filled with Caramel Kiss, the Butter Creme, the Candy Cane, the Chocolate Marshmallow, the Chocolate Meltaway, and so on.

With that same no-holds-barred approach to marketing, Hershey invaded the cookie aisle in 2003 with a hybrid cookie-candy called S’mores. Based on the popular campfire treat, it pumped up the bliss by combining the fat in the company’s chocolate, with sweet and salty graham cracker bits and marshmallow filling. With 6 grams of saturated fat in each cookie, it became a massive seller. “These guys came in attacking the cookie space with more indulgent products, which kind of put us in one of those interesting squeezes that big companies can find themselves in,” Brewster told me.

Nabisco was left with cookies that had less fat — and less allure. Brewster said that he tried his best to compete by reformulating his cookies in ways that boosted their appeal without increasing their fat, experimenting, for instance, with higher grades of cocoa. Ultimately, however, to boost the allure, his cookie team would have to budge on fat, putting them at odds with Kraft’s anti-obesity initiative, which had placed a cap on salt, sugar, and fat loads across every category of its food, from soft drinks to luncheon meats to cheese spreads. The cookies Brewster needed to create, in order to stay competitive with Hershey, would require an exemption.

Instead, Kraft simply created a brand-new category of cookie, dubbed the “Choco Bakery,” and set its cap on fat high enough to compete with Hershey. “Our desire was to be no worse, but ideally better than the other guys,” said Brewster, who left Kraft in 2006 to become the CEO of Krispy Kreme donuts. The cookies that emerged from Kraft’s labs were not exactly diet busters, individually. But collectively they made the company look like someone who had just come off a failed diet to binge. The Oreo line went from the 100-calorie packs to the Triple Double Oreo, the Banana Split Creme Oreo, the Oreo Fudge Sundae Creme, the Dairy Queen Blizzard Creme Oreo, the Oreo Golden Double Stuf. In 2007, Kraft went all out with the Oreo Cakester, a soft Oreo filled with chocolate or vanilla cream and bulked up to deliver an additional gram of saturated fat, four more grams of sugar, and 92 added calories.

By the 100th birthday of the Oreo in 2012, the ever-expanding lineup of Oreo cookies had become a $1-billion-a-year seller in the United States. And that number accounted for only half of their success. Kraft, that year, hauled in an additional $1 billion from selling the Oreos in other countries. Even more than the fat cap waivers, this global expansion by Kraft put the company’s anti-obesity campaign in a much darker context. At the first sign of losing market share, Kraft didn’t just loosen its rules a bit. It set out to vanquish its rivals by dominating the entire global market on cookies and candy. Kraft’s big move came in early 2010, when it paid $19.6 billion to buy Cadbury and then merged the two companies’ snacks and marketing machines.

Cadbury was a familiar brand throughout much of Asia, and Kraft used the brand to introduce the Oreo. The logic in this move was explained by the company’s new chief executive in a meeting with Wall Street analysts in 2012—the tone of which couldn’t have been more different from the drubbing they gave her predecessor, Betsy Holden, back in 2003. No one asked about obesity in this call. There was no reason to. The CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, was focused on a strategy for higher profits that the analysts could only cheer: Kraft’s snacks taking the world by storm, in what she called a “virtuous cycle of growth.”

“Since combining with Cadbury, our category growth has accelerated, fueled by chocolate,” she went on. “Take India, for example. Here, we’ve expanded our reach into remote villages by doubling the distribution of visi-coolers. These compact refrigerated displays are highly visible, and they keep our chocolate at the right temperature in the hot Indian weather. As a result, Cadbury Dairy Milk was up about 30 percent last year. Our biscuit business has also undergone an amazing transformation. Oreo, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, led the way with organic revenue up 50 percent. In fact, sales of Oreo in developing markets have increased 500 percent since 2006. That’s an amazing record for a so-called mature product — or for any product, for that matter.”

All told, Kraft’s net revenues grew 10.5 percent in 2011 to $54.4 billion, a remarkable achievement indeed.

In 2012, Kraft brought its expanding synergy with Cadbury home to the United States. It started selling a spread that combined the fat in cheese with the fat and the sugar in chocolate: cream cheese blended with milk chocolate. Called Philadelphia Indulgence, two tablespoons of this chocolate cheese delivered a quarter of a day’s maximum for saturated fat and, under the American Heart Association’s recommendations, as much as half a day’s maximum for sugar.

Behind the scenes at Kraft, the chocolate cheese put the company’s system of ingredient caps under a new strain. A spokeswoman told me that Indulgence couldn’t be categorized as cheese, which has no allowance for added sugar. So it was classified as a spread or dip, which does. Out on the market, this marrying of candy with cheese began racking up stellar reviews: “My wife saw this on a commercial this morning, got up and dressed and bought out the local grocery store,” one man wrote on Kraft’s website. “Chocolate and Cream Cheese! You better get out and buy some before Bloomberg makes it illegal to purchase without a prescription.”

“This kind of blows my mind,” said another. And a third: “When you run out of ideas, spread it on your hand and lick it off!!!!” And a fourth: “I want to put my whole face in it.”

The tubs of chocolate cream cheese reminded me of the work done by Adam Drewnowski, the Seattle epidemiologist, in measuring the effects that fat has on the brain. Because fat is so energy dense — it has twice the calories of sugar — the brain sees fat in food as the body’s best friend. The more fat there is in food, the more fuel the body can have for future use by converting the fat to body fat. Indeed, the body holds fat in such high esteem that it is slower to activate the mechanism that helps us avoid overeating. This mechanism is the signal the brain sends out to tell us we’ve had enough.

Drewnowski knew that this signal was quite operational for foods that are sweet. Even kids can take only so much sugar in their food before the taste buds cringe, but as Drewnowski discovered, the bliss point for fat, if there is one, is much higher, probably up in the stratosphere of the heaviest cream. Thus did cheese and beef become such powerhouse ingredients in processed foods. As Drewnowski also found out, however, there is something even more powerful in foods than fat alone: fat with some added sugar. Faced with this combination, the brain loses sight of the fat altogether. Fat becomes even more invisible in foods, and the brakes on overeating come right off.

This ability of food manufacturers to find synergy in the interplay of their key ingredients is not limited to fat and sugar, of course. The true magic comes when they add in the third pillar of processed foods: salt.

In 2012, two USDA economists sought to refute the perception that healthy foods were more expensive. They acknowledged that this is certainly true when foods are measured by their energy value. Calorie for calorie, broccoli is far more expensive than cookies. But noting that too many calories is, in fact, central to the obesity crisis, the economists developed an alternative calculation. They compared foods by how much they weighed, and by this metric, broccoli had a lower cost, per pound, than cereal and other packaged foods that rely on the high-calorie/lightweight pillars of processed food: sugar and fat.

I’m loath to embrace any dieting tools, but unsalted nuts are gaining some notable fans, including Harvard’s head of nutrition, Walter Willett, and Richard Mattes, an expert on dietary fat at Purdue University. Nuts, they told me — besides having lots of protein and the “good” kind of fat, unsaturated — appear to have exceptional powers in the matter known as satiety: a mere handful can make you feel full, which helps you avoid unhealthy snacks. The trick is not reaching for more, since the fat in nuts gives them lots of calories that can quickly undo their positives.

The 100-calorie concept tore quickly through the grocery store, across all categories of snacks. By 2008, there were 285 items with 100-calorie packaging, racking up huge sales. But then, in 2009, sales started to slump. One theory why is that they may be ineffective at curbing the urge to overeat. One study, in fact, found that the small packs worked least of all with people who were most susceptible to bingeing. They finish one pack and simply open another. Moreover, as sales slumped, manufacturers responded by doing something that undermined the dieting powers of the small packs even further: they began putting a variety of flavors into the same larger box or bag. Inside would be small bags of chips, for instance, in five different flavors, which only increasedthe temptation to open one bag after another.

By Michael Moss in "Salt,Sugar, Fat - How the Food Giants Hooked You", Random House, New York, 2013, excerpts chapter 11. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Scientists are developing a “liquid bone” that could be injected into people affected by bone-thinning diseases such as osteoporosis.

The paste-like material consists of tiny hollow spheres of calcium phosphate — the principal mineral in bones — each one packed with stem cells that help new bone to develop.

The experimental material is being developed with funding from a government research council and is a response to the rapid rise in the number of older people in whom genes, a previous lack of exercise, poor diet and other factors have combined to produce thin bones that are prone to fracture.

About 3m Britons have osteoporosis, which contributes to 60,000 hip, 50,000 wrist and 120,000 spinal fractures a year, according to theNational Osteoporosis Society.

The health and social cost of these fractures is estimated at £1.7bn.

“Our aim would be to use screening to spot people who are at risk, then strengthen their bones before they get fractures,” said Dr Ifty Ahmed, a researcher at Nottingham University, who last week revealed details of the project at the Regener8 conference on regenerative medicine, in Leeds.

“It means that rather than waiting until people have a fall and break something, we would try to stop that ever happening, alongwith the consequences — loss of independence, surgery and secondary illnesses.”

The idea of strengthening vulnerable bones using stem cells has been around for some time but the cells are delicate and most of them die after being transplanted. As a result, there are as yet no available treatments.

The breakthrough achieved by Ahmed’s team was in findingaway of perforating the “microspheres” of calcium phosphatewith tiny holes, allowing the stemcells to get inside, where they are protected from damage.

The idea, which is experimental and yet to be trialled in humans, would involve stripping stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow, then mixing them with the microspheres.

After an hour or so in which the cells migrate to the insides of the microspheres, the mix would be injected into the bones around vulnerable joints such as the hip.

Ahmed’s work has so far been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council but his team is now seeking a commercial partner.

“If it works, this kind of treatment could be done in a day,” he said.

By Jonathan Leake in "The London Times", September 21 2014. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

I woke up this morning utterly parched with thirst. It was one of those cold mornings in San Francisco, gloomy and gray. Even though the blankets were wrapped around me, I was shivering and AJ had gone to work already.

I laid there in bed, trying to figure out if there was any substance at all that could help quench my dry throat. Then it hit me. I knew exactly what I so desperately needed, what would warm me up like nothing else. I needed hot water to drink. But how do I boil water?

It’s such a difficult thing to make at home! Or is it?!?.

The first thing I did was do my research. I grabbed my iPhone, next to my bed, and skipped Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest and Google+ (ha! like anyone ever checks G+ on their phone) and launched my browser. I hit up America’s Test Kitchen, then Saveur and then Bon Appetit. But none of them seem to have a recipe for how to make boiling water at home.

Then I visited my favorite popular food blogs: Simply Recipes, The Pioneer Woman, David Lebovitz, Gluten Free Girl. Nothing. I mean, boiling water is naturally GLUTEN FREE Shauna! Get on that. Even the apparently misnamed Steamy Kitchen seemed to not have a recipe for boiling water. The site is called STEAMY KITCHEN! Boiling water produces steam . . . oh Jaden, how you missed a golden opportunity. Even when I broke down and checked Pinterest it disappointed me as there were NO moody dark underexposed photos of boiled water that I could find. PIN FAIL.

Clearly someone needed to show the internet how to boil water. So I got out of bed, while still wearing my Faded Glory (a private label version of Fruit of Loom if you must know, because I’m not fancy) sleepy plaid flannel pants and nearly worn through oversized t-shirt that had a faded burger printed on it with a word bubble coming from it that had the words “I want to be inside you” lewdly hovering above it. I hauled myself into the kitchen and started to experiment with water and how to boil it.

After all, if I was going to go through all the trouble of figuring out how to boil water, I needed to make sure I created a recipe that was utterly foolproof. A recipe perfect for summer. And Winter. And Spring, and Fall (though really, San Francisco really has messed me up in terms of the seasons as we don’t really have them). I needed a recipe that is the best ever, utterly amazing and completely delicious. Most importantly, I needed a pin-worthy recipe. The DEFINITIVE recipe on how to boil water. And after 27 attempts, I think I nailed it. Let me know what you think. And ABSOLUTELY let me know if you have any problems with this recipe. Like all food bloggers, I totally LOVE it when I get comments telling me how the recipe doesn’t work . . . especially when the reader who tried it substituted different ingredients. Those are the best comments ever.

How to Boil Water

A gluten-free, grain-free, paleo-friendly, meatless Monday friendly, cane sugar-free, soy-free, peanut and nut tree–free, egg-free, dairy and casein-free, vegan, vegetarian, local and organic recipe. NOT water-free though. So if you are allergic to water, you’re out of luck.

Forget all those “uni-tasker” items that take up so much space in the kitchen like the novelty whistling tea kettle (it whistles when the water boils!) or those hot water dispensers that are always sitting on your sassy-but-slightly-obsessed-with-wearing-sunscreen-all-the-time Asian friend’s counter. Making boiling water is as easy as buying $4 toast and way easier than making a Kouign Amann or a Green Shamrock Shaped Guinness Infused Potato Irish Cheddar Bread Corned Beef Sandwiches with Orange Mayonnaise. And, it’s just as much fun!

Now there are a million variables in boiling water, but I’m not going to get all persnickety and tell you how you need to use a scale to measure out the right amount of water to use.

Nor am I going to tell you that you have to use that copper All-Clad pot or that you need the TOP notch ingredients like the spring water drawn from the remote part of Canada which takes three days travel just to get to the location where it’s sourced. No, amazingly delicious perfect boiling water can happen with just basic everyday water and any old pot. Seriously. Just follow my easy step-by-step instructions . . . to make sure you don’t make any mistakes in making the absolutely gorgeous fun-to-drink super-fun-to-make cup of boiling water!

Directions

1. Find the perfectly sized pot for your water to sit in. The size of the pot is going to limit the amount of water you boil, so make sure to pick one that will hold the right amount of boiling water that you want.

2. Locate the sink in your kitchen and bring the pot to your sink. Turn the faucet to the “on” position, which means water will be running out of the faucet. If you are pushing the handle or turning the knob and no water is coming out, you are pushing or turning in the wrong direction. Try pulling or twisting the other way.

3. Run the water until it gets cold, as the end result will be better. I taste-tested cold water, lukewarm water and hot water myself then decided to run a focus group blind taste test with 25 of my favorite food blogger friends and all but one of them picked the boiling water that started with cold water. I later found out that Sean, the sole dissenter, had a sinus cold and stuffy nose so his taste buds were totally off.

Why he didn’t tell me up front, I don’t know. I’m never inviting him to one of my taste test focus groups again.

4. Fill the pot up with as much water as you would like to boil. There is no right or wrong answer to this. This is not a trick question. Just fill the pot up.

5. Turn the faucet off and walk the pot to your stove. Place the pot on stove top, over one of the burners. If you have an electric stove just place the pot on one of the circles on the glass that specify where the heat comes on (or if you are old school electric, place it directly on the electric coil itself). If you have an induction stovetop I hate you and you’re on your own.

6. Turn the heat up to high for the burner or electric circle/coil that you placed the pot on. You can certainly use medium or even low heat to boil water, but high heat is definitely recommended. You want to make sure to really sear the water surface initially with the high heat. This is called the Maillard reaction and it really gives the final boiling water a lovely flavor and color.

7. Now cover the pot with a lid. If you’ve lost the lid or the lid is so bent up that it doesn’t fit over the pot properly, then either grab a sheet pan or metal cookie sheet and cover the pot with that, or just skip covering the water. Just be forewarned that the water may take longer to boil, and the resulting water may be more concentrated in flavor because some of it will have evaporated in the heating process. But if you like a more concentrated water flavor, then by all means, don’t cover the pot.

8. Now wait for the heat to do its job. If you covered the pot, you can periodically check underneath the lid to see if the water is boiling. Just be aware that the more you uncover the pot, the slower it will take for the pot to boil. So check JUST frequently enough to see if the water is boiling, BUT not frequently enough that you slow down the heating process. The range of checking usually is between 2–5 times but sometimes is more and occasionally less. Just try not to go over 8 times because then you look like an impatient fool. Plus the whole “a watched pot” thing ...

9. The water is boiling when large rapid bubbles are vigorously appearing and are coming up from the bottom of the pan to the top of the water surface. If you only see small tiny bubbles, you haven’t fully reached the boiling point and you need to let the water heat ever so slightly more. Once the rapid large bubbles appear, you can turn the heat off. You have boiling water!

BONUS STEP

10. Carefully pour the boiling water into a drinking container of your choice. Mugs with handles are the preferred drinking container, but you can use glasses, or other heat proof drinkware, even cute mason jars wrapped in baker’s twine or polka dotted ribbon. Be careful that you don’t spill the boiling water on yourself or pick up the mason jars immediately because the boiling water is hot and will burn you.

* Let it cool a bit to pick up or to drink.

Makes exactly 3 2/7ths cups of boiling water.

* I am not responsible for any burns you may suffer from drinking boiling water. Please check with your doctor or health care provider if burns do happen. This post was not sponsored by First Degree Therapeutic Burn Cream as I have never used it before because I practice common sense when it comes to drinking boiling water. All opinions are my own.

Special thanks to Sabrina of The Tomato Tart for loaning me baker’s twine, as I do not own any and really didn’t want to buy any for this post. The stripey paper drinking straws are my own though. I stole a handful of those from a friend of mine’s wedding.

This has been a special April Fool’s edition of Eat the Love. I write this disclaimer because inevitably someone will believe that this is a legitimate recipe for how to boil water and try to correct me about the Maillard reaction listed above. To that person, I say ... you are a fool. Good day.

By Irvin Lin in "Best Food Writing 2014", edited by Holly Hughes, Published by Da Capo Press (A Member of the Perseus Books Group), USA, 2014. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Irvin Lin is a San Francisco food-scene Renaissance man—an award-winning photographer and graphic designer; he’s also a self-taught baker, recipe developer, and food blogger. Readers may come to his blogsite for the dazzling photos, but they’re just as likely to return for his irrepressible wit, as with this April Fool’s Day post.

In trendy San Francisco, the latest hip dessert is ice cream made with unusual flavors, like the banana-bacon ice cream served at Humphry Slocombe down on Twenty-Fourth Street. Bacon has been appearing on all sorts of desserts for some time now: bacon brownies, candied bacon, bacon peanut brittle. The donut shop down the street even has bacon-maple donuts. Now I’m sympathetic to the argument, made most persuasively by Janet, that bacon makes everything better. But I think that’s not the only reason for bacon’s dessert popularity: there’s something else going on that’s causing the hipster trend for all these bacon desserts. To solve the mystery, let’s begin by tracing dessert back to its early origins.

First of all, dessert doesn’t just mean “sweet food.” A donut on the way to the gym is not dessert; it’s just a lack of willpower. A dessert is a sweet course that’s part of a meal, and eaten at the end.

The placement at the end of the meal is expressed in the etymology: the word dessert comes from French, where it is the participle of desservir, “to de-serve,” that is, “to remove what has been served.” The word was first used in France in 1539 and meant what you ate after the meal had been cleared away; spiced wine called hippocras accompanied by fresh or dried fruit, crisp thin wafers, or candied spices or nuts called comfits or dragées. Such dessert courses under various names have a long medieval tradition, occurring in the very first menu we still have for an English feast, from around 1285, where after “the table is taken away” the guests are served dragées and “plenty of wafers.” (Dragée is still the technical term for a confection with a hard candied shell like Jordan almonds or M&Ms.)

But the word dragée and the tradition of eating light sweets with wine after dinner dates back far earlier than the Middle Ages. Dragée comes from the Greek word tragemata, which historian Andrew Dalby tells us was the name for the snacks eaten with wine in classical Greece after the table was cleared after a meal. A “second table” was set with wine and tragemata: cakes, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, sweets, and chickpeas and other beans.

Like comfits or dragées, their medieval descendants, however, tragemata were really snacks rather than what we now call dessert. In fact, Herodotus remarked in the fifth century BCE in his Histories that the dessert-loving Persians mocked the Greeks for not really having any proper desserts at all:

"[The Persians] have few solid dishes, but many served up after as dessert [“epiphoremata”], and these not in a single course; and for this reason the Persians say that the Hellenes leave off dinner hungry, because after dinner they have nothing worth mentioning served up as dessert, whereas if any good dessert were served up they would not stop eating so soon."

It was the Persians whose love of desserts was the impetus that eventually changed these simple wafers and nuts into our modern desserts. Baghdad was established in a formerly Persian part of Mesopotamia, and a culinary new wave developed, as the great chefs of the Caliphs borrowed and enriched Persian desserts like the sweet almond pastry lauznaj and starch candy f ldhaj, sour dishes like sikbj, and the many sweet stews.

From the earliest menus we have, these sweet dishes tended to congregate roughly toward the end of the meal, a property likely derived from their origin in Baghdad. The ordering probably comes from medieval models of health and digestion; sweets were believed to help digest heavy food.

Baghdad cookbooks from the very first one, the al-Warrq’s Kitab al-Tabikh, written in Baghdad c. 950–1000, place all the sweet puddings and fritters, lauznaj, and crepes at the end of the meal. This is most mouthwatering to see in the fabulous meals of medieval Arabic literature like One Thousand and One Nights, which end in dessert after dessert, like the meal from the “Tale of Judar and His Brothers” of roasted chicken, roast meat, rice with honey, pilaf, sausages, stuffed lamb breast, nutty kunfa swimming in bee’s honey, zulbiyya “donuts,” qat’if pancakes folded around a sweet nut filling, and baklava.

In “The Tale of the Sixth Brother,” after serving meat porridge, goose stew in vinegar, and marinated chicken fattened on pistachio nuts, the host presses his guest to take dessert. “Take this dish away and bring the sweets,” he says, offering almond conserve and fritters flavored with musk and “dripping with syrup” and almond jelly.

In medieval Muslim al-Andalus the man who was credited for bringing these things west from Baghdad was Ziryab, a musician who arrived in 822 at the court of Abd-al-rahman II of Cordoba. Ziryab was the inventor of the Andalusian musical form. Legend says that he memorized tens of thousands of songs and that he stayed up all night discussing composition with the Jinns. Ziryab was said to have first proposed that meals be served in courses, starting with a lamb soup he invented called tafaya made with almonds and cilantro. The eleventh-century Córdoba historian Ibn Hayyan tells us that people even credited Ziryab with “inventing” many of the fabled desserts of al-Andalus like lauznaj and qatayif that came from Baghdad. Ziryab seems to have personified in these legends both the glories of Al-Andalus and the rich foods of the eastern court at Baghdad.

A few hundred years later, a thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook specifies that meals be served in seven courses, beginning with this tafaya (because it was particularly “healthy”) and ending with three courses of desserts and egg dishes. And the first Spanish cookbook published after the Reconquista, Roberto de Nola’s 1525 Libro de Cozina, says that meals at court still begin with soup and end with sweets and fruit.

These fabulous foods spread to Europe, mainly through Muslim Andalusia and Sicily. The Manuscrito Anonimo, a medieval cookbook from Muslim Andalusia, gives recipes for dishes like zirbaja, an originally sweet-and-sour chicken stew, jullabiyya, chicken made with rose-syrup (sharâb al-jullâb, from the Persian word for rose), or lamb stewed with quince, vinegar, saffron, and coriander. These dishes were copied across Europe, first in Sicily, Naples, and England (all run by the Normans) and what we think of as “medieval” food developed: meat dishes seasoned with dried fruits, ginger, rosewater, and other Middle Eastern spices. The very first cookbook in English, the Forme of Cury, has recipes for rabbits in sugar, ginger, and raisins, or with honey and saffron; ground pork or chicken with dates in wine and sugar; and dishes like mawmanee and blankmaunger (savory puddings of sweetened boiled rice and almond milk with capon or fish that come from the medieval Arab dish ma’muniyya).

Throughout Europe, however, the tendency of sweet dishes to be served toward the end of the meal was not yet a strict requirement in the Middle Ages. Many sweet dishes were served in the middle of the meal, and savories like capon pie or venison at the end. In fact the drop in the price of sugar around the turn of the sixteenth century led to an increase in sweet recipes throughout the meal (as well as linguistic consequences—"sweet" was one of Shakespeare’s favorite adjectives). Savory and sweet were intermingled, and a leg of mutton might be simmered with lemons, currants, and sugar, or chicken might be served with sorrel, cinnamon, and sugar, as in the following recipe for “Chekyns upon soppes” (basically chicken on cinnamon toast) from the 1545 early Tudor cookbook A Propre Newe Booke of Cokerye:

"Chekyns upon soppes.  
Take sorel sauce a good quantitie and put in Sinamon and suger and lette it boyle and poure it upon the soppes then laie on the chekyns." 

From their medieval position scattered throughout the latter half of the meal, however, sweet foods began to move slowly toward their modern place at the very end of the meal. Culinary historian Jean-Louis Flandrin carefully annotated the presence of sugar in French recipes over time, and found a sharp drop in the use of sugar in meat and fish dishes as French cuisine developed from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, corresponding to a rise in sweet desserts. The use of sugar and fruits with meat, still prevalent in Moroccan, Persian, Central Asian, and even parts of Eastern European cuisine, slowly began to die out in France.

The year 1600 marks about the halfway point in this transition toward a modern meal; at this time, French meat dishes were still often sweetened and dessert mainly still used to mean a light after-dinner snack or nuts, especially fruit or nuts. We know this from the first mention of dessert in 1612 in English, where it is described as a foreign “French” word in an early health and dietetics manual, William Vaughan’s Natvrall and Artificial Directions for Health: “such eating, which the French call desert, is vnnaturall, being contrary to Physicke or Dyet.”

You might applaud Vaughan’s early warning about fat and sugar in rich “foreign” desserts, but in fact dessert still didn’t yet mean all those rich foods. Vaughan was referring to fresh fruit, and expressing concern about how hard it was to digest fruit at the end of the meal unless it was thoroughly cooked. This is an opinion that my Grandma Anna would have thoroughly agreed with; dinner at her apartment in the Bronx meant boiled chicken or boiled fish with boiled potatoes, and boiled fruit for dessert. When she visited us in California in the 1970s she would pick luscious ripe apricots and peaches from the trees and promptly boil them for compote.

By a hundred years later, in the eighteenth century, the word dessert was borrowed into both British and American English. In British English the word retained its meaning of a light after-course. Given the American attitude toward food (something on the order of “Why eat an apple when you can eat an entire plate of cake and ice cream with whipped cream and chocolate syrup instead?”), you will not be shocked to know that by the time of our revolution, the word had shifted here to include more substantial sweet fare like cakes, pies, and ice cream. We know this because George and Martha Washington threw a party after Washington’s New York City inauguration of 1789, at their Manhattan mansion on Cherry Street, and Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay put down the menu in his diary: “The dessert was, first apple pies, puddings, etc.; then iced creams, jellies, etc.; then water-melons, musk-melons, apples, peaches, nuts.”

By the nineteenth and twentieth century, the idea that sweet things belong only in the dessert course became relatively strict in the classical French cuisine represented by Escoffier. There were exceptions, but they were specific, like Escoffier’s canard a l’orange, and the vogue, especially after the rise of Nouvelle Cuisine, for duck magret with cherries or pan-seared foie gras with grapes or fruit conserves.

In American food the boundary is a bit less rigid, as Catalan super-chef Ferran Adrià once observed (“A hamburger with ketchup and Coca-Cola? That’s the most intense symbiosis of sweet and savory imaginable”). And there are further remnants of medieval tastes in meats, what historian Ken Albala calls “throwbacks”—sweet-and-sour in barbecue, brown sugar and cloves for hams, fruit sauces with duck, or meats with cranberry sauce, apple sauce, and candied yams—preserved mainly in old-fashioned meals like Christmas and Thanksgiving. The great anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz, who pioneered the modern anthropology of food, notes that these fragments “demonstrate what anthropologists have long contended—that holidays often preserve what the everyday loses.”

Besides these exceptional cases, however, we generally eat the savory things earlier in the meal and the sweet things for dessert.

Tracing the history of dessert demonstrated that a procession of the meal through savory courses with a sweet course at the end is a recent development in European cuisine. In other words, this particular sequence, and the idea of dessert, is something that some cuisines have (modern American, ancient Persian) and some don’t (classical Greek and, as we will see, Chinese).

To explain how and in what way cuisines are different or similar, and how they change over time, I propose a theory called the “grammar of cuisine,” which suggests that a cuisine is like a language. The metaphor comes from linguistic grammar. The grammar of English, for example, consists of implicit rules that specify that adjectives tend to come before nouns (we say “hot fudge,” not “fudge hot”), or objects come after verbs (“eat chocolate” not “chocolate eat”). A grammar defines how linguistic parts are structured into a linguistic whole.

Just as a language has an implicit grammar that native speakers know even if they can’t explain, a cuisine has an implicit structure, a set of rules about which foods go together, what constitutes a “grammatical” dish or meal in that cuisine. This implicit structure of cuisine consists of rules about how dishes are structured out of ingredients, meals are structured out of dishes, and entire cuisines out of particular flavor combinations and required cooking techniques. Each of these kinds of structuring helps explain the nature of cuisines and their similarities and differences.

We’ve already seen one aspect of the grammar of cuisine: the ordering of meals. One constraint of American and European cuisine is “dessert comes at the end” and another, related to entrée, the default ordering of the American dinner, which we might represent as a kind of “rule” with sequence of dishes (using parentheses to indicate optional dishes):

American dinner = (salad or appetizer)  main/entrée  (dessert)   This rule states that an American dinner consists of a main course, preceded by an optional salad or appetizer (or both), and possibly followed by dessert. By contrast, French cuisine makes use of a cheese course, and a light green salad is often eaten after the main rather than before (and of course dessert at the end or, as the French say, salé puis sucré);

French dinner = (entrée)  plat   (salade)   (fromage)  (dessert)   Even moving one country over in Europe things change again;

Italian cuisine has a distinct course (primo) that often consists of pasta or risotto:Italian dinner = (antipasto)  primo  secondo  (insalata)  (formaggi)  (dolce)

Some shifts in the ordering of the American meal are even more recent. Americans used to eat salad later in the meal, much as the French still do. The late MFK Fisher, one of America’s greatest prose stylists and my favorite food writer, suggests that the modern custom of eating salad before the main course arose in California in the early twentieth century. Fisher grew up in Whittier, just east of Los Angeles, around the First World War, eating fresh lettuce salad before the meal, and writes that her “Western” custom of starting a meal with salad shocked her friends from the East Coast who all ate salad after. (Meals on the East Coast in the first half of the twentieth century might instead begin with grapefruit, a custom that my other New York grandmother, Grandma Bessie, kept to all her life.)

Despite the differences outlined above, the American and Western European meal sequences are pretty similar. By contrast, in Chinese cuisine a dessert course is not part of a meal at all. There was traditionally no exact Chinese word for dessert. The most frequently used modern translation, tihm ban in Cantonese, or tian dian in Mandarin, is most likely an extension, via borrowing from the West, of a word originally just referring to sweet snacks, not to dessert. The end of a traditional Cantonese meal, for example, is instead often marked by a serving of savory soup, or only occasionally (after the table is cleared) by fresh fruit.

This explains why the tradition of fortune cookies developed in America as dessert. Jennifer 8. Lee’s The Fortune Cookie Chronicles tells us that little snacks stuffed with fortunes have been eaten in Japan since the nineteenth century. But only in the twentieth century in California did they begin to be served in Japanese and then Chinese restaurants as a dessert. The grammar of cuisine explains why: Chinese cuisine traditionally had no dessert course, and fortune cookies filled a kind of evolutionary niche for the final sweet cravings of American diners.

The lack of dessert also explains why baking and hence ovens have a much smaller role in Chinese cuisine; there were no ovens in my kitchens in China, and even now Janet’s mom uses the oven in her kitchen in the San Gabriel Valley as a convenient place to store pots.

Of course Chinese cuisine does have sweet foods, like the lovely sweet soups called tong sui (literally “sugar waters”), which can now be served as desserts, but more often act like snacks or small late-night meals. Janet and I often enjoy a one a.m. snack at my favorite sweet soup restaurant, Kowloon Tong out on Geary: the peanut soup called fa seng wu () with rice dumplings (tongyun ), tofu curds with honey, red bean soup, tortoise jelly, although I’m not quite as fond of the Chinese red dates with frog fallopian tubes (don’t ask).

While Chinese meals don’t have the concept of a final sweet course, they do have structure of a different sort: constraints on the ingredients and their combination. A Cantonese meal, for example, consists of starch (rice, noodles, porridge) and nonstarch portions (the vegetables, meat, tofu, and so on). These can be mixed together in one dish (to form chow mein, chow fen, fried rice, and so on) or a meal can use plain white rice with the nonstarch served as separate dishes that each eater serves over their own portion of rice. Describing this in English requires the awkward word “nonstarch”; Cantonese has a word for this, sung . The word for “grocery shopping” in Cantonese is mai sung: “buying sung” (since the starch is a staple that would already be in the house). Thus a typical Cantonese meal consists of a starch plus a sung , or, to write a different kind of grammar rule, we might say: meal = starch + sung  

The grammar of cuisine does more than define the structure of a meal. Each cuisine also has implicit rules about the flavors that make up individual dishes. I like to think of dishes as words, and particular ingredients or flavor elements as the sounds (the “phones”) that make up a word or dish.

Sounds differ from language to language, but they are also surprisingly similar. For example, every language seems to have a sound that’s something like English t or English p. Why should this be? The late linguist Ken Stevens (in his Quantal Theory of Speech) explained that humans all have the same tongue and mouth physiology, and sounds like t result from certain configurations of the tongue (and lips, and vocal cords) that are easy for speakers to make reliably and also result in sounds that are easy for listeners to distinguish reliably.

Nonetheless, each language pronounces the universal t or p in a slightly different way. English t is different from Italian t or Cantonese t, French p is different from Spanish p. That’s the main cause of our accents in foreign languages: we become expert at saying a t in the English way and it’s hard to unlearn that and make a Japanese or a French t.

Similarly, based on a different aspect of the very same human tongues, the ability to perceive flavor elements like sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami are universal. But each cuisine may express these universal flavor elements using ingredients that add their own culturally specific flavors.

Each cuisine, for example, seems to have its own flavor element for sweet. My favorite is Malaysian gula melaka, a coconut palm sugar with a lightly smoky, caramelized taste. It’s easy to find palm sugar here, but not good gula melaka, so I have to bring it back the rare times I’m there, or rely on generous visitors from Asia.
By contrast, the sweet taste of American food comes from refined white cane sugar or corn syrup, or, in special cases, maple syrup. In the gold rush days, San Franciscans instead used molasses for everything, pouring it on their food like ketchup. British and Commonwealth desserts often use golden syrup, Mexican cuisine raw piloncillo sugar, and Thai cuisine palmyra palm sugar.

The flavor elements for sour tend to be rice vinegars in China, tamarind in Southeast Asia, lemon juice or grain vinegar in the United States, sour orange or key lime in Central America, and wine vinegars in France (hence the name vin-aigre [sour wine]). Yiddish food is soured by crystals of citric acid called sour salt. This is what gives the sweet-and-sour flavor to my mom’s cabbage stuffed with rice, beef, and tomatoes (a dish I love but that my father refers to as “beef in shrouds”). Other universal flavor elements include salt or umami (from sea salt, salted olives, capers, soy sauce, fish sauce, fermented shrimp paste, anchovies, and so on).

Not all flavor elements are universal. Combining different specific combinations of flavors is definitive of a cuisine, an idea that the late food scholar Elisabeth Rozin called the “flavor principle.” She pointed out that a dish made with soy sauce, rice wine, and ginger tastes Chinese; the same ingredients flavored with sour orange, garlic, and achiote tastes Yucatecan. Add instead onion, chicken fat, and white pepper (or for baking, butter, cream cheese, and sour cream) and you’ve got my mother and grandmother’s Yiddish recipes.

Recent work has used computational techniques on online databases of recipes to test cross-cuisine generalizations of Rozin’s flavor principle at the molecular level. Y. Y. Ahn at Indiana University and his colleagues examined 60,000 online recipes to test the “food pairing hypothesis,” a recent theory proposing that tasty recipes are more likely to combine ingredients that share flavor compounds. For example tomatoes and mozzarella share the compound 4-methylpentanoic acid. Ahn and his colleagues found an interesting difference between North American and Western European recipes, which do indeed tend to pair ingredients that share flavor compounds, and East Asian recipes, which combine ingredients (like beef, ginger, cayenne, pork, and onions) that don’t have overlapping compounds. The difference suggests that preference for similar or different compounds may be part of what makes up a cuisine.

Interestingly, the East Asian lack of dessert seems to have played an important role in their results. They found that the North American ingredients with the most shared compounds are dessert ingredients like milk, butter, cocoa, vanilla, eggs, cream cheese, strawberries, and peanut butter. Thus it’s possible that the difference in food pairing tendencies between East Asia and North America is caused by the fact that North America has dessert.

One last aspect of the grammar of cuisine has to do with cooking techniques rather than flavors. In Chinese cuisine, for example, ingredients need to be cooked before eating; a raw dish like a green salad just violates the structure of the cuisine. We might say that salad is “ungrammatical” in Chinese. Although salad is naturally now available in foreign restaurants (called sa leut in Cantonese), traditionally it would have been as bizarre in China to see someone munch on raw carrots or celery or bell peppers as it seems to most Americans to eat duck brains.

In early China cooking was associated with the concept of being civilized; neighboring cultures who ate their food raw were considered less civilized than those who cooked their food. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that this opposition between the raw and cooked is probably universal across cultures: that cooking is everywhere associated with civilization and with socializing and controlling nature.

But health is probably the most significant cause of the Chinese taboo on raw food, as suggested by the fact that even water is never consumed raw; it is always boiled before drinking. Drinking boiled water (and tea, with its antiseptic properties) presumably helped protect China from some of the water-transmitted epidemics suffered by the West. Americans and Europeans traditionally drank water raw, and partly as a consequence suffered epidemics of diseases like cholera until the nineteenth century when municipal water supplies began to be treated.

The Chinese cultural constraint against raw water runs very deep. Despite the fact that the municipal water in modern Hong Kong or Taipei is treated and perfectly safe and drinkable, people like my friend Fia who grew up in those very sophisticated cities still boil all their water, even keeping pitchers of preboiled water in the fridge.

The implicit cultural norms that make us think that desserts should be sweet, or that knishes should taste like chicken fat instead of butter, run just as deep. The discomfort of Fia in Taipei at the thought of drinking raw water, the shock of MFK Fisher’s friends at salad occurring at the wrong place in a meal, the disgust at frog fallopian tubes or raw carrots come from the fact that a cuisine is a richly structured cultural object, with its component flavor elements and its set of combinatory grammatical principles, learned early and deeply.

I suspect that it is the grammar of cuisine that underlies the recent fad for pork in dessert. Bacon ice cream violates an implicit rule of American cuisine, the rule that says desserts should be sweet and not meaty and savory. We delight in bacon ice cream not because this is necessarily the most delicious way to serve bacon but, at least in part, because it breaks the rules, it’s fun, it’s rebellious, it’s even . . . ungrammatical!

In fact, rebelling against these norms is one way that innovation happens. This is most evident with modernist cuisine (“molecular gastronomy” or “deconstructivist” cooking), which often uses ungrammatical dishes (popcorn soup, toffee of white chocolate and duck liver, caramelized tomato with hot raspberry jelly) as a creative tool. But consider as well the global borrowings that became our day-to-day foods like ketchup or ice cream or macaroons, borrowings that begin as an exotic import for the rich, and slowly became nativized. We haven’t yet explained what drives this nativization, what causes the specific changes in each of these foods as they adapt to their new cuisine. The grammar of cuisine is the explanation: exotic imported luxury foods became everyday dishes by changing to fit the implicit structures of cuisine. As medieval spices lost their centrality in the flavor principles of the food of Western Europe, macaroons and marmalades lost their medieval rosewater and musk. As tomatoes with sugar became one of Americas flavor principles (think ketchup, tomato soup, pasta sauce), the sweet-and-sour tomatoey version of a former fish sauce rocketed in popularity. Meanwhile in China, the grammar (remember starch+sung) led the dominant use of tomatoes to be, not ketchup or pasta sauce, but a stir-fry dish of tomatoes and eggs. The importance in European cuisine of milk and cream led to Eastern sharbats becoming Western ice creams and American sherbets. Because of the Lenten fasts central to the religion, culture, and diet of medieval Christianity, sweet-and-sour meat sikbj became fish and chips. Finally, as dessert became an integral part of our cuisine, newly imported ingredients led to new desserts like the macaroons, coconut cake, and ambrosia from newly imported coconut, or the pecan pie from native American foods like pecans. The grammar of cuisine even explains why fortune cookies, originally a small Japanese temple snack, grew into a standard dessert in American Chinese restaurants, filling the dessert gap in that cuisine for American eaters.

Dessert is more than just a sensual pleasure (even one that causes us to give higher restaurant review scores). It’s a reflection of the implicit cultural structures, the language of food hidden in plain sight, that underlie every bite we take.

By Dan Jurafsky in "The Language of Food - A Linguist Reads the Menu", W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2014. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

I was giving a “Sensual Eating” seminar at a conference of administrators who get totally geeked out over rules, procedures, and policy positions. Nice, huh? About 150 stuffy people, sitting in a stuffy conference room, as stuffy presenters drone on and on about worksite OSHA benefit structure allocation, blah, blah, blah. So for those who hadn’t already lapsed into a policy platform–induced coma, I think the words “sensual” and “eating” definitely caught their attention.

During my presentation, I had them compare fresh strawberries versus fresh-from-the-plastic-bag strawberry-flavored rope candy. The first part of this test is to lightly rub the outside of the berry with your fingers and take in the aroma. This stimulates saliva, which is basically just your mouth yelling to your brain, “Me too, me too, me too!” Then, with the smell still lingering deeply in their collective nostrils and their eyes closed, I had them bite slowly through the tartly sweet flesh and lightly open the berry with their teeth and tongue to release the sweetly tart flavors. Postures suddenly went limp in a room now filled with the random audible groans of some happy, happy administrators.

Next, I had them smell the chemically flavored, Day-Glo strawberry candy. This didn’t go so well. After coming off that prior experience of simultaneous strawberry mouth-gasms, the synthetic, fresh-from-the-chem-lab smell was noxious by comparison. You should have seen their faces. It was like an ad for the TV show Fear Factor.

They were supposed to taste it, but over half the people in this room didn’t go past the smell test. These people, whose job it is to research, create, and enforce “procedures,” were going totally rogue on me! They wouldn’t follow through because the comparison between real versus fake, friend versus faux, turned the candy from a great little afternoon snack into a repulsive, disgusting, no-good, awful oral calamity.

Of those who actually went through with it and put the candy into their mouths, approximately half looked up and actually—I kid you not—spit it out into their napkins. The interesting thing about this little experiment wasn’t just that you could get that much reaction out of a room full of otherwise somnolescent professionals, but that many of them came up to me afterward to say that they normally liked those candies. However, now I’ve ruined their lives by showing them how nasty they are. Now they can’t go back, and they’re going to miss their candy! Bummer. I guess I’m just a bad human being.

This perfectly illustrates why sensual eating is so important to your overall health. Not because I’m such an awful person, but because when you taste—really taste—your food, it turns out to be really, really hard to make poor eating choices. Honestly, the only way fast-food nastiness and junk-food junk are tolerable is if you have zero to compare it with (so you don’t know any different), or if you slam it back so fast that it spends more time in your gullet than on your palate. Either way, sensual eating is the solution. And just try to name one food that’s better than chocolate to use for sensual eating practice. There just isn’t one.

Learn to Love Your CHOCOLATE. Really.

You may be thinking that, sure, the phrase “sensual eating” and chocolate are perfect for each other—got it. But the problem comes when you love your chocolate so much that you can’t stop eating it. The problem comes when you look back at the pile of wrappers surrounding you on the couch, or the sheer volume of chocolate just eaten after a bout of choco-love. Isn’t it a problem to love your chocolate too much?

The answer is no, absolutely not. The problem is not about love at all but about the sense we have learned that love is equivalent to consumption. This misconception about love and food is exactly what leads to overconsumption, which leads to consuming more calories, which leads to the weight gain that ultimately leads to the larger pants.

I was on the phone with the health editor for one of the largest-circulation newspapers in the United States today. She asked me how Mediterranean people could eat so much amazing food and still be thinner and healthier than us. I blathered about data for a while before she stopped me and said, “Will. Will, Will! Whoa, there. It’s a short article. All I need is a bullet point.”

I laughed and said, “Okay. They can do what they do because they love their food.” She paused for a long time. Finally, she said, “No, that’s not right. Our problem is that we love our food too much.”

Her conclusion reflects one of the most persistent problems we have with our food: this confusion between love and consumption. And we’ve been taught that equation from Day 1. Think about the classic Cookie Monster character on the very popular children’s show Sesame Street. He’s depicted as funny when he’s gobbling down a million cookies, with his gravelly voice saying how much he loves them and a spray of cookie shrapnel going everywhere.

Our children learn from this that if you love cookies, you gobble them up. And you should do so as fast as you possibly can. This is how our culture of health defines love as consumption. I’m not picking on this kids’ show per se, because it’s not the cause, but a reflection of something we all believe so implicitly. And that implicit belief is so engrained in us that it comes out in our behavior—even when we’re all grown up.

For example, as adults we’re told to eat at the seafood restaurant because of the “endless shrimp” deal (not because of the flavor of the shrimp); you go to the Chinese restaurant for the “bottomless buffet” (not because of the quality of the Hunan); and for a mere 39 cents more you can get a bucket of french fries with your burger at your local fast-food chain. I want you to watch commercials and ads through this filter and notice how they depict someone who is enjoying their food. Mouths are poised open for a monster-size chocolate bar, or burger, or drink, or steak.

What you see in advertisements is a reflection of ourselves. It’s like looking into a mirror, because marketers will find out exactly what we want to hear and then tell us exactly that. These are our own biases and beliefs, affixed to their company logo. Therefore, what has become our most basic bias around eating? Quantity is quality and volume is value. Worse, we have turned love into consumption.

I don’t care what relationship you’re in—with your spouse, your job, your hobby, your pet, your food—when love becomes consumption, you’re in a disordered relationship. And unfortunately that’s the relationship we have developed with our food today, which has led to weight gain, obesity, and the raft of health issues that trail in its oversized wake. Everyone says that they love their chocolate, but what does that mean? Is it love they’re talking about, or is it just the consumption of it?

Now ask yourself this question: When you say you love your chocolate, what do you mean? Are you only satisfied with your chocolate after you’ve eaten a lot of it? Or are you able to eat a smaller amount of higher-quality chocolate and no more? Be honest with yourself. Now is the moment. If, for you, love is consumption, we have to correct this disordered relationship.

This chapter retrains us to really love our chocolate. And it’s not done by eating a bucketful of it or by inhaling it like you see done in commercials, but by actually focusing on its sensual aspects: the flavor, the savor, and the aroma. Being sensual with your chocolate will improve your relationship with it, but it will also improve your relationship with all of your food. And when your relationship with food is improved, the quality of that food goes up, the quantity comes down, and you get all the health benefits it offers without eating so much of it that you make it bad for your health.

Sensual Eating with CHOCOLATE

If you’re not taking the time to notice the different tastes within your food, you’re like a canine that cannot see color. You have no idea what you’re missing—or that you’re even missing anything, for that matter. You’re just living in a gray-flavored world. If you want to color your senses, all you have to do is open your mind to the sensuality of the food you’re eating.

Do you remember how, as we discussed in the previous chapter, the solution to controlling portions started in your brain? Well, now it is your brain that stands between you and sensual eating. More to the point, what keeps us from being sensual with our chocolate is the overintellectualization of every single thing we do.

Case in point: The overintellectualization of our lives. After all, humans are incredibly smart. We just are. But being really high on intellect can create a deficit in the other important aspects of ourselves, like the sensual dimension.

This is exactly what we do with our chocolate and all of our food, by dissecting the minutia of a meal to parse out just how much of this or that molecule we should be eating (2,000 calories per day as the baseline, with 30% of that composition coming from fats, 40% from carbohydrates, and 40% from proteins).

The alternative to this mental rabbit hole is to be sensual. In other words, to pay attention to your senses. Of course, we’re always sensual in some base, unconscious way because we have to see and feel and hear and taste and smell just to navigate through the world. But throughout most of your day, those sensations are on autopilot. You’re not consciously aware of them. Sure, you can choose to focus on the things you smell, or taste, or feel, or see if you want to, but most of the time they’re just quietly working away in the background.

When you choose to focus on your sensations though, you become conscious of them, awake to them. And this makes you aware of the flavor and aroma and texture in ways you have never been before. As I’ll explain in the next few paragraphs, this also creates the physiological conditions that help you improve the quality of the chocolate you’re eating and decrease the quantity you’re putting away. Thus—and here’s the take-home message—being a sensual eater with your chocolate increases the quality of your eating while decreasing the quantity in the long term. Sensual eating is the antidote to overeating.

In fact, researchers set out to understand the factors that cause cravings to decrease over time.1 For example, it could be that you eat, fill up, and stop eating simply because you have ingested enough calories; this is the standard “food is fuel” idea. Alternatively, it could be that the Off switch of eating happens when you “wear out” on a flavor or taste. To test this, these researchers conducted a study comparing two dietary conditions: one high-calorie and the other low-calorie. In each case, they had subjects taste a small amount of a food and rate their desire for more than 10 repetitions. The time between each repetition was 2 minutes. They found that the decreasing drive to consume after “repeated presentations of the same food stimulus is affected by the sensory characteristics of the food rather than the caloric content.”

So, do the math here. If “the sensory characteristics of the food” is a factor in helping you prevent overconsumption, and you are gulping your food so fast as you’re stopped at the red light that you don’t even notice how it tastes, then you will never even notice the sensory characteristics—and therefore, you will overconsume. The good news is that if you take your time and attend to these sensory characteristics, you’ll be more likely to keep your caloric load to a level that supports a lower number on your scale.

In other words, sensual eating is a solution for all of your foods, not just chocolate. But if you’re going to harness sensual eating to help you control consumption, and therefore calories, and weight, and your pants size, there’s no better food on planet Earth to start with than chocolate. But to break out of your current behavioral biases, you’re going to have to practice. This isn’t hard practice, and the only thing it takes from you is the consistency needed to just stick with it.

Overcoming Your Main Obstacle: You

You have to want to change. I had a friend named Roberta, who worked with me in the lab at Syracuse University. This was during my first year back after returning from doing research work in France. She was thin, but nevertheless kept a bag of little mini candy bars in her desk drawer. It was funny, too, because when I was a kid, this particular brand of candy bar was my favorite, favorite candy of choice. At one point during some journal review, she offered one to me. Remembering my childhood fondness for them, I peeled back the plastic and popped it in my mouth. Ewww. It was totally gross, wickedly sweet, waxy chocolate.

After the meeting, I went straight back to my desk. I had brought back from France some Côte d’Or chocolate, which is a Belgian variety I like to call “from God” (a.k.a. amazingly awesome). After rinsing out my mouth with Borax and a Brillo pad, I approached Roberta to ask her if she would like to try some of my chocolate. I was so excited to give her this wonderful deliciousness to replace those things she was putting in her mouth.

She said to me, “Will, I’m not going to do it. I don’t want your chocolate, thanks.”

I was stunned. Why would she not? Hell, I suffered through her schlocky candy bar and she won’t even try my chocolate? So I replied, “Why? It’s really good, I promise!”

Then she explained, “I know it’s good. In fact, I know exactly how wonderful that chocolate is. That’s why I won’t eat it. It’s so good that if I have it, I won’t want my candy bars anymore! And I don’t want to not like them.”

Now there’s some honesty and self-awareness! Most of my friends relent and start eating decent food after I harangue them enough, but I never turned Roberta from the dark reaches of that candy bar. She just didn’t want it.

For you, when you’re ready to start training your tastes for chocolate in a healthy direction, just be prepared that you may be turning your own tastes against a favorite comfort food. You’ll replace it with a better one, but you need to be willing from the outset to let those former faves go. And to do that, let’s start by thinking about the aspects of chocolate that you perhaps haven’t paid too much attention to once you’ve opened its wrapper.

Visual Appearance

Chocolate is more than just brown. “Brown” is a nothing description. I mean, yes, chocolate is brown. But if you took a minute to compare different chocolates in different ways, you’d see that chocolates vary from light to dark, depending on the bean they are made from or because of the additives applied. Once you know to look for these variations, you’ll see that “chocolate brown” can be anything from ruddy violet to rustic red to charcoal brown.

Why is this important? Because we don’t eat just with our mouths; we eat with our eyes, as well. And the visual appreciation of the thing you’re about to eat can preset your expectations. As a principle of neuropsychology, those preset expectations can color (pun entirely intended) your expectation of the flavor.

When you open up the wrapper, your chocolate should appear dark and shiny, and if you break it, you should hear a nice crisp snap. However, sometimes you may see a little whitish discoloration that makes it appear as though it may have gone bad. This discoloration is most likely a common “bloom” in one of two varieties: a sugar bloom or a fat bloom.

In a sugar bloom, the chocolate may have simply come into contact with moisture of some kind. It doesn’t happen just when something wet gets spilled on it. Sugar blooms can also happen if there are rapid swings in temperature that produce condensation on the surface of the chocolate. For example, if your chocolate is stored in the refrigerator and then warmed quickly, the condensation can cause a sugar bloom. But even if you happen to live in an area of high humidity, you can also get this kind of bloom.

In a fat bloom, the grayish mottled discoloration is composed of crystals from the cocoa butter itself. When the chocolate is produced, six types of these crystals are formed as the chocolate hardens. A process called “tempering” is used to make sure that only stable crystals are formed. However, if this is not done well, over time the nature of the crystals can change and you will get the fat bloom.

How do you know whether you have a fat bloom or a sugar bloom? If it’s a sugar bloom (caused by moisture), and you put some moisture on there, the ashy appearance will go away. Just lick your finger and touch the chocolate to see. In either case, whether it’s a fat bloom or a sugar bloom, the chocolate is certainly edible and its flavor isn’t affected a great deal. In the case of the fat bloom, you may notice a textural difference in your mouth.

Aroma

Smell is a basic sense. It’s hardware. It’s part of the standard package (typically) that we all just get. However, this sense can be learned and improved on: There’s a software element to it as well, which can be programmed to detect more aromas, better, over time. And all you have to do to detect these aromas is, very simply, to practice taking notice of what you smell.

You can treat smell as nothing more than one of your five senses, or you can treat it as a gift that informs your tastes with many variations and notes of aromas in your food and drink. And if you are going to develop this aspect of your life, there is no better food to use than chocolate to train your senses. In fact, there are many flavor components to chocolate—including more than 600 different aromas.

That said, the nutty, sensual aroma of chocolate can easily be lost. You can pound it out by adding too much sugar. You can hide it completely by eating the chocolate cold. And there won’t be much to smell if you eat chocolate that’s been cheapened by replacing its cocoa butter with some species of vegetable oil.

So let’s discuss a couple of rules on smelling your chocolate. First, it must be at room temperature, much like cheese or wine, in order to liberate the aromas. Next, you can warm it further by taking a small piece and rubbing it gently between your fingers. Bring that close to your nose, close your eyes, and take in the smell. Here’s what to think about as you smell the chocolate: Try to discern whether the aromas are fruity, nutty, floral, or even earthy.

If you don’t detect those aromas at first, that’s okay. Honestly, it’s difficult to pick them up if you haven’t compared one type of chocolate with another. It’s the comparison and contrast of multiple kinds of aromas that informs you of the varieties of nutty, fruity, floral, or earthy aromas. By trying multiple kinds of chocolate and by doing this smell test each time, you’ll become better at picking out the differences over time. Think of it as acquiring a skill: The more you practice, the better you become.

Sensual Flavors

Smelling your chocolate is actually a wonderful prelude to tasting your chocolate. That’s because when you smell your chocolate, it goes into the olfactory region of your brain, which then informs your consciousness about the upcoming flavor of the chocolate within the taste region. So when you smell your chocolate before you eat it and notice how it enhances the flavor, you have basically just juiced your brain to be better able to taste the chocolate before it even hits your palate.

When first tasting chocolate, most people assume that it has a single flavor. At the most basic level you hear, “Oh, this tastes like chocolate.” But “chocolate” has many layers of flavors—and an estimated 1,500 flavor components. These flavor variants arise from the specific species of bean used to make the chocolate (Criollo, Trinitario, Forastero, or some combination of those). Each of these types of beans has a totally unique flavor, just like the Cabernet, Pinot, and Shiraz grapes produce completely different flavors of wine.

Also, chocolate’s final flavor, like wine’s, doesn’t come just from the bean itself but also from the earth in which it grew. The Criollo, Trinitario, and Forastero beans will produce a chocolate that tastes different depending on the growing region.2 Here are the flavors you should think about when you’re tasting your chocolate:

• Nuttiness: think roasted chestnuts or hazelnuts

• Fruit: think plums or raisins

• Floral: think orange or rose

• Spices: think vanilla or cinnamon

If you can’t pick out these flavors at first, don’t worry or think that it’s you. It may simply be that you have cheap chocolate, and there’s really nothing there to smell or taste. But even if you do have chocolate with decent flavors on board, it actually takes practice to be able to pick out even a few of the notes. Again, it’s just like practicing tasting wine, and over time becoming able to distinguish the different flavors.

The Fourth Dimension of Sensual Eating

You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that the fourth dimension is time. What does this have to do with chocolate? The flavors that come from your chocolate change over time. Like Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers, the early flavors come, then go, and finally give way to the middle and then the late flavors. Thus, if you’re an Einstein yourself, you’ll have the patience to taste these time-traveling flavors as they come and go.

By the way, you may have heard that Albert Einstein was eating chocolate when he came upon the theory of relativity and that early in his career, while he was working at the patent office, he approved the patent for Toblerone chocolate. However, regardless of just how much I want these little choco-facts to be true, they just aren’t. Sorry.

EARLY FLAVORS

When you first place a piece of chocolate in your mouth, the taste receptors on your tongue register flavors in your brain, in combination with the smell of the food you’re eating. The first flavor you’ll be aware of when you taste your chocolate will be the sweetness. If there is a lot of overt sugar in the chocolate, it will be noticeable at the very beginning.

MIDDLE FLAVORS

After a few minutes, the middle tastes will move away from blunt sweetness to reveal more of the actual underlying flavors. For example, you may begin to taste a floral component, like a light orange flower note. Other subtly sweet sensations will give way to a more fruity taste, like plum or raisin.

As simplistic sweetness fades into flavored sweetness, the fruit flavor may then fade into a slightly tart or acidic element. Just as when you eat a piece of fruit and notice the sweetness before the tartness, the same is true when you eat chocolate. At this point in the progression of middle flavors, the tartness will start to carry tannic notes. Some describe these as “earthy” or “leathery.” This may seem weird to you, because you’ve probably never tasted earth or leather. But you recall the smell of the loamy earth of a forest floor or the soft hide of rubbed leather. So, if you think of these aromas while you’re tasting the middle portion of your chocolate, you’ll see the similarities and realize how your chocolate tastes like these smells smell.

LATE FLAVORS

The last flavors to reveal themselves are the bitter flavors. The bitter receptor is the most sensitive of all taste receptors on your tongue, possibly because bitter flavors are often associated with plants that are toxic, and it’s beneficial to be able to detect these even at minute levels.3 And in fact, your brain can detect bitterness more acutely than any other flavor. That said, many bitter foods are excellent for your health as well, such as coffee, cocoa, hops, olives, bitter greens, etc.

The bitter flavors in chocolate are like the sweet and sour flavors in that they also carry associated flavors with them. These are the flavors that will linger on your palate after the chocolate has melted and been swallowed. You will note these as the smokier flavors.

Just realizing that there are early, middle, and late flavors that are all totally unique will help you taste them. Tasting for those evolving flavors will ultimately lead you to choose the better chocolates that are also healthier for you. And this new understanding will help you avoid those schlocky chocolates that have no more flavor than the waxy oils from which they’re made.

Unlocking the Flavors

As we’ve discussed, the first key is to make sure that your chocolate opens onto your palate and stays there as long as possible. Don’t rush this. You can use your teeth if you want, but the point is not to chew up your chocolate in order to swallow it down (so that you can go back and get more to chew and swallow). If I were writing a book on how to eat chocolate and gain weight, that would be my prescription.

When you’re tasting chocolate, the point of using your teeth is simply to open up the inside of the chocolate onto your awaiting, grateful, gleeful, newly happy taste buds. Lightly break the chocolate open and then leave it alone to liberate the deliciousness between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Your teeth have done all they need to do.

Texture

While you’re tasting your chocolate for the immediate, medium, and late flavors, you should also think about its texture. Another term for texture is the “mouthfeel” that your chocolate gives you.

The procedure for doing this is to take the chocolate into your mouth and to lightly press it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Then gently move your tongue over the bottom of the chocolate from the front of your tongue to the back. Note the feel of it: Is it smooth and creamy or powdery and gritty? If there is an inert waxiness to your chocolate, this is when you’ll pick up that for sure.

Tasting for texture is even more important if you want to lose weight, because this can help you stop eating nasty chocolate that just isn’t as good for you. Cheap chocolates substitute cheaper oils for the cocoa butter, which is the source of the fatty acids that are good for your heart, among many other things. Thus, once you start noticing the texture of your chocolates and selecting those with smoother finishes, you’ll be less likely to choose unhealthy versions. And now that you know the basics of what to look (and taste) for in your chocolate, let’s talk about a few guidelines to keep in mind as you learn to become sensual with your chocolate.

Before Each Tasting

Before tasting your chocolate, it’s important to cleanse your palate. I was speaking at a gathering of French people, talking about diet and food, when I was cornered by this man who was probably 4-feet-nothing tall, but who was all up in my face about the importance of having the salad after the main course. “Nehver before, do you hear! Nehver! Zee salahd must have dressing of vinagre to cleanse your palate before zee dezzert, you know. It is zee simple chemistry of acids. Zey clean your mouth, zen you can taste zee dezzert!”

As animated and adamant as this gentleman was, he was absolutely right. If you want to be able to better taste your chocolate, clean your mouth first. Water is average for this; a very small piece of bread is better; but best would be something slightly acidic with no sugar (such as vinegar in a salad dressing or a chilly tart sorbet).

Cleansing your mouth before you taste your chocolate is a great idea, because otherwise the flavors of your wonderful chocolate will be masked. Then, when you have another piece, your brain won’t get the message and neither will you. How sad would that be?

The Procedure for Tasting

Let your chocolate come to room temperature. This, by the way, is what you should do with a lot of things. When your beer is ice cold, you cannot taste it as well. There are many reasons why an ice-cold beer is good, but flavor isn’t actually one of them. The same thing is true with cheese. If you eat cheese right out of the fridge, you won’t be able to taste the flavors as much as you will when it has had a chance to come up to room temperature (around 70°F).

Likewise, unless you live in some Sahara-type locale without air-conditioning, where you’re afraid your chocolate is going to turn into a molten puddle that you’ll have to lap up from the wrapper, just leave your chocolate in the cupboard and grab your pieces when you’re ready to eat them.

How Much Can I Have?

To answer this question, we need to break it up into three separate questions:
(1) How much can I have at each bite?
(2) How much can I have at each tasting event? And
(3) How many times can I have these tasting events each week?

Let’s start with the bite. From the standpoint of sensual eating, you can diminish your ability to taste your food by trying to do too much at one time. Take the long view. Know that you’ve got a while. This is a process. Relax into it. Breathe.

In other words, when you taste your chocolates, the size that you put in your mouth shouldn’t be nearly as large as the state of Wisconsin. You shouldn’t have to unhinge your jaws just to get it in there. A larger chocolate wad in your cheek does not provide larger flavor or appreciation, and it certainly doesn’t help you fit into smaller pants.

So, when you taste your chocolate, use our rule of thumb and take just one thumb-size bite. If you look at the size of this chocolate and think that it’s way too small, then you’re thinking about it in the wrong way. You’re thinking about it in terms of consumption rather than flavor. Your tongue can detect chocolate flavors at molecular levels. And the number of molecules in your thumb-size piece of chocolate is enormous. Thus, that square has all the flavor you will ever need, without the high volume that turns your chocolate into a liability for your weight and your health.

Now, when you are doing a sensual eating comparison, how much should you have at each event? When you select the chocolates that you will compare, have no more than four thumb-size pieces at a time. After about four pieces, your taste sensations will lose discrimination. They won’t be able to pick out the differences as well. You want to get all the flavor your chocolate has to offer and to become good at tasting it. And to get good at tasting it, you’ll need to plan for this process to take years, not days. All that means is that you have to practice eating your chocolate longer. Bummer, right?

Finally, how often should you do these tastings during a given week? Only do these tastings on the weekends. You’ll have your daily chocolates that you consume in association with your meals (the starter and the ender) each day in order to help control consumption (during the meal and after the meal, respectively). However, this is a great activity to do on a Saturday or Sunday with friends, when you have more time on your hands and you’re not juggling a million things at the same time.

Write It Down

I’ve had wine that has totally taken me by surprise. It was so shockingly delicious that I tried to peel off the label so I wouldn’t forget what vintage it was. A better idea when you’re tasting chocolate is to keep a journal so that you can write down not only the specific brand of chocolate but also the flavors as you notice them.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this, so feel free to create your own rating system. But the simplest version would be to rank each chocolate in two ways: First, rank how much you love the flavor, aroma, and texture on a scale from 1 to 5. Second, note any special flavors you detect, such as nutty, fruity, floral, leathery, earthy, or tannic. And the best scenario for your tasting practice is to do it together with a number of people. In this case, do the taste testing in two rounds. During the first round, have everyone write down what they notice as specified above. While you’re cleansing your palate between tastes, have everyone read their tasting notes. Then retaste the same chocolate, keeping in mind the flavors that were noticed by the others. When you retaste, you’ll be more likely to pick up on the additional tastes that went unnoticed the first time around.

More Friendly with Two

Sensual eating, it turns out, is much more friendly with two—flavors, that is. Pairing chocolate with sympathetic flavors just makes your mouth that much happier, as you can uncover tastes in the chocolate that you couldn’t have noticed by eating the very same chocolate on its own. Think about complementary flavors that you can add, such as cheese or wine or any red fruit. Just as with your chocolate tasting, there are no right or wrong pairings, but below are a couple of tried-and-true combinations to get you started.

Strawberries. Take just a moment to think about chocolate-covered strawberries. Think about the rich, dark chocolate lingering over the red tartness of the berry. This pairing is especially good when the chocolate is as dark and creamy as the berries are fresh and perky. Once it’s in your mouth, the flavor parade begins with sweet, followed by tart, and then the deeper tannins finish the show.

Peanut butter. Peanut butter is like type O blood: It goes with everything. And chocolate is a perfect example. However, unlike the taste coupling of a chocolate-enrobed strawberry, the marriage of peanut butter and chocolate offers a different contrast. In this case, there is no sweet sharpness of berry to bite against the richness of chocolate’s cocoa.

Because of this, pairing good peanut butter with good chocolate makes the bitter tannins jump out even more. Strawberries are so overwhelmingly tart that they swamp those more subtle flavors in the chocolate. But with peanut butter, the tannins are released from the background of flavor into the foreground of your awareness.

Wine. The bad news: There are so many complex flavors inside both the wine and the chocolate that you’re not able to fully taste just how they interact with each other without a lot of practice. The good news: There are so many complex flavors inside both the wine and the chocolate that you’re not able to fully taste just how they interact with each other without a lot of practice.

When you want to taste wine and chocolate together, there are some basic commonsense rules. Ready? Lighter wines go with lighter chocolates, while darker wines go with darker chocolates. Darker chocolates pair well with heavy tannin zinfandels and cabernets. On the other hand, a pinot noir or a lighter merlot are best for the more subtle flavors of lighter chocolates. Finally, if you have a number of wine-chocolate combinations to taste, always start with the lighter ones and move to the darker ones, because starting out with strong flavors on your palate can make it harder to pick out the more subtle flavors tasted afterward.

Bear in mind, too, that the order of the tasting matters. Start with your chocolate, and do not add the wine until the chocolate flavors have started to open up. If it takes a minute for them to develop, that’s okay; wait on the addition of the wine.

TAKE THE Chocolate Challenge

Change your tastes. There. That’s your chocolate challenge. Because if you change what you have a taste for, you’ll choose healthier foods. And even better, you’ll choose healthier foods not because you’re following some dumb dietary prescription that you can stick with for a good solid 2 weeks before you’re off it again. You’ll choose healthier foods because you happen to like them better. At that point, you’re not micromanaging molecules—you’re just living your life. That’s your goal, and this chocolate challenge will help you get there.

WHAT DO I DO?

In Chapter 3, you learned to pull your sweet tooth with a vertical tasting. In other words, you tasted the same kind of chocolate but with different levels of sugar in it. For this chocolate challenge, you will do a “horizontal” tasting.

However, do not start this horizontal chocolate challenge until you have completed the vertical challenge in Chapter 3. How do you “complete” the Sweet Tooth Test? It’s completed when the daily chocolate for which you have conditioned your tastes is 70% cocoa or greater (any amount darker than this is actually better). Once your tastes have adapted to that cocoa threshold, you’ll then be able to taste the unique flavors found in high-quality chocolates. On the other hand, if your taste buds are still being bludgeoned by the sugar in your milk chocolates, you won’t be able to detect all that your chocolate has to offer.

So just wait until you’ve gotten your tastes beyond the 70% threshold before moving on to this more advanced chocolate challenge. Once you’re “there,” it is time to take up this horizontal chocolate challenge. But what do I mean by “horizontal”?

A horizontal tasting is typically done with wine, and this involves tasting a couple of wines that are from exactly the same grape and the same year, but from different vineyards. For chocolate, though, you’ll taste versions that contain the same percentage of cocoa, but from two different producers or from two different kinds of cocoa beans.

This horizontal challenge is much more difficult than the vertical challenge that helps pull your sweet tooth, because sugar is such a blunt, obvious taste. This horizontal challenge requires another level of awareness for the flavors in your chocolate. However, just as the learning is more difficult, the reward is that much better, too.

Once you complete this challenge and have changed your tastes in a healthy direction, I want you to see how far you’ve come. To do that, you’ll do a probe tasting of a former chocolate that you perhaps once enjoyed (something like the candy bar I used to love). To see how much your tastes have improved, compare your new chocolates with the former faves you once craved.

HOW DO I DO THIS?

To do the horizontal tasting, you’ll have to find chocolates that have the same cocoa percentage but that come from different locations or manufacturers. If your local chocolate shop doesn’t carry enough variety to provide this comparison, it’s easy enough to order them online.

Mainstream, off-the-shelf, everyday chocolates will give you the greatest contrast to train your tastes because some will be made with cocoa butter and others with substitute oils. You’ll notice the waxy difference between them right away. Move on from here though, and compare old-world chocolates versus new-world ones (in other words, comparing chocolates made with South American cocoa beans versus African cocoa beans). Other delicious horizontal tastings are nationalistic: Swiss chocolate versus Belgian, for example.

Once you have identified the pairings for your horizontal tasting, use the techniques in this chapter to taste them side by side. The challenge will be conducted in stages. First, taste one of your chocolates, think about the flavors you notice, and write down your impressions. Next, cleanse your palate, and then move on to the second chocolate. During your tasting of the second version, you need to note two things: the flavors you perceive and also the difference between that chocolate and the first one. Again, write this down in your journal to keep track of your progress.

After the first comparison, rinse your palate and repeat with the same pairing. This time, when you compare the two chocolates, you’ll have a better idea of what to expect. Thus, the second tasting will bring out even more of the contrast between them.

For the Probe

After you have practiced your horizontal tastings for 2 weeks, find a cheap chocolate—preferably one that you used to like before you started changing your own tastes. Bear in mind that you actually liked that chocolate at one point in your life. Note: Do not do the probe trial more often than once every 2 weeks, as you need to allow your tastes time to acclimate to the better flavors.

Treat this probe trial no different than any other horizontal tasting you do. First, taste the higher-quality chocolate that you have been eating. Then rinse your mouth and taste the former fave; rinse and repeat. Note the differences between them. However, in this case, also take note of how much you have changed your own tastes. Write down how much your tastes have changed and, more important, what this means for your weight and health.

WHAT CAN I EXPECT WHEN I DO THIS?

First of all, expect that you can do this. You may be thinking that chocolate tasting sounds like wine tasting, which can be viewed as some kind of purist pursuit of pinky-extending, hint-of-oak-smelling, highbrow snoots. Because of this, you might think that such a tasting just isn’t your game.

I’m going to tell you that you can not only do this, but you can also become good at it. The only thing that stands in your way is practice. Repetition. That’s all. If you start the horizontal test and think you can’t tell the difference between the two types of chocolate, don’t worry, because you will absolutely get better at it the more you do it. Think about it like a muscle: It’s totally a flavor appreciation muscle that you can tone up or let wither. And again, the only thing required for this kind of “taste toning” is repetition. Oh, bummer, that means you have to taste more.

Also, if you do this chocolate challenge with other people, you may taste something completely different than they did. That doesn’t mean you “missed” something, or that they’re making something up because you didn’t taste it in your piece. It just means that there’s no right or wrong taste because everyone’s neurosensory taste system is different. In fact, no two people perceive the very same flavor in the very same way. So if someone else is picking up that hint of oak, and you’re not, well, that’s just them. You’ll taste other flavors.

For all these reasons, don’t shuffle between different kinds of chocolates too quickly. For example, let’s say you’ve compared a Belgian 70% chocolate to a Swiss 70%. Even if you’ve detected clear differences between them from the beginning, the differences you notice will change as you get better at detecting the different flavors contained in chocolate.

However, the most life-changing difference will come from the probe trial. You’ll notice that the flavor you once loved, and perhaps went way out of your way to get, now tastes nasty and gross. The amount of time it takes to get to this point will vary from person to person. But I promise you that your first probe trial will shock you. The second probe will reinforce it. And if you make it to a third probe trial, I’ll be surprised. By this point, most people simply cannot go back to the bad chocolate—ever again.

Expect to have your eyes opened in a couple of ways. First, you’ll realize how poorly you ate and wonder how you could have possibly eaten that schlocky chocolate. More important, though, you’ll realize the empowerment and freedom that come from taking ownership of your health. You made a change so fundamental that it altered the physiology of your own brain, creating new cravings that now make unhealthy food taste bad to you. You did that, and that is nothing short of absolutely amazing.

HOW DO I HELP MYSELF?

Don’t treat your chocolate like a pill that you pop into your mouth just because you were told to. It’s important to create routines around eating your chocolate in association with meals, for both your vertical Sweet Tooth Test and your horizontal sensual tasting. Why? Well, one study showed that the appreciation of the flavors in your food increases when it is eaten in a regular or ritual way.4 (“Ritual” in this context doesn’t mean you have to go as far as including candles or chanting or gongs, but just doing things in a predictable way. When I was a kid, we set the table, said a prayer, and then ate. That’s a perfect example of a routine or ritual that precedes eating.)

For this study, people ate chocolate by unwrapping one portion, eating, waiting a bit, and then unwrapping a second portion, eating, then waiting a bit longer. This routine not only caused subjects to actually like the chocolate more (15% more compared to the “random eating” condition), but it also extended the length of time they spent eating the chocolate.

As we now know, enjoying your food and taking your time with it also help you control consumption by giving your brain a chance to hear the signals that you’re full before you overrun them by eating too quickly. And from the standpoint of your brain, patterning routines around eating creates an operant link between the behavior and the upcoming flavor (the food). Thus, the next time you prepare food or chocolate for consumption, your brain will know that something delicious is coming, and this will enhance your appreciation of it.

How else can you help yourself? Return to the family table. Eat with the people you love in your life—in a pattern that is predictable. If that means eating together, do that. If it means having an appetizer before the main meal, do that. If it means we all sit down and contribute something about our day, well, that’s just perfect. In the end, these rituals around eating are as good for your body as they are for your soul. Oh, and by the way, you parents get to find out who your kids are in the process. Bonus.

THE COCOA Q & A

Q: How long will it take to change my taste preferences?

A: Every physiology is different, so there will be a lot of variability from person to person. You can start to notice changes in what you have a preference for in as little as 1 week, but this process will continue for years. For others, it may take up to 4 weeks to notice a change.

This is such an important question, though, because if your tastes have not changed in that time, there may be other behaviors that are standing in the way. If this happens, you need to step back, take an inventory of the foods you’re eating, and make sure that everything is real food.

The reason this process can take so long comes down to just how fundamental this change is. You are making a transformational change of your cravings, moving the baseline of taste preference in a healthy direction. When this happens, you make healthier choices just because that’s what you enjoy more.

So be patient with yourself—until you’ve been doing this for about 4 weeks. You should notice a difference in your taste preferences by then. And if you don’t, it’s time to take a look at the foods you’re eating to make sure you’re not somehow standing in your own way.

HOW CHOCOLATE SAVES YOUR DIET

Now think of how you can apply the change you learned through this chocolate challenge to your entire diet. You changed your taste preferences for bad chocolate to good chocolate, and you can make this shift with all of your foods.

What if you craved fruit instead of plasticized fruit sheets? What if you craved vegetables instead of prepackaged packets of oversalted, over-sugared food products? If that is who you have become, then you will exchange high-quality for high-quantity consumption by doing nothing more than eating what you love.

You can get from here to there. You can change your own physiology—your own brain—for the better. Just apply the lessons from this chocolate challenge across the board. In other words, practice tasting for flavors in your sauces, breads, fish, and veggies. The more you do it, the better you’ll get. And just like with this chocolate challenge, the only thing standing between you and this level of freedom is repetition. Taste, and you begin the process of sculpting a healthy flavor appreciation.

By the way, people ask me all the time how they can help their kids eat healthier. You can tell them all the rules of what to eat, for sure. But the Confucian, top-down, cerebral strategy (see Chapter 4), in which they have to (a) remember what their parents said and (b) care to remember what their parents said, is useless. It will never stick for long. The solution for our children is to get them to taste, and to talk about what they’re tasting. If you can get them to discriminate between good foods and bad foods, then you will have created an internal guide for them that will work when they’ve forgotten all your reams and reams of rules and more rules. Inside out, that’s your solution. And that’s a beautiful thing.

AN EAT CHOCOLATE, LOSE WEIGHT

SUCCESS STORY

Rose Batiste
Age: 52
Pounds lost: 30

Chocolate tip: “Really savor your chocolate ender. Think of it as your reward at the end of your meals.”

“My grandmother loved dark chocolate, and that’s what she always gave me as a treat as a little girl,” Rose Batiste shares. “So I’ve always loved dark chocolate. I ate chocolate every day. Before this program, chocolate wasn’t an ‘ender’; it was a beginning, a meal, and an ender.”

But it wasn’t what Rose ate that caused her weight problems; it was how she ate. “I was working long hours and just grabbing food whenever I could. My time was limited, and I wasn’t mindful about what I was eating. I ate mostly fast food and processed food. I wasn’t active at all,” she says, noting that she tried countless times to lose the weight, but nothing worked. “I’d tried every diet, every pill, every gimmick, but they were just too hard and required too much thought and planning.”

Tired of struggling with her weight, Rose knew she needed to find a weight-loss plan that gave her the freedom to eat more of the food she enjoyed. “I was tired of buying bigger clothes all the time. I kept buying larger and larger sizes instead of fitting into what I had. I knew it was time to try something new.”

So when she heard how simple and unrestrictive the Eat Chocolate, Lose Weight plan was, she decided to give it a try. After starting the plan, Rose quickly learned the importance of the chocolate ender. “It’s like the period at the end of the sentence. Now I look forward to it, and it’s about savoring that moment.”

And once she learned that, the program became even easier and she noticed even more results. “I knew the program was working when I realized I could get through the day without sugar. I didn’t need to have sugar in my coffee or to have cookies or doughnuts for breakfast. Once I was off sugar and ate something sweet again, it tasted too sweet—too concentrated.”

Rose ultimately lost 30 pounds. She also dropped several clothing sizes, going from a 12 to an 8, all without ever feeling unsatisfied. “You never feel deprived when you have the piece of chocolate at the end of your meals. It’s all about savoring.” For Rose, sensual eating was the key to her success. “You can eat anything you enjoy, but you have to take your time and not just shove it down your throat. All you have to do is be aware of what you’re eating and enjoy it.”







By Will Clower in "Eat Chocolate, Lose Weight", Rodale Inc., USA, 2014, excerpts chapter 5. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Ill huswiferie pineth,
not having to eate.
Good huswiferie dineth,
With plentie of meate.

Thomas Tusser "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry" (1573)

The medieval period covered many centuries and was moulded by many changes, of climate and circumstance, far-rippling cycles of economic expansion and retreat, spikes and troughs of localized prosperity and decay. With few personal memoirs to offer glimpses of private responses to public events, it is easy to present the history of the times as a roll-call of calamities, a police record of crimes and cruelty, brutal wars and devastating plagues. In any age, however, life manages to limp along for society at large, if not for the individual victim. For men and women on the lower rungs of the medieval social ladder there was a thread which ran unbroken from one generation to the next, and tied them with a common bond – the need to devise strategies for survival in straitened conditions. Those least padded against misfortune were always at risk, perched precariously on a knife-edge from which they could be toppled by a single ill-timed blow, whether the death of the family’s main provider or the failure of a crop. How to keep body and soul together, in bad times and good, was an ever-present concern throughout the Middle Ages. The ways devised by cooks to cope with the problems of scarce resources and scanty equipment form the subject of the present chapter.

Some information about the pots and pans and the ingredients available with luck to the cottage cook can be found in written records and in the interesting if unappetizing evidence of seeds, bones, and blackened shards recovered in the archaeological excavation of midden heaps and refuse dumps. Not very much about actual cooking techniques and improvisations is preserved in such sources, and nothing at all about the relish or resentment felt by those who had to digest the results. The most vivid impression of what it was like to cook and eat in humble households is to be gleaned from the occasional vignettes which crop up here and there throughout the centuries, embedded in sermons and saints’tales, fables, fantasies, and those bewhiskered jokes whose refusal to lie down and die in the course of time is a testament to remarkably unchanging human reactions in an ever-changing world.

The Problems

To set beside the portrait of the hot and harassed cook described in Chapter 1, there is another standard ‘type’, that of the hot and harassed housewife. Mistress of an establishment far too humble to support any kind of paid professional help, this unsung heroine had to cope by herself with the unpredictable demands of every day. By and large, her plight was treated as the stuff of comedy. On a Norwich Cathedral misericord, carved c. 1480, the housewife is shown in vain pursuit of a vanishing fox, which holds her prize rooster clamped between his jaws. Taking advantage of the uproar, a plump little pig methodically licks her stewpot clean. After this, dinner clearly will not be served on time; indeed, if the pig has really known his business, it may never be served at all.1 Occasionally, comedy is set aside, and the frustrations of the daily grind are dwelt on with grim relish. In Hali Meidenhad, an early thirteenth-century treatise for young women on the joys of the convent, a cloister’s calm is contrasted with the chaos of married life: ‘The wife ... hears, when she comes in, her child scream, sees the cat at the flitch and the hound at the hide. Her cake is burning on the hearthstone, her calf is sucking up all the milk, the earthenware pot is boiling over into the fire, and her husband is scolding.’2

Both the professional cook and the peasant housewife were pictured working under pressure, but the two faced entirely different challenges. For the professional, cooking was the defining task which he had been hired to perform. His job was to prepare food, and he was judged on his ability to do so. The hours were long, the work demanding; the pains and pleasures of his private life were of no interest to anyone but himself. They were not expected to impinge on his daily routine. For the housewife, the making of a meal was just one scrap in the day’s patchwork quilt of tasks, to be stitched in somehow between its other duties and distractions. She bore and brought up children, looked after both husband and household, and played her part in the outside world as well. She was expected to take charge of the family garden, to be ready to work when needed with her husband on the piece of farmland allotted to them in the village, or labour in their lord’s fields at weeding time or harvest. If her family was lucky enough to own livestock, some poultry, a pig, or a cow, hers was the prime responsibility to keep them fed and out of trouble. When her cow strayed on to forbidden territory, she was the one who had to spend precious time vainly trying to persuade a village official not to impose a fine: ‘She has to say nice things to the hayward, call him names when he impounds the cow, and yet pay damages nonetheless.’3

The housewife was, in short, a partner in the family enterprise, and pulled her weight in every venture. Above all, she had to be prepared to change course at a moment’s notice, and cope with any one of a hundred unexpected interruptions. In the story of St Bridget’s life, as told in an early fourteenth-century manuscript of The South English Legendary, Bridget is born just as her mother comes home from milking the cow, and steps over the cottage threshold:

hure a vot withinne was
And hure other vot was withoute
(one of her feet was in the house, and the other was still outside)4

There may be just a touch of melodrama in the telling of the tale, but the tiny detail forcefully drives home the hazards in the housewife’s working day. Any baby, whether future saint or sinner, demands a distracting amount of care and attention. One picture in a Flemish psalter of the early fourteenth century shows a young mother as she juggles two jobs at the same time. She stirs the contents of her stewpot with a spoon held in one hand, while clutching a large, energetically wriggling baby in the other. An older child, a little boy, tries to help by blowing up the fire with a pair of bellows almost half as big as he is .

The conflicting claims of cookery and child-care posed problems which are still familiar to the housewife today. What that modern figure would find strikingly, shockingly different about the facts of life faced by her medieval counterpart is the amount of preparation and lead-time required before even the most rudimentary meal-making could begin. A fire had to be not simply made and maintained; its fuel had to be searched for and stored. Kindling to start the blaze had to be improvised and kept ready. Strips of old rags and dried toadstools were known to be reliable: ‘I shall gette me drye tode stooles or fyne lynnen clothe halfe brent [half charred]: to make tynder of.’5 Before its virtues could be put to the test, however, that toadstool first had to be found, and then to be dried. Water for the cooking pot had to be brought in, not through a kitchen tap, but carried in buckets from some outside source.

To clear such hurdles every single day, over and over again, was a challenge, one not for the faint-hearted. Far more intractable problems regularly threatened to disrupt the annual flow of provisions, the cook’s raw materials. Even in a good period, when no regional or national catastrophe occurred, to ruin crops or ravage neighbourhoods, the year was patterned as a chequer-board of feast and famine. High summer and autumn brought their harvests of grain, fruit, and vegetables. Late autumn saw the main slaughter of livestock for the meat supply. All this abundance could be enjoyed at the time, and preserved as far as possible for later use, but by the early spring stocks were running dangerously low. Then there was a very lean stretch indeed, before any new crops could be gathered in. As a bleak snatch of verse explains, the larder was bare because:

Winter alle etes
That summer begetes.
(Winter eats everything that summer makes.)6

These perilous weeks posed a problem for society as a whole but, inevitably, the pinch of hunger was felt most sharply by the poor. They, even in the best of times, lived from hand to mouth and, in the worst, stared starvation in the face.

This thumbnail sketch indicates in faint outline how serious were the pitfalls faced by the housewife of very modest means, and how frighteningly narrow was the gap between sufficiency and destitution. Worry about supplies never eased entirely. Even in the pleasant stretches of the year, the calamity of crippling illness or a husband’s sudden death could in a moment darken the brightest prospect.

There are more than enough descriptions in medieval literature which dwell with relish on the squalor of poverty, the consequences of pinched resources and defeated spirits. In the thirteenth-century Welsh romance, The Dream of Rhonabwy, weary travellers arrive at a ‘black old hall’, and step inside, in search of dinner. They find there at first no hearty, warming welcome, just one lone peasant, a cross old crone hunched over a smoky fire, who offers them nothing better than rudeness and the cold comfort of ‘barley-bread and cheese and watered milk’.7

Fortunately for the digestive comfort of the human race, not all cooks are created equal, and from time to time in the records a glimpse is permitted of an alternative model. This is of the capable housewife who creates order and ease in her own domestic world. She is the amateur counterpart of that cool, competent professional who was the second main ‘type’of cook discussed in Chapter 1. In The Lay of Havelok the Dane, a romance probably composed in the late thirteenth century, the wife of Grim the fisherman knows just how to bring a starving little boy back to life:

Y shal the fete
Bred and chese, butere and milk,
Pastees and flauns; al with suilk
Shole we sone the wel fede.

(I shall bring you bread and cheese, butter, milk, pasties and flans. With all such things we shall soon feed you well.)8

It is sometimes possible to find such a figure in person, and sometimes just the fruits of her labours, as in those traditional calendar scenes for the winter months which show a bright fire blazing, a stewpot simmering, and the head of the household toasting his toes by the hearth, contentedly waiting for dinner.9 By tracing the strategies employed by this kind of housewife, a plausible case can be made, to show that, at least on a good day, a peasant’s life did not have to be all gloom and gruel. With competence, experience, and a touch of imagination, it was possible to turn scanty resources into sustaining, even at times attractive, meals.

The Materials

The basic foodstuff was grain of one kind or another: wheat, rye, barley, oats, or some combination of these, depending on local conditions. This was supplemented with peas and beans, either fresh or dried. Monotony and blandness could be countered with fruits and vegetables, grown on a private plot, harvested on a larger scale, bought at a market, or found in the wild. Milk and cream, cheese and butter were all readily obtainable in the spring and summer months. Eggs were not scarce, because it was easy to keep a cock and some hens contented in a small garden.

The one item conspicuous by its absence is meat. That absence was deeply regretted, and bitterly resented because, quite apart from any nutritional value it might have been thought to possess, meat had an undisputed place at the very top of the medieval prestige pyra­mid. The dinner tables of the powerful were laden with meat dishes of every kind; on fast days fish, the accepted substitute, was offered in the same variety and abundance. However, for reasons which will be outlined later, while animals themselves were familiar figures in the peasant’s landscape, their meat was in frustratingly short supply.

Considered from a safe distance, a diet of milk and bread, fruit and cheese, eggs, cream, herbs and vegetables sounds quite agreeable, and more than one elegant poem was composed at the time, in praise of the peasant’s enviable lot. The most famous of these, Franc Gontier, was written in very comfortable circumstances by the Bishop of Meaux, Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361). He dwelt lovingly on the details of the meal enjoyed by Franc Gontier and Dame Helaine as they picnicked ‘under the green leaves’, enjoying ‘fresh cheese, milk, butter … cream, curds, apples, plums, pears; they had garlic and onions, and crushed shallots, on crusty black bread, with coarse salt, to give them a thirst’.10

A hint of what was really going through the mind of such a peasant as he cast his eye over such a feast is dropped in the late thirteenth-century play by Adam de la Halle, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion (c. 1283). Hero and heroine are shepherds, and Marion invites Robin to share her picnic of bread, cheese, and apples. Robin is delighted, but cannot help murmuring to Marion that this blameless meal would be brightened considerably by the addition of a slice of the bacon he has happened to notice in her grandmother’s kitchen. With regret, Marion explains that Grandmother (who clearly has not lived to a ripe old age without learning a thing or two along the way) has hung the bacon high up in the rafters, well out of reach and harm’s way.11

The pent-up longing for meat pours out in The Land of Cockayne, a poem copied in a manuscript some time before 1350. In the dream world of ease and plenty it describes, geese, already roasted, fly through the air, ready for the taking, and pipe their own praises as they go: ‘Gees! al hot, al hot.’12 No comparable vision is included, of cabbages bobbing along like balloons before gently floating down to mouths wide open to receive them. For a modest household in real life, meat was a luxury, a rare touch of welcome extravagance to break the monotony of a somewhat insipid diet. The housewife cook, working within severe constraints of time and resources, was forced to devise those strategies for survival which have proved tried and true in every century. She had to stretch scanty provisions, find ways to blunt the sharp edge of appetite with plain, substantial fare and then, on a lucky day, add a morsel of some special treat to brighten an all-too-familiar menu.

Methods and Equipment

Even in a very simple household, it was possible for the cook to choose any one of the basic techniques which are still familiar to us today. Food could be simmered or stewed in a large cauldron, which might stand on its own support legs in the heart of the fire, or be suspended from a chain over the flames. Small quantities of soup, gruel, or some drink might be heated or kept warm in a long-handled saucepan, set to stand on its own trivet beside the fire. Ingredients were fried in a pan, grilled on a gridiron, turned on a spit. Naturally enough, not every household was lucky enough to have all this basic equipment at hand. Limited means called for ingenuity and improvisation: ‘For lacke of belowes: blowe with thy mouthe’( ‘If you don’t have a pair of bellows, blow up the fire with your own breath’); ‘A soudear for lacke of a broche or a spyt rosteth his meate upon his wepon made lyke a broche’( ‘A soldier who doesn’t have a spit roasts the meat on his dagger’).13

To bake something in an oven was another well-known method, but here there was a problem. Most poor families did not have a full-scale oven on their own premises. It was possible to mix up the raw ingredients, and then take them to be baked in the village oven, but that had its disadvantages because this solution was expensive in more ways than one. Payment had to be made to the baker for services rendered, and another payment had to be paid in time, time spent on the journey to and from the oven, and time wasted awaiting the baker’s convenience. All this being so, there was an incentive to try another approach. A small, improvised oven was put together and set in the heart of the fire. The food to be cooked was placed on a bakestone or metal plate, covered with a lid, and then pushed into position, with the ashes piled around and over the lid. Such a contrivance was too small to cope with large quantities, but it had two virtues. It made economical use of heat from an existing fire, and it could be reached for at will. No extra expenditure of time or money was required.

Feeding the Youngest Members of the Family

Throughout the medieval period, the protective affection felt by all normal parents for their babies was sharpened by the haunting fear of infant mortality. As a result, much attentive care was lavished on the first year or so of childhood. Once they had been weaned, babies were introduced to the staple diet of porridge, or ‘pap’, made from hulled grain, flour, or breadcrumbs, cooked in water or milk until the mixture had thickened into a sustaining soup. An early fifteenth-century medical recipe for grown-ups prescribed a combination of cow’s milk and fine white flour, cooked ‘in the manner of children’s pap’.14 In a few Nativity scenes, painted over a period stretching from the late fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, Joseph can be found, stirring just such a soup in a little saucepan for the baby Jesus.15 One of the shepherds in the fifteenth-century Chester Shepherds’Play, has the same idea. He brings a flask of soup as his present for Jesus, and thoughtfully hands over his own spoon for the baby’s use:

to eate thy potage withall
as I my selfe full oft hath done.16

Jesus was a very special baby, but he was fed on standard fare. A late fifteenth-century French manuscript on the Ages of Man shows, in the scene representing Infancy, a baby cradled in its mother’s arms, while the young father carefully spoons out soup for the child from a long-handled container.17

Once babies had a tooth or two to chew with, they were encouraged to keep themselves busy, gnawing away at a crusty chunk of bread. Soon after that adventure, they were tempted with new tastes and textures. In the thirteenth century, an apple was recommended as a safe choice by Walter de Bibbesworth, but he warned that care had to be taken to peel it and cut away the core before it was given to the child. He also praised the virtues of the egg. The yolk of a soft-boiled one was delicious and easy to digest, while a hard-boiled one was not only good to eat but fun to play with as well.18 Fun sometimes led to disaster. One little boy, just eighteen months old, bent down to dip his hard-boiled egg into a pool of salt brine on the Lincolnshire coast. The egg slipped through his fingers into the water, and the child tumbled over and drowned as he tried to retrieve it.19

Feeding the Rest of the Family

Fruit and Vegetables

After the first year or two of life, children began to eat the same dishes which were prepared for the whole household. Of all the materials with which the cook had to work, fruits and vegetables held out the best hope of variety in a monotonous and limited diet. They also shared one feature which must have made them specially precious: they could be eaten raw. Rawness was neither admired nor approved of by the physicians who advised those able to afford their services, but had distinct advantages for the hard-pressed poor. On those days when there was no fuel, no time, and certainly no officious doctor anywhere at hand, the sweetness of a parsnip, the crunch of a turnip, the pungency of an onion, could add not merely nourishment but zest to any meal.

Everyone loved fruit. Children liked to play games with cherry­stones, and what better way has there ever been to build up a stockpile of the stones than to eat the cherries first?20 As a schoolboy, the poet John Lydgate spent happy hours stealing fruit from other ­people’s property: ‘Ran into gardeynes, apples ther I stall’.21 The beauty and brevity of the fruit season was used as a universally understood image of life’s fleeting pleasures: ‘Farewell, this World is but a Cherry Fair.’22

Herbs and salad stuff, whether grown in a garden or gathered in the wild, added relish to a basically bland diet. They could even take the place of salt, to some degree, by lending their own sharp flavours to the mix. This virtue was noted by a missionary, Gabriel Sagard, who spent some time in Canada in the early seventeenth century. Having sampled the kind of corn pudding prepared by the local Indians, he made his own improved version by adding: ‘small herbs such as wild marjoram and other things (purslane and a certain kind of balsam) to give it taste and savour, in place of salt and spice’.23

Of all vegetables, members of the onion tribe provided the most pungent pleasures, and were at their potent best when eaten raw. Many a meal of plain porridge or coarse bread must have been cheered by the addition of an onion to the menu. Onions, leeks, and garlic were much-loved standbys, eaten with relish even though their tell-tale aroma lingered on long after the last mouthful had been swallowed. In his poem Les Contredis Franc Gontier, François Villon (1431–c. 1463) mocked the rustic idyll depicted a hundred years earlier by the Bishop of Meaux, and claimed that if Franc Gontier and Helaine were ever given half a chance to lead a more comfortable life, they would abandon in a moment their diet of black bread with those intrusive onions ‘qui causent forte alaine’( ‘which make the breath smell strong’).24 With no such hope of escape, peasants were prepared to put up with the smell for the sake of the savour.

When it came to cooking vegetables, the simplest method was to simmer them in water. This is a way to cook chestnuts recommended in one manuscript of the health handbook, Tacuinum sanitatis, copied in Rouen c. 1400. The illustration shows a pot set over an open fire beside a tree, and a nut-picker pulling a chestnut out of the pot for his young helper.25 Besides being cooked on their own, vegetables could be tossed into the pot in any combination, depending on what happened to be available at the time, and then simmered together into a soup, with a handful of herbs added for piquancy: ‘A few herbes wel chopt to gether wyl make a messe of good pottage to an hungry man.’26 The soup could be thickened with oatmeal or some other grain but, as an Elizabethan writer pointed out, it was more economical to achieve the desired consistency by simply adding more leeks and dried peas. In this way: ‘thou sparest both ­otemell and bread to be spent’.27 Sustaining soups could be made from this and that, leaf vegetables like cabbage and root vegetables like parsnip, with each making its contribution to the whole. As with all such hit-or-miss recipes, the result could be dispiriting or remarkably tasty; much depended on the cook’s judgement and flair. The method itself was so basic that Taillevent, the great chef to the royal court of France in the fourteenth century, declared that there was no need for him to dictate any instructions whatsoever.28

The economical way to get the most out of the large pot in which such soups were made, and the fuel needed to heat it, was to cook more than one item at the same time. When suitably wrapped and protected, several things could be set or suspended in the pot while the soup was simmering. Room might be found for a side of bacon, a sausage in its own casing, or a container filled with eggs to be hard-boiled. One special favourite was the bag pudding, for which the ingredients were securely wrapped in a cloth, suspended in the warm liquid inside the pot, and left there to steam. Of all such concoctions, the Pease-pudding was the best-known. Dried peas or beans were first soaked overnight, then bound in a cloth with some herb flavouring and, perhaps, a dab of butter or dripping, and so cooked until ready.29 Over the centuries, and indeed right up to the present time in the north of England, the substantial, grey-green cannonball which in due course emerged has proved to be a sure-fire way to blunt the edge of appetite, and satisfy the heartiest trencherman.

Such staples as pease-pudding and vegetable soup might be supplemented from time to time with agreeable morsels, prepared in quite different ways. While one manuscript of the Tacuinum sanitatis, as we have seen, recommended that chestnuts should be cooked in water, another said that they could be ‘roasted, stirring them over a lively fire of seasoned wood’.30 Several fruits and vegetables could be cooked in the ashes of the fire, either while it was heating the big, all-purpose cauldron or while it was slowly dying down after its main job for the day had been completed. Apples, pears, parsnips, leeks and onions lent themselves well to this method, which transformed all-too familiar items into tempting little treats: ‘The nightes be prety and colde now. A roste apple ye shal have, and fenell-seede.’31 In order to make sure that autumn’s apple crop did not rot away before winter’s chilly nights arrived, the fruit had to be set out in a cool, dry place, and each apple protected from contact with its neighbour by a wisp of packing material. Chaucer had just such a store-room in mind when he composed his lines:

Hir mouth was sweete ...
As hoord of apples leyd in hey or heeth.32
(Her breath was as sweet as apples laid in hay or heather.)

Another cooking method was to wrap an onion, for example, in a scrap of dough, and bake this turnover in the warm embers of the fire, inside one of those small, improvised ovens which have been mentioned already. The same kind of morsel, dipped into an egg batter, dropped into a pan and fried in hot, sizzling fat became a fritter, whose crackle and succulence made it a prime favourite. Probably because of their inborn sweetness, apple and parsnip fritters were specially popular variants on a much-loved theme.33 Frying has always been a way to add a spark of interest to the boringly familiar. By the early sixteenth century it had become the custom in northern England to fry dried peas and beans as a special treat on the day known as Carling Sunday, the second Sunday before Easter, to cheer the weary as they faced the last two weeks of the long Lenten fast. The first of the references collected under ‘carling’in the Oxford English Dictionary, is dated 1530, and so it is not clear that the custom had its roots in the medieval period, but it seems very likely. Certainly the materials, the method, and the incentive had all been in place for centuries.

It was possible to gather in provisions from many different sources. Herbs could be searched for in the hedgerows, mushrooms collected in field and forest, watercress plucked from a stream. An item might be found in the local market, although it was never wise to be over-confident: ‘There be no herbis in the herbe market.’34 Ideally, there could be friendly exchanges between neighbours, but here again it was best to be braced for disappointment. Christina of Markyate, a recluse who lived near St Albans in mid-twelfth-century England, was a very holy woman who sulked like an all-too-human one because the owner of the next-door garden: ‘out of miserliness, had denied her a sprig of chervil when she had recently asked for it’.35 Because of all these pitfalls, the most reliable source of fruits and vegetables, naturally enough, was the family’s own small garden plot. The importance of this private holding can be judged from the care with which conditions for its use were spelled out in wills. When such a property passed from the widow of its owner to the heir, or when it was handed over by an elderly father to his son, there was often a formal stipulation that the widow or former owner would have the right for life to part of the garden’s produce.36

Grain and Bread

Grain, even more than bread itself, was the staff of life for the peasant household. Depending on region, locality, and circumstance, the principal crop in any one place was wheat, rye, oats, or barley. Peasants grew grain on their own allotted strips of land in the village, and they could be paid in grain for the work they did each year on their lord’s properties. They might winnow the chaff from the grain themselves, but that grain, in order to be turned into flour, had to be carried to the local mill for grinding, a service which, needless to say, was not performed for nothing. The mill, indeed, was a considerable and coveted source of income for its owner, and for the miller himself, so determined effort was made to discourage any attempt to avoid the official payment by doing one’s own grinding with a hand-mill, or quern, in the privacy of the home. The battle to confiscate and destroy such querns, or punish their users, was waged with vigour in every century. The very energy of the campaign suggests that victory was never decisive; hand-grinding was never completely stamped out.37 However emotionally gratifying it may have been, this defiant, do-it-yourself method was time-consuming and, because it could not yield substantial amounts of flour, somewhat ineffective. Despite rumbles of resentment, and the occasional flare-up of outright revolt, it had to be accepted that grain must be ground at the mill if the aim was to have in store a reasonably ample quantity of flour for some time to come.

Just as grain needs a mill to grind it into flour, so dough needs an oven to bake it into bread. This posed another problem for the hard-pressed family cook to solve. As has been pointed out already, most poor households did not have an oven. It was possible to mix up the dough and then take it to the village oven for baking, and it was also possible to buy a ready-made loaf from the baker, from a stall in the local market, or from some better-equipped neighbour who did indeed possess an oven of her own, and was eager to earn a little money by baking a batch of bread for sale.38 One distinct disadvantage to all such solutions was that in each case money, or some payment in kind, had to change hands. Another was that even a plump purse could not guarantee success. In a collection of Latin exercises drawn up for schoolboys in the mid-fifteenth century, one English sentence set for translation reads: ‘Ther ys no bred yn towne to sylle but a lytyl lofe for an halpeny, as myche as a man-ys fust, the wheche unnethe wold ful an hongry [boy] at hys deynere’( ‘There is no bread for sale in town except one little halfpenny loaf, no bigger than a man’s fist, which would scarcely satisfy a hungry boy for dinner’).39

For all these reasons, although a loaf of bread was enjoyed and coveted, and thought of as one of life’s essentials, it was not always within the reach of a poor family on any given day. Quickly assembled alternatives helped to bridge the gap between a full-size baker’s loaf and no loaf at all. A batch of oat-cakes could be made from a handful of oats, mixed with water and dropped in spoonfuls to cook on a hot metal or stone plate. Writing about the daring Scottish raids into England in 1327, Froissart pointed out that the invaders could travel fast because they travelled light: ‘The only things they take with them are a large flat stone placed between the saddle and the saddle-cloth and a bag of oatmeal strapped behind … They lay these stones on a fire and mixing a little of their oatmeal with water, they sprinkle the thin paste on the hot stone and make a small cake, rather like a wafer … It is not surprising that they can travel faster than other armies.’40

Small buns, with or without some savoury morsel tucked inside, could be baked in one of those useful, improvised ovens, set within the embers of a fire. Even without such a protective covering, it was possible to bake little rolls of dough by placing them right inside the warm ashes, just as a potato is baked today. This method seems to be simplicity itself, but sharp-eyed attention was needed to ensure success. The story of King Alfred who, as a bedraggled fugitive, took shelter in a herdsman’s hut and failed to let the wife know that her bread had burnt to a cinder in the heat of the fire, first began to circulate in the late tenth century, and it is still being told today. In 1998, the sign outside the ‘Alfred’pub in Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, showed the king enjoying a pint of beer while the cakes, and the housewife, smoulder in the background. One mid-thirteenth-­century version makes the domestic drama spring to life: ‘The little old wife … had placed some bread in the warm ash to be baked there, and then turned to other necessary chores while the bread was in the ashes. She forgot about the bread until she was reminded of it by the burning smell. The old woman dropped what she was doing … and ran over, and said impatiently to the man whom she saw sitting there: “What sort of a careless man are you, who neglects to attend to burning bread? Never have I seen so negligent a man – one who doesn’t even know how to turn ash-baked bread – and yet when it’s put in front of you you’ll no doubt rush to eat it! ”’41 Incompetence and inattention clearly ruined more than one baking day throughout the long medieval period, for a fourteenth-century Franciscan preacher, John Myrc, explained that the name Ember Day, given to certain special fasting days in Lent and Advent, was derived from the kind of food permitted then, small penitential buns baked in the embers, and all too often blackened in the process.42

Bread, in short, was both a pleasure and a problem. For any meal taken out in the open or in the workplace bread was best, because it was solid, easy to handle, and needed neither knife nor spoon. We can assume that the picnic lunch being carried to harvesters in the field, in a number of calendar scenes for July and August, consisted of a chunk of bread and, with luck, some relish, an onion perhaps, or a piece of cheese.43 Inside the home, however, it was much easier and more economical to use grain in other ways, to give some body to a soup, or to heat it in water until it thickened into porridge. For hundreds of years that staple dish kept its key position in the diet of the poor. As late as 1819, for example, John Clare in his poem, ‘The Woodman’, described a man setting off to chop wood for long hours in a frostbound forest, carrying a crust of barley bread in his bag for lunch, having first fortified himself for the day ahead with a bowl of warm porridge.44

Porridge has been praised for many virtues, but full-bodied ­flavour is never on the list. Its basic insipidity, however, has one distinct advantage: the addition of any flavour whatsoever will be instantly noticed and almost invariably appreciated. A touch of salt or honey, a handful of herbs, a nut or two, a slice of apple or of onion, could turn the boringly familiar into a relished treat. The hiding of an almond for good luck in the similarly bland rice pudding which is still served on Christmas Eve in Denmark is a festive adaptation of the day-to-day strategies devised in any country, any century, by any cook whose imagination is alive and well even when her cupboard is almost bare.

Milk, Butter, Cheese

Milk’s smooth, full-bodied pleasures added a welcome touch of richness to the diet. By a rare stroke of good fortune for the peasant, those pleasures could be relished, as many householders kept a cow or two, and led them out to graze on common pasture. Indeed, Chaucer’s ‘poor widow’, in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale (l. 2831), owned three. In spring and summer, the seasons when calves were born and there was plenty of fresh new grass for cows to feed on, milk was easy to come by, and easy to enjoy. Milk was specially ­precious because, by an accident of timing, it flowed so freely just in the very weeks when everything else, the provisions from the last year’s harvests, had almost run out, and there was still a painfully long stretch to be covered before new crops were ready to be gathered in. Langland’s Piers Plowman has nothing very filling in his larder with which to fend off Hunger’s attack in those anxious days, but to supplement his handful of vegetables he does at least have two cheeses, a few curds, and some cream.45

Despite its many virtues, milk has one distinct drawback: it soon goes bad, especially in warm weather. The comment, ‘This mylke is sowre or turned’, was selected in one set of early sixteenth-century exercises as a very familiar sentence for schoolboys to translate into Latin.46 How much milk was drunk in its fresh, cold state is hard to tell. As has been mentioned already, Grim’s wife, in Havelok, lists milk among the items with which she plans to feed a hungry boy, and Chaucer’s poor widow, in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale (l. 2844), has two staples in her diet, ‘mylk and broun breed’, but in neither case are we told how the milk was served. Many recipes do survive for a comforting warm drink, a posset, which was made from milk heated with ale.47 The addition of rare, expensive spices could transform the posset into a luxurious confection, fit for any lord, but in its simplest form, with milk and ale heated together in a saucepan, it was an attainable treat for a poor family.

In the making of this drink, deliberate steps were taken to cause the milk to curdle by adding the slightly acid ale. Acid-producing bacteria are already present in milk itself, and once gentle heat is applied their action causes milk to separate into its solid part, the curd, and a watery liquid, the whey. Whey tastes of nothing in particular, but it has some nourishment, and it certainly had its uses as a refreshing drink after a long, hot working day. Curds, or ‘cruddes’, were eaten on their own, and formed a staple, valuable part of a poor family’s diet. Their taste may be most kindly described as elusive but, as in the case of porridge, this very neutrality had its virtues, for any touch of added flavour, whether salt, herb, or honey, made a noticeable improvement.

Curds could also be made into a simple cheese, by being put into a cloth bag, hung up, and left until any remaining liquid had drained away. An alternative method was to set the curds in a rush basket with a weight on top, to press out those last drops of whey. Hard cheeses had a longer shelf life, but the making of them required more time, attention, and expertise, so it is not likely that this would have been attempted by the average small household. Instead, there was always the chance to buy one at a local market, from a specialist cheese maker.

The cream which rises to the top of milk could be skimmed off and relished on its own as an instant treat. If prudence prevailed, it was made to last much longer by being turned into butter. Poured into a churn, the cream was worked with a paddle until the butter pat was formed. One useful by-product of the process was yet another refreshing drink, buttermilk, the thin, skimmed, and faintly acid liquid left behind after the butter had been lifted out

Effort and experience went into the production of butter but, once made, it seems to have been enjoyed for its own sake, not as an ingredient to be folded into some more elaborate dish. At the very end of the fifteenth century, a Venetian, who of course came from an oil-using region, noted down a little street scene which had caught his eye while he was in London: ‘The kites are so tame, that they often take out of the hands of little children the bread smeared with butter in the Flemish fashion given to them by their mothers.’48 Butter also had its uses as a cooking fat. A little goes a long way to enhance flavour and refine texture. Even dried peas and beans, as we have seen, could be noticeably improved once they had been stirred once or twice in the butter sizzling in a hot pan.

Cheese, like butter, had the great advantage that it needed no embellishment. However, though cheese eaten cold is satisfying enough, once heated it turns into a glorious indulgence. Slices of cheese spread on bread will melt when a red-hot shovel is held above them, and be metamorphosed in a moment into that irresistible confection, toasted cheese. According to a joke which was making the rounds in the early sixteenth century, this little luxury proved the downfall of a pack of troublesome Welshmen who had managed somehow to slip into Heaven, and were making life there intolerable for everyone else with their endless quarrels and arguments. God’s patience snapped, and he ordered St Peter to take action: ‘God sayd to Saynt Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde fayne have them out of heven. … Wherfore Saynt Peter went out of heven gatys, and cryed with a loude voice, “Cause bobe” , that is as moche to say as “rostyd chese” , whiche thynge the Welchmen heryng ran out of hevyn a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them al out, he sodenly went in to heven and lokkyd the dore, and so sparryd all the Welchmen out.’49

Eggs

The wonderfully versatile egg must have been a godsend to the cook of modest means, because it was cheap, plentiful, and readily available. Hens were easy to keep in a small garden space, and easy to feed with household scraps. Eggs, in their turn, were easy to like, and delightfully easy to cook.

All the basic ways to treat them which are familiar to us today were known and used in the Middle Ages. Then as now, when a boiled egg was asked for, or the cry went up: ‘Serve me with pochyd eggys’,50 the only equipment needed by the cook was a pan of hot water and a spoon. An Italian handbook of the late fourteenth century outlines the methods: ‘An excellent way to cook (eggs) in their shells is to boil them until just set … The best way to cook them without their shells is to break them into boiling water.’51 For those with more robust digestions, eggs were fried in butter or lard or, like so many other little titbits, buried in the embers of the fire and so roasted in their shells.
With scarcely more effort, they could be beaten up, poured into a hot pan, and made into an omelette, flavoured at times with a few herbs. Eggs being at their most abundant and herbs at their most tender in the springtime, the two were combined together in various ways to celebrate the season.

One omelette associated with Easter took its name, ‘a tansy’, from that particular plant, but in fact the herb of choice must always have been the one which happened to be at hand. Sorrel and mint were two favourites because, like tansy, they had a pungency which added a special zest to the dish. Another very old, and very simple, recipe is for a herb ‘pudding’. In this, an assortment of herbs and such spring greens as young dandelion leaves, were blanched in hot water, drained, and heated up again with eggs and butter in a saucepan. Once this mixture could be stirred together into a small, soft ball, it was spooned out onto a plate.52

Eggs themselves are packed with nourishment, and they can also give body to any liquid in which they are cooked. These characteristics made them welcome ingredients in yet another kind of warm, comforting drink, the caudle. Like the posset, a caudle could be as luxurious as resources would allow, but in essence it consisted of ale and egg yolks heated together, with some oatmeal or breadcrumbs thrown in at times for extra measure, to thicken the brew still more.53

Whether or not a cottage housewife ever made a pancake is not certain, but it does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that she sometimes did so. The necessary ingredients, an egg, some flour, and milk or water for the batter, and some fat in which to cook it were well within her means, and so was the equipment, a frying pan. Pancakes were universal favourites throughout the period, whose records hum with murmurs of contentment, or frustrated cries for more; ‘Y have noght ete half my fylle of pankakys.’54 The town of Olney in Buckinghamshire still stages on Shrove Tuesday a pancake race in which housewives wearing aprons and wielding frying pans toss their pancakes and then run for glory to the finishing line. It is said that the race was first staged in 1445 and, although the claim seems to rest more firmly on local pride than on positive proof, it has not yet been refuted.55 For the moment, then, it is permissible to indulge the pleasant fancy that today’s contest is witness to an age-old passion for pancakes.

Meat and Poultry

Meat posed problems with no easy solutions for the straitened household. It was much enjoyed, both for its taste and for the status which its presence on the table conferred, but it was hard to get hold of in any satisfying quantity.

The farm animals in any village were used for hauling and ploughing, or valued for such by-products as wool, hide, or milk. By the time they were killed, their meat was sinewy and tough, best suited for long, slow stewing. Not very much of this was tasted by peasant owners in any case. As will be discussed in the next chapter, the most sensible course for them was to sell the animal to a local butcher, in exchange for a cash payment which, in turn, could be spent on more pressing needs. Game was officially off-limits, because hunting was a privilege reserved for the powerful.

More promising sources of meat were the poultry which many families managed to keep in their own gardens, and feed on kitchen scraps. Even here, because the chief function of cocks and hens was first to create and then to produce eggs, a bird was usually of a ripe old age by the time it was deemed to be ready for the table. Once again, the most satisfactory way to deal with such vintage flesh was to stew it in some way. A clue to the basic method is embedded in the brisk command: ‘Stue me this cocke in an erthen potte.’56 The bird was put into a tall, earthenware pot and then, once a cover had been tied over the opening, the whole container was made to stand or hang in the cauldron, and left there to simmer in the surrounding liquid until the contents were cooked.57 On those occasions when the age of the bird encouraged more optimism, the spit-roasting technique could be tried. This required a more extravagant use of fuel, because a higher cooking temperature had to be maintained, but the rare treat was relished, sometimes with excessive gusto. In a story told by a thirteenth-century preacher, a husband roasted a bird, and licked his lips at the thought of a companionable feast with his wife. Unfortunately, the first mouthful was so succulent that any idea of equal shares was forgotten, and the wife wolfed down every morsel. At this, the much-tried husband exploded: ‘There is nothing left but the spit. It is only fair that you should have a taste of that!’‘And with that spit he beat her handsomely.’58

By far the most promising source of meat was the pig. Like poultry, he was easy to provide for and, on a diet of household scraps, he was wonderfully easy to raise. Every part of the body, from the head to the trotters, could be eaten, and every part was delicious. The meat kept well, because it could be smoked and cured. In many a calendar picture for January or February, a haunch of bacon or a string of sausages can be seen, hung up above the fire.59 Even so, the greatest economy had to be used as this precious resource was consumed, in order to make a little go a very long way. Only the wealthiest peasant had the comfort of being able to look round his home and find it ‘full of bacon flitches’;60 most families counted themselves lucky to have one. Pork was a particularly suitable meat for a poor family, because there was a very simple, very quick, and very popular way to cook it. A slice or two of bacon, sizzled in a hot pan, either on their own or with an egg thrown in for good measure, made an exceedingly satisfying and tasty meal. Langland alerts the reader to Piers Plowman’s desperate state during the leanest, hungriest stretch of the year, when he makes Piers say that he does not have the ingredients for this basic dish:

Y have no salt bacoun
Ne no cokeney [eggs] ... colloppes [fried egg and bacon] to make.61

Even when a cook was lucky enough to have meat of any kind in store, prudence and skill were needed to ensure that the family supply would last for as long as possible. Meat, after all, was not only for eating. There were many other important uses for the by-­products of a carcass, and these had to be budgeted for in the housekeeper’s calculations. To take just two examples: mutton fat, or tallow, was needed to make candles, and all kinds of fat were used as ointments for people and animals, and embrocations for equipment, as well as for cooking. In the sixteenth century, Thomas Tusser advised housewives to hoard every drop of fat and put it to good use:

Save droppings and skimmings, how ever ye doo,
for medcine [sic] for cattell, for cart and for shoo.
(Save your dripping for cattle medicine, and for rubbing on to cart wheels and shoe leather.)62

Economy was the watchword, and it must have been a rare occasion when meat was gorged on with reckless abandon. Instead, small portions had to be cooked with care and eaten with relish. Like bacon, any meat could be sliced and fried in a pan but, while bacon cooks to perfection in its own fat, other leaner cuts need a little extra lubrication. A sentence devised for schoolboys to translate into Latin points out what goes wrong when shortcuts are taken: ‘The coloppis [slices] cleved [stuck] faste to the fryenge pannys bottom for lacke of oyle droppynge [dripping] or butter.’63

Another way to cook a small piece of meat was to put it into one of those improvised ovens, set in the heart of the fire’s embers, but with this approach there was the danger that, if the meat was lean to begin with, it might become unappetisingly dry. Certainly in yet another schoolboy exercise the method finds no favour, and the grilling of steaks on a gridiron is called for instead: ‘I love no meate dressed [prepared] under a bake pan. Caste stekis [steaks] upon the grydyron.’64

Even when meat is in short supply, it is possible to enjoy a taste of it without ever cutting a slice from a joint. Necessity is a stern but stimulating taskmaster, and the inventive housewife made sure that every part of a carcass served some profitable end. Tripe, to take one example, is scraped from the stomach walls of an animal, usually a cow or calf. Little prestige attached to it. and it was considered to be a food for labourers. As a fourteenth-century Italian treatise put it: ‘Tripe is a cold-weather food, especially for those who do hard physical work.’65 In the same century Taillevent, the great chef at the royal court of France, refused to note down any advice on ways to handle it, with the dismissive comment: ‘As for tripe, which I have not put in my recipe book, it is common knowledge how it is to be prepared.’66 Tripe needed to be softened by long, slow simmering, but if this were done properly, with the tripe cooked in broth and flavoured with onions and herbs, it could be made into a very acceptable dish. In one of those schoolboy translation exercises, it even becomes a favourite: ‘I had lever [rather] have a fatte trype than a capon.’67

Effort, economy, and inspiration went in to the making of Brawn, a dish which used all the parts of the pig left over after the body had been cut into joints: head, tail, feet, ears, tongue, bones, and ­gristle.68 These were simmered together until the flesh was so soft that it could be lifted from the bones. This meat was then cut into neat, small pieces, seasoned well, and laid in a large pan while the stock in which it had cooked was boiled down and reduced. This concentrated broth was then poured into the pan and left there to set into a jelly as it grew cold. Brawn kept well, was very nourishing, and could be eaten, slice by slice, over a long period.

The handsome, gleaming Black Pudding, which is still popular today in the north of England, is a very old invention, a mixture of pig’s blood, liver, oatmeal, and flavourings, all baked together in a pan.69 In those medieval calendar scenes for December which show the killing of a pig for the winter meat supply, the collecting of the precious blood in a basin is often featured prominently.70 For the ever-popular sausage, chopped pork and other ingredients were stuffed into casings fashioned from the pig’s intestines. Brawn, puddings and sausages could all be made at home, but skill, time, and equipment were needed to do so, and it seems most likely that these items were supplied by specialists. Either the householder provided the materials and then paid a fee for the making of the final product or, for a somewhat larger sum, the finished article could be bought outright in the market.

Any kind of meat bone will release its flavour and its goodness when set to simmer slowly in some liquid. Because of this, bones were prized for the cooking pot. As one line in a magic charm from Scotland’s West Highlands declares: ‘The due of a kettle (cauldron) is bones.’71 The potency of those words in a spell may be a mystery, but there is no mystery at all about the zest which a bone will bring to any soup or stew. In the same way, a marrowbone cooked with cabbage leaves in a pan of broth lent a touch of meat’s richness to a wearisomely familiar vegetable.72

Even the most careful and ingenious manager can make a small amount of anything go only so far, and hungry minds were always busy, on the alert for ways to supplement the meat ration. Hunting was officially reserved for the king and the landowners. Poaching was forbidden, and poaching was punished, but poaching ­undeniably went on. The principal reason for such risk-taking was the chance to stock the family larder. The two partridges which a French peasant just happened to find in a hedge and bring home, in a thirteenth-century story, Le dit des perdrix, made a significant contribution to the dinner table, a welcome change from the standard bowl of porridge.73

The secondary reasons were the thrill of poaching itself, the pride in the skill and nerve which it required, and the pleasure in beating the system. Although the penalties for poaching were severe, in the case of minor offences there was always the faint hope of softening a magistrate’s stony heart with a tearful tale of extenuating circumstances. An excuse which must have been dusted off and polished again and again in the course of history can be found in a poem, The Fox and the Goose, in which the Fox explains why forces beyond his control drove him to run off with the Goose:

I have a wyf, and sche lyeth seke [sick];
many smale whelppis [cubs] sche have to eke [as well].74

Another way to supplement the meat ration was entirely legal, and needed only ingenuity and patience for success. Grain crops were precious, and the birds which flocked in to the fields to feast on the seeds were not welcomed with indulgent smiles. Instead, inviting handfuls of grain were scattered in one spot, and covered with a fine net. When the birds plucked up courage and ventured inside, the string was pulled and they were trapped under the mesh. A horrid little boy, in John Heywood’s Play of the Wether (1523), enjoys the sport with immoderate glee:

All my pleasure is in catchynge the byrdes …
O … to here [hear] the byrdes flycker theyr winges …
I say yt passeth all thynges.75

The main aim of trapping was to protect the future harvest, but it is hard to believe that all those tiny corpses were not put to some other use as well. In Robert Henryson’s fable, The Preiching of the Swallow, the man who has set such a trap brutally slaughters the prisoners. but some ‘he stoppit (stuffed) in his bag’.76 The treasure trove may have been popped into a stewpot, or threaded on a skewer and grilled, as small birds are still cooked today in parts of Italy. They cannot have added much bulk to the day’s dinner, but every little helps when hunger calls.

Fish

Worries about the meat supply gnawed at the back of every mind. Fish posed no such problems and stirred no such passions. Except in places where draconian local regulations restricted access, fresh fish was available to those who lived near inland waters or beside the sea. Even for those less conveniently situated, it was possible to buy in local markets fish which had been salted, smoked, or dried.77 Officially sanctioned eel-traps were set in the stream beside many a water-mill. The catch was the property of the mill owner or of the miller himself, to be sold or disposed of as he thought fit, to favoured customers. Rival, unauthorized traps were tucked away in less conspicuous stretches of water by peasants planning a contraband contribution to the larder.78

This kind of poaching was discouraged, but it was never stamped out. Moreover, the savage laws against the poaching of game animals did not apply to fish. It may have been unwise to filch a carp from an abbot’s private pond, but to be caught in the act was not a disaster. One culprit who had been seized as he dipped his hands into just such a pond and pulled out a tench, obviously knew The Fox and the Goose by heart, because he chose the Fox’s excuse in his appeal to the court: ‘My dear wife had lain abed a right full month … and for the great desire she had to eat tench I went to the bank of the pond to take just one tench, and never other fish from the pond did I take.’79 The poaching of fish was, in any case, more of a sport than an act of desperation, because there were many stretches of water where everyone, even peasants, had the right to try their luck.

Fish was not hungered for as meat was, and its presence on the table conferred no special status. Indeed, there must have been something faintly oppressive about the very idea of fish, because fish and fast were so closely associated. On certain days of every week in the year, and in particular throughout the long seasons of Lent and Advent, meat was forbidden, and fish was the approved, official substitute. A fine salmon on the table might do much to raise morale and cushion the rigours of the fast, but such a treat could never be taken for granted, and was in any case far more likely to brighten the diet of the prosperous than of the poor. In an exultant Christmas carol, the hated figure of Advent is driven from the hall, pelted with reproaches for all the mean, miserable fish dinners he had forced his unwilling followers to swallow:

Thou hast us fedde with plaices thynne,
Nothing on them but bone and skynne.80

There were so many compulsory fast dates that the thought of having to face yet another fish on one of the red-letter meat days was more than a long-suffering schoolboy could bear: ‘Y had as lefe be servyd with a cawlestokke as with heryng yn flesche day’( ‘I would as soon be served with a cabbage stalk as with a herring on a meat day’).81 Oddly enough the poor, just for once, had some advantage in this matter of fasting. The burden weighed less heavily on them than on the prosperous, because they had considerably less to lose. It is not so very hard to abstain from meat on a fast day when very little meat is to be hoped for even on high days and holidays. A poor man’s feast certainly looks like a fast to a rich friend in Robert Henryson’s fable, The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous. There, a poor, humble country mouse invites her fashionable, big-city sister to a meal, and brings out the best she has to offer from her cupboard shelves. The plump, sleek little town mouse takes one look at the ‘wydderit [withered] peas and nuttis’spread before her, shudders, and exclaims: ‘My Gude Friday is better nor your Pace’( ‘My Good Friday is better than your Easter’).82 The poor had no absolute need to buy in stocks of fish for Lent, because their normal, daily vegetarian diet fell within the approved guidelines. It is true that the Church also discouraged the use of dairy foods during the season, but this rule was never so strictly enforced as was the one about meat, and many exceptions were explicitly allowed, or tacitly condoned.

Skilled, imaginative cooks, working in a great household, would transform a penitential dinner into a permissible feast of exquisitely prepared and presented fish dishes. In a very modest household, no such refinements could be attempted. Fresh fish might be simmered in a soup or stew, baked in the embers, fried in a pan, or grilled on a gridiron. In the Holkham Bible (c. 1330), one illustration shows a ­disciple on his knees beside a gridiron, blowing on the flames to make the fire hotter as the fish is cooked. This particular gridiron has a ring attached to one side, a clue that it could be hung up out of the way when not in use.83 Eels, which were much enjoyed for their rich, fatty flesh, were sometimes cut into short lengths and fried, and sometimes wound around a spit and roasted.84 Delightful dishes can be made from small fishes, and one recipe which Izaac Walton recorded in the seventeenth century may well have had roots reaching back into the medieval period. In Chapter 18 of The Compleat Angler (1653), Walton writes with approval of the minnow, which ‘makes excellent sport for young anglers, or boys, or women that love that recreation’. After a pleasant hour or two of angling, these housewives take home their catch and ‘make of them excellent minnow-tansies; for being washed well in salt, and their heads and tails cut off, and their guts taken out … they prove excellent for that use; that is, being fried with yolks of eggs, the flowers of cowslips, and of primroses, and a little tansy; thus used they make a dainty dish of meat’.85

Imaginative treatments like this can yield delectable results but they do take time. What a comfort it must have been for the hard-pressed housewife to know that for many kinds of fish no cooking whatsoever was required. Shellfish could be eaten raw; smoked, dried herrings were already prepared and ready for the table when they were purchased. Those who lived within easy reach of the shore gathered shellfish for themselves.86 The less well-situated bought them at a market stall. A tiny saucerful of cockles or mussels was a Lenten treat for the poor:
a ferthing-worth of moskeles

Were a feste with suche folk, or so fele cockes87
(a farthing’s worth of mussels, or as many cockles, would be a feast for such people)

Smoked or dried herrings were easy to store, and easy to eat. The raging thirst their saltiness provoked was also easy enough to quench, with an extra-large gulp of ale. As one fifteenth-century preacher noticed, his flock drank even more in Lent than throughout the rest of the year. When questioned about this, there was always the same disarming, irrefutable excuse: ‘Fish must swim!’88 Shellfish and smoked fish, indeed, were staples in Lent, so much so that when, for a procession in Norwich which took place in January 1448, the figure of Lent was impersonated, the man playing the part appeared: ‘cladde in white with redde herrings skinnes and his hors trapped with oyster shelles after him in token that sadnesse and abstinence of merth shulde followe and an holy tyme.’89

NOTES

1. G. L. Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 107, no. 30.


2. Eileen Power, Medieval Women, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 72.

3. Salu, The Ancrene Riwle, Part viii, ‘External Rule’, p. 185.

4. Charlotte D’Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, eds., The South English Legendary, vol. 1, EETS, os 235 (London, 1956), p. 39, ll. 65–6.

5. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 154.

6. Celia Sisam, ed., The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 560, no. 307.

7. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, trans. The Mabinogion (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1949), pp. 137–8.

8. Walter W. Skeat, ed., The Lay of Havelok the Dane (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), ll. 642–5.

9. Bridget Ann Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1999), chap. 2, pp. 29–49, figs. 2-5, 2-8, and colour plate 6-6.

10. Brian Woledge, ed., The Penguin Book of French Verse, vol. 1: To the Fifteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), pp. 216–17.

11. G. Paris and E. Langlois, eds., Chrestomathie du Moyen ge (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1897), pp. 344–5.

12. Sisam, The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse, p. 159, no. 63, ll. 102–4.

13. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, pp. 155, 157.

14. D’Arcy Power, ed., John Arderne: Treatises of Fistula in Ano, EETS, os 139 (London, 1910), p. 72.

15. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), vol. 1, p. 70, and text illustration no. 30; vol. 2, figs. 132, 157, 180, 181.

16. H. Deimling, ed., The Chester Plays, EETS, es 62 (London, 1892), The Shepherds’Play, ll. 584–5.

17. Erik Dal and Paul Skårup, The Ages of Man and the Months of the Year (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1980), fig. 56.

18. Orme, Medieval Children, p. 72.

19. Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 27.

20. Orme, Medieval Children, p. 176.

21. Lydgate, Testament, l. 638.

22. Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), no. 149, p. 236.

23. Mary F. Williamson, ‘Seasonings and Flavourings in Canada before 1840’, Petits Propos Culinaires, 75 (March 2004), pp. 16–26 (reference on p. 22).

24. Woledge, The Penguin Book of French Verse, vol. 1, p. 328.

25. Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum sanitatis (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976), colour plate v.

26. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 156.

27. Geoffrey Grigson, intro., Thomas Tusser: Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 95.

28. Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, p. 71.

29. Dorothy Hartley, Food in England (London: Macdonald & Co., 1954), p. 389.

30. Judith Spencer, trans., The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1984), p. 74.

31. W. Nelson, ed., A Fifteenth Century School Book (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 74, no. 307.

32. Chaucer, Miller’s Tale, ll. 3261–2

33. C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 130.

34. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 166.

35. C. H. Talbot, ed. and trans., The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth Century Recluse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 191.

36. Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 157.

37. Sir William Ashley, The Bread of Our Forefathers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 119.

38. Judith M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 56–7.

39. Nicholas Orme, ‘Grammatical Miscellany of 1427–1465 from Bristol and Wiltshire’, Traditio, 38 (1982), p. 323, no. 94.

40. Geoffrey Brereton, ed. and trans., Froissart Chronicles’ (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 46–7.

41. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, trans., Alfred the Great, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983, Appendix I, pp. 200–1.

42. T. Erbe, ed., Mirk’s Festial, EETS, es 96 (London, 1905), p. 254.

43. Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year, chap. 1, pp. 16–17 and fig. 1–8.

44. Jonathan Bate, John Clare (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), p. 63.

45. Langland, Piers Plowman, C Passus viii, ll. 304–5.

46. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 162.

47. Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), s.v. ‘posset’.

48. C. A. Sneyd, trans., A Relation of the Island of England about the Year 1500, Camden Society, os 37 (London, 1847), p. 11.

49. F. J. Furnivall, ed., Andrew Boorde: Dyetary of Helth, EETS, es 10 (London, 1870), p. 330, note.

50. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 153.

51. Spencer, The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, p. 114.

52. Florence White, Good Things in England (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932), pp. 191–2.

53. Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, s.v. ‘caudle’.

54. Orme, ‘Grammatical Miscellany of 1427–1465 from Bristol and Wiltshire’, p. 326, no. 112.

55. Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, s.v. ‘pancake’.

56. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 155.

57. Hartley, Food in England, pp. 36–7.

58. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, p. 164.

59. Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year, chap. 2, p. 38, figs. 2-5.

60. Sisam, The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse, p. 514, no. 243, l. 23.

61. Langland, Piers Plowman, C Passus viii, ll. 307–8.

62. Grigson, Thomas Tusser: Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, p. 172.

63. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 162.

64. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 162.

65. Spencer, The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, p. 105.

66. Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, p. 71.

67. James, Vulgaria, by William Horman, p. 166.

68. Hartley, Food in England, pp. 112–13.

69. Hartley, Food in England, pp. 111–12.

70. Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year, chap. 7, pp. 171–2 and fig. 7-2.

71. Katharine M. Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 226.

72. Constance B. Hieatt, ed., An Ordinance of Pottage (London: Prospect Books, 1988), p. 37, no. 6.

73. Lynette R. Muir, Literature and Society in Medieval France: The Mirror and the Image, 1100–1500 (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 88.

74. Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 43, no. 48, ll. 21–2.

75. Peter Happé, ed., Tudor Interludes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), John Heywood, The Play of the Wether, pp. 172–3. ll. 1010–20.

76. Charles Elliott, ed., Robert Henryson Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), The Preiching of the Swallow, p. 56, l. 1880.

77. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, p. 157.

78. H. S. Bennett, Life on the English Manor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960; 1st ed. 1937), p. 95.

79. Hassall, How They Lived, p. 140.

80. Richard Leighton Greene, ed. A Selection of English Carols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 53, no. 1, ll. 13–14.

81. Orme, ‘Grammatical Miscellany of 1427–1465 from Bristol and Wiltshire’, p. 316, no. 23.

82. Elliott, Robert Henryson Poems, The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous, p. 7, l. 222, p. 8, l. 248.

83. Hassall, How They Lived, p. 137.

84. Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, p. 50.

85. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653) (London: Folio Press/J. M. Dent, 1973), chap. 18, p. 173.

86. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound, p. 148.

87. Langland, Piers Plowman, C Passus ix, ll. 94–5.

88. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, p. 435.

89. Greene, A Selection of English Carols, p. 186, note.








By Bridget Ann Henisch in "The Medieval Cook", The Boydell Press, Woodbridge,UK, 2013, excerpts chapter 2. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Character Overview

According to the monotheistic religions (those religions that believe there is only one god) of the Middle East, the first man and woman that God created were the couple named Adam and Eve. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, contains two accounts of how Adam and Eve came into being. The first version, which most likely dates from 600 to 400 BCE, says that God created all living things, including a man and woman “in his own image,” on the sixth day of creation. According to the second version, which is longer and probably several centuries older, God made Adam from dust and breathed “the breath of life” into his nostrils. God then created animals so that Adam would not be alone. However, God saw that Adam needed a human partner, so he put Adam to sleep, took a part of him (traditionally, his rib), and created Eve from it.

The Garden of Eden and the Fall 

Adam and Eve lived in a garden called Eden, from which four rivers flowed out into the world. Like other earthly paradises in mythologies of the dry Near East, Eden was a well-watered, fertile place that satisfied Adam and Eve’s every need. God imposed only one rule about life in this paradise: the two were told to never eat the fruit of the “tree of knowledge.”

A clever serpent in the garden persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, then Adam tasted the fruit as well. Immediately upon tasting the fruit, Adam and Eve lost their innocence. Ashamed of their nakedness, they covered themselves with leaves. God saw that they had disobeyed him and drove them from the Garden of Eden.

When Adam and Eve left Eden, human history began. The two worked long and hard to survive. Eventually, they grew old and died, but not before they had children. The first two were their sons, Cain and Abel. According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, all the people of the world are descended from the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve in Context

The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions each have their own versions of the story of Adam and Eve as well as their own ideas about what it means. In Christian thought and belief, three important parts of the story are the serpent, the Fall, and the idea of original sin.

Christians believe the serpent was identified with Satan, a rebellious fallen angel and the force behind all evil. In the Christian tradition, it was Satan’s pride in thinking he could be the equal of God that caused him to be cast out of heaven. He then persuades Eve to commit the very same sin by telling her that she can be like God if she eats of the fruit of the tree of life. Pride, therefore, is a serious sin in the Christian tradition, for no one should think of himself as the equal of God.

The Fall refers to the expulsion, or the forcing out, of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden into the world of ordinary, imperfect human life, sometimes called the fallen world. Some people interpret the Fall to mean that in the original state of existence before the beginning of history, people lived in harmony with each other, God, and the natural world. Closely related to the idea of the Fall is the idea of original sin. This idea came from the writings of the Christian leader St. Paul, whose work appears in the New Testament of the Bible, and of later Christian thinkers whom he influenced. According to this idea, the sin that Adam and Eve committed when they ate the forbidden fruit marks every human being descended from them. As a result, no one is born completely innocent and free from sin.

Eve being made from Adam’s rib is sometimes used as a way to explain why men are more important than women. In this view, the original woman was just a rib made as a companion to Adam, and therefore not of equal status. However, this idea seems to have been based on a wrong translation of the Hebrew text. The word translated as “rib” is actually the Hebrew word for “side.” Some biblical scholars believe that Adam was androgynous—both male and female—and the story of the creation of Eve is about the separation of the female “side” of the first human from the male side. Ribs do not play any part in the story at all. The fact that Eve brings about Adam’s downfall by getting him to share the fruit has supported negative attitudes towards women as tempters of men.

Key Themes and Symbols

Adam and Eve are typically shown as naked in the Garden of Eden, showing their innocence and purity while living in a world without sin. Once they introduce sin into the world, however, they feel they should clothe themselves with animal skins, indicating that they feel ashamed. This shame is made even worse when God orders them to leave Eden. The importance of obedience to God is an important theme. The perfect life that Adam and Eve led in Eden is ruined by the fact that they did not listen to God when he told them not to eat the fruit of the tree of life. Even worse, their sin dooms the rest of mankind to live in an imperfect world. In both literature and art, the apple is almost always portrayed as the fruit Eve took from the tree of life, even though the Bible did not name a specific fruit.

A Sumerian Version of Adam’s Rib

The story of God making Eve out of Adam’s rib may have come from an ancient legend from Mesopotamia, a region located in southwest Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern-day Iraq. After the Sumerian god Enki ate eight plants belonging to his wife, the goddess Ninhursag, she cursed him so that eight parts of his body became diseased. When he was nearly dead, the gods persuaded Ninhursag to help him, and she created eight healing goddesses. The goddess who cured Enki’s ribwas Ninti, whose name means “lady of the rib” and “lady of life.” In Hebrew mythology, Adam names the woman created from his rib Hawwah, which means “life.” The Sumerian story probably influenced the Hebrew one, which became the basis for the version of Eve’s creation found in the Bible.

Adam and Eve in Art, Literature, and Everyday Life

During the many centuries when European art dealt mostly with religious ideas, the story of Adam and Eve was a favorite subject. Among the famous images of the couple are the paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome by Italian artist Michelangelo. Completed in the early 1500s, they show the creation of Adam and Eve and the Fall. Another wellknown painting of Adam and Eve comes from German artist Albrecht Dürer, which was done in 1504. In general, artists of all periods have used fruit and snakes as symbols of temptation and evil.

Aside from the story of creation and the Fall in the book of Genesis, the Bible contains little information about Adam and Eve. Other writings, however, have added details to their story. One such work, the Life of Adam and Eve, was presented in the form of a biography. Written sometime between 20 BCE and 70 CE, it provides an interesting account of the Fall and the sufferings of Adam and Eve after leaving Eden. The most famous literary treatment of the story of Adam and Eve is the booklength poem Paradise Lost, written by English poet John Milton and published in 1667.

Further modern interpretations of the Adam and Eve myth have also been created, which build upon popular knowledge of the original story. Eve’s Diary by Mark Twain, written in 1906, is a humorous retelling of the familiar events. Since the 1940s, numerous science fiction stories offered a new twist on the traditional tale, usually involving some type of disaster that wipes out the human race and a pair of survivors (sometimes actually named Adam and Eve) upon whom the fate of the species depends.

The story of Adam and Eve is the source of the common phrase “forbidden fruit”—referring to something that is tempting because one is not supposed to have it. Although there was plenty of other fruit she could have eaten in the garden, Eve chose the fruit from the tree of life specifically because God told her she could not have it.

In "UXL Encyclopedia of World Mythology", Vol. 1, Product manager: Meggin Condino, Project editor: Rebecca Parks Editorial: Jennifer Stock and Kim Hunt, 2009, Gale, Cengage Learning, USA, excerpts p. 4-8. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

1.The Myth of Magellan 

After learning about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, we were taught that Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world in a single trip (or circumnavigated the globe, if you will). Well, he didn’t. Magellan, a Portuguese captain in the service of Spain, set out on August 10, 1519, from Seville with five ships and a crew of 250 men. Things didn’t go so well for old Magellan, though. His three-year journey was plagued with terrible weather, maps that weren’t up to date, starvation, and a violent mutiny. The truth of the matter is only one of Magellan’s ships, the Victoria, arrived back at Seville, with only eighteen of its fifty crewmembers alive. One other person who didn’t make it was Ferdinand Magellan himself. When his ship landed on Mactan Island in the Philippines, he was met with a less than friendly reception party. Magellan died, face down on the beach, looking like a pincushion from the numerous spears sticking out of his body.


2. The Lightbulb Was Not Edison’s Bright Idea 

Thomas Alva Edison is credited with hundreds of inventions; not the least of these is the electric lightbulb. Ask any schoolchild who invented the lightbulb, and he or she will, without hesitation, name Thomas Edison. But the truly illuminated know the first lightbulb was actually invented in 1802 (nearly seventy-seven years before Edison’s version) by an English chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, who made an arc lamp glow by passing electricity through a platinum wire. Davy never pursued any practical use for his invention, and the world stayed dependent on candlepower and oil lamps for several more decades. In 1845, an American, J. W. Starr, developed a lightbulb using a vacuum bulb and a carbon filament—a design very similar to Edison’s. When Starr died at the age of twenty-five, an Englishman, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, continued to work on his design. The main problem with this and previous designs was that the filament would burn only for a short while, rendering the lightbulb impractical for any real use. In 1877, Edison went about searching for a filament that could stay illuminated for a long period of time. After trying nearly 8,000 possibilities, he found one—a carbonized cotton thread. So Edison discovered a way to make a lightbulb work for an extended period of time? Not really. Remember Joseph Swan? Well, he discovered using a carbonized piece of cotton thread would do the trick, too—ten months earlier. In fact, he filed a patent infringement suit against Edison and won. So Edison, living up to his credo that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” became inspired, made Swan a partner in his lighting company, and later bought him out.

3. The Great Wall of China Is Out of Sight 

Part of the mystique surrounding this amazing engineering marvel is that the 1,864-mile-long wall of China can be seen from space. But when one actually stops to think about this claim, it simply crumbles. Why would the Great Wall be seen from space when Beijing’s new Golden Resources Shopping Mall, the world’s largest at six million square feet, can’t be? The foundation for the wall story started in 1938, when Richard Halliburton, in his book Second Book of Marvels, announced that the Great Wall is the only man-made object visible from the moon. I suppose a sequel to this book would include how Halliburton could know that, when it would be another thirty-one years before Apollo 11 actually landed on the moon. And according to the astronauts, not even the earth’s largest mountain ranges are visible from the moon.

4. One Half of All Marriages End in Divorce 

This statistic is the ace in the hole when it comes to showing the moral decay of our times—politicians use it, preachers use it, marriage counselors use it—but statistically speaking, it’s useless. This figure is derived by taking the number of marriages per year and comparing it to the number of divorces per year. And since there are nearly half as many divorces as marriages, people conclude that half of all marriages end in divorce. This statistic would be correct if everyone married only once and divorced only once, but thanks to the Larry Kings and Elizabeth Taylors of the world, things just don’t add up. The actual number of marriages that end in divorce is closer to 1 in 4, or 25 percent.

5. The Truth of William Tell Told 

It’s a disturbing story, to say the least. An oppressive bailiff named Hermann Gessler was sent from Austria to Switzerland in the early 1300s to maintain control of the people. He placed his hat on a pole and ordered the citizens to salute or bow to the hat to show their allegiance. William Tell, along with his son Walter, walked by the hat without honoring it and were accosted by guards. Gessler forced William Tell to shoot an apple off his son’s head in exchange for his freedom. Tell put one arrow in his crossbow and another in his quiver and easily shot the apple from his son’s head. When asked what the other arrow was for, Tell told Gessler if he had hurt his son during the stunt, he would have used the extra arrow to kill Gessler. Needless to say, Gessler got the point. He was infuriated by Tell’s arrogance and ordered him imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Tell’s legendary prowess with the crossbow and unfailing love of freedom made him the hero of Swiss independence. The story would be even more disturbing if it were true, but it isn’t. William Tell didn’t have a son, didn’t own a crossbow, and never even saw an apple. Why? Because William Tell never existed. The great fourteenth-century hero of Swiss independence was born in the imagination of an anonymous fifteenth-century storyteller. I quiver when I think how many people have been shafted into believing this story is real.

6. Oh, Hell, Caesar 

Claudius I (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 10 B.C.-A.D. 54) was poisoned by his wife, Agrippina, with a lethal dose of mushrooms. As he lay writhing on the floor, a doctor was summoned to his aid. The doctor thought if he could make the emperor throw up the noxious mushrooms, that might save Claudius’s life. The doctor took a feather and began tickling the emperor’s throat, hoping to stimulate the gag reflex. The responsibility of saving the ruler of the Roman Empire might have been distracting to the doctor, who lost his grip on the feather. Claudius inhaled the feather into his throat and chocked to death on it.

7. A Real Shoe-In

In the 1600s, Louis XIV of France (born 1638, ruled 1643-1715) was at the height of his power, but unfortunately, that was the only height he could claim. You see, the Sun King, one of the most beloved monarchs in history, was—how should I say it?—short. Since the cards were stacked against him in the height department, he decided to use stacks to even things out—he added a few inches to the heels of his boots. The elevator shoes elevated his stature, but he got knocked down a few pegs when he noticed he’d started a fad in his Royal Court—soon everyone was wearing elevator shoes. Not to be overshadowed, Louis added even more height to his heels, and the Royal Court followed suit. Soon people were tottering around in footwear resembling the Frankenstein monster at a disco. Eventually, men’s heel size came back to earth, but women stayed perched on high. In the 1800s, American women began emulating the exotic styles of Paris, and soon “French heels” became part of the American fashion scene and were referred to simply as “high heels.”

8. Bridge over Troubled Water 

In 1981, the Intermarine Company of Ameglia, Italy, celebrated after they were awarded a huge contract from the government of Malaysia to build an enormous minesweeper and three military launchers. It was a coup for the company, which specialized in building smaller vessels. “This contract,” they thought, “will make us famous.”They were right, but for the wrong reasons. Everything went well for Intermarine, and in fact, they finished the project on time and on budget. During the entire two years it took Intermarine to fulfill their contract, they overlooked one small thing—their shipyard was a mile from the Mediterranean on the Magra River. The river was deep and wide enough to accommodate the ships, but farther downriver was the beautiful but tiny Colombiera Bridge, and not one of the ships could navigate under it. The Intermarine Company pleaded with local authorities, promising they would dismantle the bridge and then rebuild it. The shipyard’s dreams of further lucrative contracts sank when the town council said no.

9. War Is Hell 

In 1883, the citizens of Lijar, a small town in southern Spain, were infuriated when reports came back that while visiting Paris, King Alfonso XII had been insulted and attacked. The mayor of Lijar, Don Miguel Garcia Saez, and all 300 citizens of the town demanded retribution and declared war on France on October 14, 1883. Not a single shot was fired and not an injury was sustained during the confrontation. Nonetheless, Mayor Saez became known as “The Terror of the Sierras” for this exploit.

Ninety-three years later, in 1976, King Juan Carlos, Alfonso’s great-grandson, made a visit to France during which he was treated with great respect. In 1981, the town council of Lijar ruled that “in view of the excellent attitude of the French,” they would suspend hostilities and agree to a cease-fire with France. The current mayor of Lijar, Diego Sanchez, said humbly, “We’ve forgiven them now,” making this the first time in two centuries that France fought a war and didn’t lose.

10. Floundering for a Name 

We see tin after tin of sardines in the stores, so it must be pretty easy to catch a sardine, right? Actually, it’s impossible to catch a sardine unless you accidentally hook a can lying on the bottom of the sea. Why? Because there’s no such fish as a sardine. The name applies to any small fish packaged in sardine cans. (They’re usually pilchard or small herring.) The reason sardines are packed, well, like sardines isn’t because companies are trying to give you your money’s worth—it’s because the oil they’re packed in costs more than the fish themselves.

11. An Eggstraordinary Story 

Images of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, Jesus on a refrigerator door, Mother Teresa on a cinnamon bun—these all seem like laughable bits of weird news. But what if Christ prophesied his return on freshly laid chicken eggs? That’s just what happened in a small village near Leeds, England, in 1806, when a hen laid an egg with the words Christ Is Coming inscribed in black on its shell. Mary Bateman, the hen’s owner, announced that God had arrived in a vision to tell her the hen would lay fourteen prophetic eggs; the fourteenth would usher in the apocalyptic destruction of the world. But the news wasn’t all hard boiled—God had also bestowed upon Bateman special slips of paper with the inscription J.C. that were basically “Get into Heaven Free” passes available for one shilling apiece. More than 1,000 people purchased the slips of paper and rested comfortably in the knowledge that they were guaranteed salvation while everyone else was going to burn in hell. A doctor who was skeptical of the eggs, or not in on the yolk, examined the eggs and discovered God had used corrosive ink to write on the shells. He told the local authorities, and they burst into the tavern where the chicken was caged and caught Mary Bateman red-handed—shoving the fourteenth inscribed egg into the hen to “lay” later that day. Bateman was hanged, not for egging people into believing her story, but because she later became an abortionist, which was illegal in the nineteenth century.

12. The First Bump in the Road 

There’s a first time for everything, and Mrs. Bridget Driscoll holds the unfortunate title of being the first person killed by an automobile. On August 17, 1896, at the Crystal Palace in London, Arthur Edsall, an employee of the Anglo-French Motor Car Company, accidentally ran over Mrs. Driscoll and fractured her skull, leading to her death. At the inquest, it was discovered that Mr. Edsall’s vision had been obstructed by two other cars, and he could not see Mrs.Driscoll as she crossed the road. The verdict of the court was accidental death. Eyewitnesses stated Mrs. Driscoll panicked at the sight of Mr. Edsall’s car and didn’t get out of the way, which she could have done easily, as Mr. Edsall was traveling only four miles per hour at the time. So it could basically be called a slow death.

13. Two Kings, Three Queens, and a Big Joker 

In 1939, during a trip across Canada, King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, were greeted by Canadian prime minister MacKenzie King. The mayor of Winnipeg and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. John Queen, also greeted them. So in a bizarre but true variation of Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First” routine, here is a partial transcript from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcement of the event:
" There’s the King—he’s stepping out, followed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, nattily attired in a silver coat. Mr. King is now shaking hands with the King and introducing Mr. Queen to the King and Queen and then Mrs. Queen to the Queen and King. They are now proceeding up the steps to the well-decorated City Hall, the King and Mr. King together, with the Queen being escorted by Mrs. Queen…. The King leaves Mr. King and goes to Mrs. Queen, and the Queen and Mr. King follow behind…."

14. Please Tread Lightly 

While we’re on the subject of mismatched shoes, in the original story of Cinderella, her infamous glass slippers were actually made of fur. When Charles Perrault finally wrote down the story in 1697 (it had been passed down orally for centuries), he mistook vair (“ermine”) for verre (“glass”). Which makes much more sense, because even though they sound more romantic, glass slippers could cause more damage than just blisters. Perrault realized his mistake, but by that time, the story was so popular, he chose to leave it as it was.

15. It’s a Small World After All 

In geography class, we’ve been taught there are seven continents (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America), right? But look at any globe, and you’ll see there are really only six (Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America). The boundary between Europe and Asia is artificial; ancient Greek mapmakers thought the two regions were separated almost entirely by water from the Aegean to the North Sea.

In another case of don’t believe what you see but what you’ve been taught, the incorrect “seven continents” theory is still the norm. This is a case of either tradition beating out the truth or Europeans not wanting to be considered part of Asia.

16. Nuts to You! 

You can buy almonds in their shells, or walnuts in their shells, or Brazil nuts in their shells, so why can’t you buy cashews in their shells? For the simple reason that cashews don’t have shells. But wait, don’t all nuts have shells? That’s true, but cashews aren’t nuts, they’re technically seeds. Peanuts aren’t nuts, either; they’re actually a species in the legume family.

17. The Domino Effect 

On June 9, 1978, at New York’s Manhattan Center, Mr. Bob Specas was in the final stages of beating a dominoes world record by knocking down 100,000 dominoes in a row. The media was out in droves documenting the historic event. As Specas leaned down to place domino number 97,499 in position, a nearby TV cameraman accidentally dropped his press badge and prematurely set off the dominoes. I’m sure dominoes weren’t the only thing that got set off that day—Mr.Specas’s temper did, too.

18. Seldom Is Heard These Discouraging Words 

Everybody sing with me: “Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play.” Americans have sung “Home on the Range” since 1911, so what could possibly be wrong with the song? Well, actually, there are two things:

"The real home where the buffalo roam is in Africa or Asia (the Cape buffalo of Africa and the water buffalo of Asia). The species we have in the United States is properly called bison. There are no antelope in the United States, either. They’re also native to Asia and Africa. What the song calls “antelope” was probably the pronghorn, which is a lot tougher to rhyme. Antelopes grow their horns throughout their lives, whereas pronghorns (Antilocapridae) shed their horns annually."

But “Oh give me a home, where the bison roam, and the deer and the pronghorn play” doesn’t quite have the same feeling, does it?

19. Not with a Wimper, but with a Bang 

On December 6, 1917, the largest man-made explosion of the prenuclear age happened when a ship loaded with munitions exploded in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, killing more than 1,900 people. The explosion was so massive that one man, William Becker, who was in a rowboat about 300 feet away from the ship when it exploded, was propelled 1,600 yards—the length of sixteen football fields—across the harbor. He was uninjured during his unexpected trip across the harbor and was able to swim to safety—he lived until 1969. Of course, it was difficult to watch football with him: “Sixty-yard touchdown? That’s nothing. I once went 1,600 yards for a splashdown!”

20. Stop Your Whining 

Wine merchant William Sokoin paid $300,000 for a 1787 bottle of Château Margaux once owned by Thomas Jefferson. He planned to sell it to the highest bidder from a group of 300 wine collectors gathered at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant in 1989. He hoped to make a profit in excess of $200,000 for the wine, but his dreams were shattered when, moments before the bidding started, he dropped the bottle and broke it.

21. The Defendants Suck! 

In the thirteenth century, the town of Mayenne, France, was infested with a swarm of mosquitoes that plagued the inhabitants to such an extent they filed a lawsuit against them. When the pesky public nuisances flew in the face of authority and refused to answer the summons, the court appointed a lawyer to act on their behalf. The courtroom was abuzz as defense counsel pleaded his case, and spectators waited with bated breath as the judge handed down his verdict. The judge banished the bugs from his jurisdiction, but took pity on them and gave them a patch of land outside the town limits where they could swarm in peace forever. What the townfolks needed wasn’t a case against the mosquitoes, but a case of DEET.

22. The Incredible, Regrettable Egg 

The citizens of Basel, Switzerland, were stunned when a rooster was accused of laying an egg. In 1473, it was common knowledge that an egg laid by a rooster was prized by sorcerers, and it was known that, according to court records, “Satan employed witches to hatch such eggs, from which proceeded winged serpents most dangerous to mankind.” It looked like the rooster’s goose was cooked. But even something as foul as a demonic rooster deserves the best defense available, and the court appointed it a lawyer. The lawyer strutted his stuff and contended that “no injury to man or beast had resulted” and that laying an egg is an involuntary act, so, he surmised, his cock should walk.

The judge was impressed with the lawyer’s impassioned plea but nonetheless found the rooster guilty of sorcery. Both the rooster and the egg (I’m not sure which one came first) were roasted at the stake— no mention if coleslaw and mashed potatoes were served as sides.

23. A Chili Reception 

Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World is so full of mistakes, it’s nearly impossible to categorize them all. One of the most famous is that he thought he had arrived in India, so he called the natives Indians. A lesser-known mistake occurred when his hosts served a spicy food containing hot chilies, which Columbus thought must be related to the Piper nigrum, the plant that produces black peppercorns. The spice the Indians actually used wasn’t a pepper at all—it was part of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family and was more closely related to potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants. But thanks to Columbus, chilies have been known as chili “peppers” ever since.

24. He Said, She Said 

In the repertoire of every bad Humphrey Bogart impersonator is the line, “Play it again, Sam.” But Bogart never said this. In the 1943 movie Casablanca, Ingrid Bergman’s character. Ilse, not Humphrey Bogart’s, Rick, is the one who implores Sam (Dooley Wilson) to “play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” So no one ever says, “Play it again, Sam,” and in fact, Sam never plays “As Time Goes By,” he just sings it—Wilson couldn’t play the piano, and the accompaniment was dubbed over later.

25. W. C. Fields Forever 

“Anybody who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad” is the perfect quote to embody the comedian W. C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield), and it’s one of his most famous sayings, but like most things in this book, it’s a myth. The actual quote is “Anybody who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.” This misquote wouldn’t be enough to include by itself if not for the fact that W. C. Fields never said either line in the first place. The original quote came from Leo Rosten, the humor writer, who said it when introducing Fields at a dinner. Unfortunately for Mr. Rosten, W. C. Fields is still given credit for this great line.

26. Roses on Your Piano 

Pokémon, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids, and tulips are all examples of collectible “crazes.” Yes, tulips. Tulips were introduced into Holland in the late 1500s and were much sought after by the upper class. In 1634, traders began speculating on tulip bulbs, and soon the price of certain prized tulips skyrocketed—the age of tulipmania had struck! The rare Semper Augustus sold for as much as 5,500 florins per bulb, the equivalent of eight pounds of gold. But eventually, the tulip bubble burst, and in February 1637, the price of bulbs hit the dirt. Thousands of people went bankrupt, and investors refused to honor the futures contracts they had signed. When these cases went to court, they were ruled to be gambling debts, not enforceable contracts. I guess in this case it wasn’t money but tulip bulbs that were the root of all evil.

27. Sax and Violins 

Catgut, which for centuries has been used to string musical instruments, is made from cats, right? Not even close. Catgut is a term for a chemically treated animal intestine made into a tough string or cord. But the animal in question isn’t a cat and never has been; it’s a sheep. So why isn’t it called sheepgut? Good question. Here’s my guess: Imagine the sound of a young child practicing a violin, and then imagine the sound of a cat with its tail caught in a door. The word catgut makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?

28. It’s a Dog’s Life 

When calculating the age of old Fido, most people use the equation one human year equals seven dog years. But if you think about that logic for only a moment (four hours in dog moments), you’ll see it doesn’t hold true. Using this theory, Bluey, an Australian cattle dog who lived to be twenty-nine years old, would have been 203 years old in human years. So how do you compare a dog’s age in human years? Since puppies become dogs much quicker than babies become adults, the equation could be figured more along these lines: fifteen years for the first year of the dog’s life, ten years for the second, seven for the third, and three for each following year. Making a three-year-old dog thirty-two, a fourteen-year-old dog sixty-five, and our twenty-nine-year-old dog an amazing but more realistic 110 years old. Of course, it’s much harder for a dog to figure out the age of a human in dog years.

29. Alone Again, Naturally 

Let’s get this straight: Charles Lindbergh was not the first to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. The first nonstop flight was made on June 14, 1919, by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, and if you count two earlier dirigible crossings transporting a total of sixty-four people, Lindbergh was actually the sixty-seventh person to cross the Atlantic. The key word missing from these previous accomplishments is solo. On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic, from the United States to Europe, by himself. I suppose if people could remember his nickname, The Lone Eagle,” they wouldn’t get things confused.

30. Petite Defeat 

Three things are usually remembered about Napoleon Bonaparte: his big, funny hat; having his hand inside his vest; and the fact that he was short. Even now, hyperaggressive, height-impaired men are said to have a Napoleon complex. This would come as a surprise to the emperor of the French, because he actually stood five feet six and a half. The confusion about Napoleon’s size arose because after his autopsy, it was reported that he measured five feet two. The problem is, he was measured based on the old French system of pied de roi (“royal foot”), which was shorter than the modern foot. The height requirement for the French army at the time was four feet eleven, so a lot of Napoleon’s soldiers looked up to the great conqueror not because of his powerful position, but because he was taller than they were. Napoleon wasn’t short, and he certainly wasn’t shortsighted when he said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.”

31. The Big Bus Fuss 

Why aren’t there electric streetcars anymore? The answer: General Motors. In the 1930s, GM was looking for a way to expand its bus manufacturing business, but buses weren’t needed in most cities, because they already had electric streetcar or trolley lines. So GM, along with Standard Oil, Firestone Tires, and several other corporations, formed a company to buy municipal streetcar systems and dismantle them. After a few trial cities, their plan seemed to be working, so they moved on to New York and Los Angeles. In April 1949, a Chicago federal jury convicted GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone of criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with buses and monopolizing the sale of buses—they were fined $5,000. So it’s not only the bus fumes that stink!

32. Not in High Cotton 

Eli Whitney is credited with inventing the cotton gin in 1794 and single-handedly saving the South’s cotton industry. Before his invention, it took an entire day for one person to separate a single pound of cotton from the seeds. After only a few days of experimenting, Whitney came up with a simple, efficient machine that made the work of separating cotton easy. In 1792, the United States exported approximately 140,000 pounds of cotton; by 1800, because of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, that number went up to 18 million pounds. So this simple machine must have made Mr. Whitney a lot of cotton-picking money, right? No. The machine was so simple that any farmhand could easily copy it… and they did. Companies began producing their variations of the cotton gin, but even though Whitney took them to court over patent infringement, the courts consistently ruled against him. After thirteen years of fighting court battles over his design that saved Southern agriculture, Whitney finally got a favorable ruling in 1807—but by then, the patent had nearly expired. And soon after that, Mr. Whitney expired, too.

33. Buckle Up 

Were the Puritans pure of spirit and body? Hardly. There are hundreds of court records documenting cases of sodomy, rape, adultery, fornication, and other not-so-pure deeds. Like this one: On September 8, 1642, a sixteen-year-old from Plymouth, Massachusetts, was hanged because of his love for animals. Thomas Granger was detected of buggery with a mare, a cowe, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey,” as Governor William Bradford wrote in Of Plimouth Plantation, 1620-1647. “And whereas some of the sheep could not be so well known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which they were and which they were not.”To make matters worse for young Granger, he had to watch the objects of his affection die first. “A very sade spectacle it was; for first the mare, and then the cowe, and the rest of the lesser cattle, were kild before his face, according to the law, Leviticus 20:15, and then he him selfe was executed.” All this because the guy was caught horsing around.

34. Keeping an Eye Out 

In 1801, Captain Horatio Nelson of the British navy was engaged in attacking French troops in Copenhagen, Denmark. The tide of the battle turned in favor of the French, and Nelson was ordered by the command ship to retreat. But Nelson wanted to continue fighting and ignored the command. A subordinate urged the captain to heed the commander’s order, and Nelson picked up a telescope to verify the signal for himself. But Nelson, who was blind in one eye, purposely held the telescope to his sightless eye and said truthfully that he “couldn’t see” any signal of retreat. Nelson continued his attack and won. This event left us with a phrase that means “to ignore something” and is still used today: to turn a blind eye.

35. The Case of Coke 

Coca-Cola is not only an American institution, it’s one of the most successful businesses in American history. John Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta, concocted the drink in 1886, for use as a nonalcoholic “nerve medicine.” And yes, the first recipe included coca leaves—along with kola nuts and other herbs. Pemberton would then mix the thick syrup with tap water and sell it in his drugstore. The story is that a customer, complaining of an upset stomach, asked Pemberton to mix the syrup with carbonated water, and it was at that moment that the pharmacist realized he had “the real thing.” So Pemberton began producing Coke and retired a billionaire—well, if he did, he wouldn’t be in this book. Shortly after he created the drink, Pemberton became very sick, and in desperate need of money, he sold the rights to Coke to a group of druggists for about $350. He died of cancer in 1888. Pemberton went from soft drinks to hard times.

36. It’s What’s for Supper 

We’ve all heard the expression “It’s raining cats and dogs,” but how about the phrase “It’s raining meat!” You would be familiar with this phrase if you were in southern Bath County, Kentucky, on Friday, March 3, 1876. While in her yard making soap, Mrs. Allen Crouch was sprinkled with dime-size pieces of fresh meat, and there wasn’t a meat cloud in the sky. Two gentlemen who tasted the meat agreed it was either mutton or venison. During examination, scientists concluded the first sample was lung tissue from a horse or a human baby. (I didn’t know they were so similar.) Further samples were identified as cartilage and striated muscle fibers. No definitive explanation for the meat shower was given, but one theory was that a flock of buzzards had thrown up while flying over Mrs. Crouch’s yard. What is so weird about this story is the two men who volunteered to taste the meat.

37. Get a Tan by Standing in the English Rain

In many Mediterranean countries, solar-powered city parking meters are used, saving a fortune in maintenance costs. So city officials in Nottingham, England, decided to get in on this action and spent more than £1 million (about $1.5 million) installing solar-powered parking meters on their city streets. There was one glaring problem Nottingham officials overlooked—or should I say a problem that wasn’t glaring—the sun. Mediterranean countries get a lot of sun, and even in the summer, England doesn’t. As of August 2001, more than 245 of the parking meters were out of commission, allowing hundreds of motorists to park for free.

38. Scooping It Up 

All newspapers and news programs try to get the scoop on big stories, and occasionally, in their haste, they overlook a few facts—or blow the story completely. On November 8, 1918, the United Press Association reported that Germany had signed a peace agreement, thereby bringing World War I to an end. Newspapers all across the country began reprinting the organization’s story, and celebrations broke out. But the story was wrong. It all started when someone, now believed to be a German secret agent, called the French and American intelligence offices to report that Germany had signed an armistice. The story was passed to Roy Howard, United Press president in Europe, who wired the story to the United States. I’m sure a lot of newspapers were sold that day, but the war didn’t officially end until June 28, 1919, with the signing of the Treaty of Versaille.

39. Bailing Out on War 

Wars are started for a variety of reasons: to take over land, to take resources, to avenge a great wrong, to free a repressed people, or to steal a wooden bucket. The War of the Oaken Bucket (1325-1337) was fought between the independent Italian city-states of Modena and Bologna and started when Modena soldiers invaded Bologna to steal a bucket. The raid was successful, but during the ensuing invasion, hundreds of Bologna citizens were killed (or kicked the bucket). Bologna declared war to restore national honor and to avenge the death of the martyred citizens … oh, and to get the bucket back. The war raged on for twelve years, but Bologna never did get a handle on the bucket. To this day, it’s still in Modena, stored in the bell tower of the twelfth-century cathedral Duomo di Modena.

40. The Winner of the “What Was He Thinking?” Award

Francisco Solano Lopez, president of Paraguay (1862-1870), after a trip to Paris, became obsessed with Napoleon (some say he even believed he was Napoleon). In 1864, to prove he had Napoleon’s leadership abilities, he simultaneously declared war on his country’s three neighbors: Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The war was also known by three different names: the Napoleonic Wars, the War of the Triple Alliance, and the Paraguayan War. The outcome of the war? Paraguay was nearly annihilated. It is estimated that 90 percent of its population died during the war (as a result of battle, bad food, and disease). There is still debate over whether Lopez was a champion of smaller nations against more powerful neighbors or … well, a nut.

41. Telegraphic Liar 

The inventor of Morse code, Samuel Morse, we are told, invented the telegraph in 1844. It’s true he invented Morse code, but the telegraph itself was invented in 1831 by Joseph Henry, a Princeton University professor. So why is Morse given the credit? Because Professor Henry never applied for a patent. Morse obtained Henry’s sketches and papers and based his telegraph largely on the work already done by Henry. He even called the professor when he was stuck on a problem he couldn’t figure out, and Henry was always willing to assist and encourage Morse. But years later, when Morse became incredibly rich and famous, he would give no acknowledgment to Henry’s contribution to the creation of the telegraph—not a dot or a dash.

42. Casting a Wide Internet 

In the April 1994 issue of PC Computing magazine, John Dvorak wrote an article describing legislation going through Congress making it illegal to use the Internet while intoxicated or to communicate about sexual matters online. The bill number was 040194, which also stands for 04/01/94, or April Fools’ Day; in fact, the name of the contact person was Lirpa Sloof—or April Fools spelled backward. The fictitious bill gave the FBI authority to wiretap anyone who “uses or abuses alcohol” while accessing the Internet. “The moniker “Information Highway’ itself seems to be responsible for SB 040194,” went the article. “I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is.” Soon congressional phone lines were jammed with angry protests regarding the phony bill. For Senator Edward Kennedy, the hoax was as clear as the nose on his face. He had his office immediately issue a press release that denied he was a sponsor of the bill.

43. Getting Down to Brass Tacks 

At the same time explorer Samuel Wallis discovered the Tahitian Islands in June 1767, his crewmen discovered the native women would trade sex for iron nails. The Tahitians found many uses for iron nails, and they soon became more precious than silver or gold. Soon a very precarious condition evolved: On the one hand, you had beautiful exotic women willing to “do anything” for iron nails, and on the other hand, you had lonely, bored sailors with nothing to do but figure out how to get their hands on iron nails—thereby getting their hands on the beautiful exotic women. And at the heart of the dilemma was the HMS Dolphin—a wooden ship held together by iron nails. Captain Wallis was forced to forbid the trade. “It was soon found that all the belaying cleats had been ripped off,” wrote the captain in his log, “and that there was scarcely one of the hammock nails left.” The nail crisis came to a head when a Mr. Pinckney’s robust transactions led to the collapse of the mainsail. I’m not sure about this, but it’s possible this is where “nailing” or “getting nailed” became synonymous with sex.

44. X–ing Out Christmas 

You would think the Puritans, who were known for their religious fervor, must have loved Christmas—but they didn’t. In fact, a law was passed in 1659 outlawing the celebration of Christmas. A five-shilling fine was levied against anyone “found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way, any such days as Christmas day.” They considered Christmas “an extreme forgetfulness of Puritans, they sure talked about sex a lot, didn’t they?


It’s not likely that any of the “traditional” Thanksgiving foods were served by the Pilgrims in 1621. It’s true they had a feast, but it was not called a feast of “thanksgiving,” as that implied to the devoutly religious colonists a day of fasting and prayer. It is possible they had turkey, but only the term fowl is used. It is known that the Indians brought five deer for the feast and it lasted forChrist, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights.” For being three days and was a one-time occurrence—not the beginning of a tradition. But one thing is sure—there was no apple pie. Apples are not native to North America—they came from Europe and West Asia.

45. Heavy Is the Head That Wears the Crown 

When King Charles II fell ill on the morning of February 2, 1685, a team of six doctors were immediately at his side—and it might have been the worst thing to ever happen to him. The following are some of the procedures used on the king:

a.They let (drained) sixteen ounces of blood.

b. In order to “stimulate the system,” they applied heated cups to the skin that formed large round blisters.

c. They let eight more ounces of blood.

d. They induced vomiting to cleanse his stomach, gave him an enema to purify his bowels, and made him swallow a purgative to evacuate his intestines.

This type of torturous treatment continued for four days. More bleedings, more blistering, more purging, more vomiting, more enemas, a concoction made from pigeon droppings, a cure of “40 drops of extract of human skull” of a man who had met a violent death, a force-feeding of the gallstone of a goat, and finally, “extracts of all the herbs and animals of the kingdom.” The result? The king died. In comparison, dealing with an HMO sounds pretty good.

46. One More Time from the Top 

Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest was leading his Confederate troops to Alabama in late September 1864 to attack the Union post located in Athens. But there was an overwhelming problem: The post was well manned and heavily fortified. The general knew he was greatly outnumbered, and he knew Union reinforcements were on the way, but he had a plan. He sent a message to Union commander Colonel Wallace Campbell requesting a personal meeting. Campbell agreed to the meeting, and on September 24, 1864, Forrest escorted Campbell on a tour of his Confederate troops. Campbell took the opportunity to secretly count the number of soldiers and artillery he saw surrounding his fort. But what Campbell didn’t count on was that Forrest had ordered his men, after being inspected and tallied, to pack up their belongings and quietly move to the back of the line to be counted again. After counting continuous counterfeit Confederates, Campbell returned to his fort, believing he was heavily outnumbered, and surrendered without a fight.

47. This Is My Good Friend, Harvey 

In 1726, an English maid, Mary Toft, reported to the authorities that she had been accosted and molested by a six-foot rabbit. Some of the townsfolk were skeptical, and some actually believed her, ordering their wives and daughters to stay inside at night and, of course, not to open the door to any six-foot rabbits. Five months after the rabbit rape, Mary collapsed in a field and was declared pregnant by a local doctor. A little over a month later, Mary gave birth, and the baby looked just like its father—a rabbit. Over the next few days, Mary gave birth to seven more rabbits, all of them dead. News of the bunny babies reached King George I, and he sent two of England’s finest physicians to investigate. The doctors performed various tests on the dead rabbits and amazingly declared the births genuine. Under the direction of a third expert, Mary was moved to a London hospital and put under round-the-clock surveillance. During that time, Mary didn’t move a hare. A gardener confessed to supplying Mary and her husband with baby rabbits, and Mary finally admitted the ruse. She told authorities the motivation behind the hoax was her husband had lost his job and they were hoping for a pension from the king. The king did give Mary something—a prison term for fraud. I guess the king was angry about the deception—you could say he was hopping mad.

48. But, Dad, Everybody’s Wearing Them

Three teenage girls in Tokyo became fatally ill, and their deaths were blamed on a silk kimono possessed by evil demons (not the butler this time). In February 1657, a priest was summoned by the girls’ fathers to see if he could perform an exorcism on the garment. At the cleansing ceremony (or the dry-cleaning ceremony), the fathers of the young victims watched as the priest reverently took a torch and, while deep in prayer, set the cloth aflame. As if on cue, a strong wind blew the kimono to the floor, catching the house on fire. The wind fanned the flames of the burning house, and soon fire engulfed the wooden dwellings throughout the city of Tokyo. Before it was contained, the notorious “Long-Sleeved Kimono Fire” (Furisode-kaji) incinerated three quarters of the city and took the lives of more than 100,000 people. Things could have been worse—the noise of the destruction could have awoken Godzilla!

49. Caesar or Seize Him? 

Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic (later the Roman Empire), was one of the most influential and powerful men in world history. He was a great military strategist and political leader who expanded the territory of the Roman Republic all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. With all these credentials, why was Caesar’s nickname “the Queen of Bithynia”? I’ll tell you. In 80 B.C., young Julius Caesar was an ambassador to King Nicomedes IV in Bithynia, a Roman province in Asia Minor, and reportedly had a fling with the king. Most of the writers of the time mention the alleged affair, and Mark Antony even charged that Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian (Emperor Julius Caesar Octavianus), earned his adoption through sexual favors. Was Caesar really in love with Cleopatra, or was he just in denial?

50. The Number You Are Trying to Reach Is No Longer in Service 

Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with creating the telephone—or stealing the idea from Antonio Meucci, depending on how one looks at it—decided to cash out on the invention early by selling it to Western Union. One would think an invention of this importance would have been snatched up immediately—but surprisingly, Western Union just gave Bell static. The committee that was formed to review Bell’s proposal stated the following:

"The telephone is named by its inventor A. G. Bell. He believes that one day they will be installed in every residence and place of business …. Bell’s proposal to place his instrument in almost every home and business is fantastic. The central exchange alone would represent a huge outlay in real estate and buildings, to say nothing of the electrical equipment. In conclusion the committee feels that it must advise against any investment in Bell’s scheme. We do not doubt that it will find users in special circumstances, but any development of the kind and scale which Bell so fondly imagines is utterly out of the question."

 The people at Western Union must have been off their cradle.


By Leland Gregory in "Stupid History", Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City, USA, 2007. Compiled, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

"By the time of the Crusades [starting in 1095] wooden casks were the standard means of transporting all manner of liquids and provisions, and the cooper was coming into his own as one of the foremost tradesmen, particularly in coastal and riverside towns."

Kenneth Kilby, 'The Cooper and His Trade'

"Wine imports could be naturally affected every year by bad harvests, plague, war, and even by the effect of the weather or piracy upon voyages. Apart from prolonged war, these factors would have had a short-term effect on the pattern of trade."

Catherine Pitt, ‘The Wine Trade in Bristol in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries'

The year 1985 found me and my wife travelling through Europe visiting wineries and cooperages. In Bordeaux the particular cooperage we were seeking was located deep within the Chartrons Quarter, a warren of old stone wine warehouses adjacent to the Garonne River. On stepping inside, it took a few moments for our eyes to adjust to the dim, hazy atmosphere. The walls, blackened by years of smoke from the bending fires, absorbed what little illumination entered from the few dirty sky lights. Sawdust and shavings littered the floor, and the air was filled with the rich aroma of toasted oak. We were met by the owner and, over the constant clang of hammers pounding the hoops, were quickly passed on to his wife, who ran the business. It was the classic small-business case of an owner who just wanted to engage in a craft, in this case making barrels, and a wife who wanted to know where the money was coming from. Letting him make his barrels, she took over the accounting and looked after the customers.

As we observed the barrel-making activity, we could see men at each machine, often with another awaiting his turn. Madame told us that her coopers worked on a piece rate, a common method for maintaining productivity. This meant that each man built and completed as many barrels per day as possible. However, with only one machine of each type, additional pressure to produce quickly was created by knowing that someone else was impatiently awaiting use of the machine.

This cooperage business no longer exists in that building; typical of many French companies, it has since moved outside the city into a modern facility, with the son and his children now managing the business. On reflection, with the exception of the machines, the image of that Bordeaux cooperage we observed in the 1980s was probably not that different from those seen in drawings of fourteenthto sixteenth-century European cooperages. And, quite possibly, things really hadn’t changed too much even from Roman-era cooperages.

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a good place to begin our examination of the use of barrels as the Roman era ended and the Europe we now know began to emerge. Even before Julius Caesar fought his way through Gaul, Burdigala, as Bordeaux was known to the Romans, was a trading centre for wine.1 However, at that time the wine was not grown in Bordeaux but sourced from Italian vineyards, primarily around Etruria and Campania, in west-central and southwest Italy respectively.2 It was packaged in amphorae, secured for the long journey with a wooden plug sealed with wax. Some loads were sent overland via Marseilles, while others were shipped across the Mediterranean directly to Narbonne. From Narbonne, a consignment would be conveyed by land or rowed in boats up the Tarn River, to Toulouse, and then barged down the Garonne River to Bordeaux. Merchants in Bordeaux sold the wine on to the Atlantic markets – western France and Britain. Even in this early era, Davies notes that ‘Roman Britannia was fully integrated into the imperial trading systems’.3 Italy to Britain was a long trip for a fragile commodity, but, surprisingly, not atypical of the long-distance trading taking place at the end of the last millennium bc and the beginning of the first one AD.

With the Roman takeover of Gaul, vines and winemaking skills were introduced into the southern regions. Eventually, plantings slowly made their way north and west, as farmers and landowners wanted to propagate the grapevines and make money from the resulting wine. Once fighting the Romans ceased, the Bordeaux merchants encouraged plantings and winemaking in their own region. Tired of paying duties to Toulouse and Narbonne for the wine coming through those cities, they believed they could make more money by producing their own wine.4 Slowly, the previous dependence on wine from Italy, and also from Spain, decreased, as the newly planted vines in the Bordeaux region came into production. And by the thirteenth century, ‘almost all Gascons, from the Archbishop of Bordeaux downwards, were involved in the wine trade’, as Anne Crawford notes in her book about the Vintners’ Company, a London-based guild and major trading partner with Bordeaux.5

The early Bordeaux vineyards were thought to be planted with grape varieties such as Allobrogica, an early scion of Syrah, and Biturica, possibly a forerunner of Cabernet Sauvignon.6 The Allobrogica came from east of the Rhône, so it was already fairly well acclimatized to the cold Bordeaux winters. The Biturica may have been brought from Italy or Spain.7 Without the apparent cold-hardiness, Biturica needed careful siting in warmer microclimates.

Around the first century AD the merchants of Bordeaux, desiring further control of their wine-trading network, set up a factory to produce amphorae.8 However, this enterprise was relatively short-lived as the continued use of amphorae, particularly for overseas shipments to Britain, did not last long. For reasons that are not entirely clear, in about ad 250 the use of amphorae ceased rather abruptly as barrels took over and became the primary wine-shipping containers.9

In the case of trade between France and Britain, the shift from amphorae to barrels may have been partially influenced by the type of ships that plied the Atlantic between mainland Europe and British shores.10 In 1982 what is believed to have been a typical merchant ship of the period was discovered buried in the mud of St Peter Port harbour, on the Isle of Guernsey. The Asterix, as she was called, dated from about the second or third century and was a sailing ship about 1.5 metres.11 Built with thick oak planks, fully decked and with a curved bow and stern, she was capable of weathering the rough Atlantic seas in order to transport cargo between ports in Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal and possibly as far as the Mediterranean.

Ships like this were substantial, capable of carrying at first many amphorae, and later many barrels.12 The Asterix is estimated to have had a cargo hold of about 200 cubic metres.13 Conservatively estimating 2.22 cubic metres per barrel (using the size of the theoretical standard barrel of the era, the 900-litre tun), the ship could conceivably have carried as many as 90 barrels of the tun size, although typically the cargo might have been a mix of commodities and containers. The weight for that amount of barrels, full of wine at 997 kg each, would have been about 90 metric tons. That weight would equal approximately 2,500 amphorae, which was also about an average ship’s cargo.14 A full load of wine in those 90 barrels, at today’s value of, say, $2 per litre wholesale, would have been the equivalent of $162,000. During that era wine was shipped in bulk, with little or no mark-up for sales or marketing – the packaging was the barrel. The majority of ordinary people at the time drank beer; wine was generally intended for the upper class and the clergy, and would have been priced accordingly. And despite the Asterix being, as Bob Dean notes, ‘a most sophisticated vessel, the end-product of an evolutionary design process surely dating back many centuries’,15 hauling barrel-loads of wine, or any product, across the open ocean was a risky business, but rewarding when successful.

As opposed to the flatter-keeled ships which plied the Mediterranean, those Atlantic-voyaging vessels had more of a V-shaped hull, designed to cut through the heavier seas. However, their keel was not so deep that it deterred them from navigating the shallow estuary waterways of end-of-the-tide ports such as Bordeaux and Bayonne or London and Bristol. The cargo hold would also have had a V shape. Within these holds barrels nested better than amphorae, as already mentioned, and may have been a significant factor in the shift from amphorae to barrels.16

In the ensuing centuries, Bordeaux continued to be a major exporter of wine,17 with barrels consolidating their position as the primary storage and shipping container. Strangely, first-millennium cooperages are not mentioned in the historic literature. It is possible that the earliest cooperages were not separate workspaces, but adjuncts for the wooden articles being made by carpenters, blacksmiths or chariot and wagon makers, as the skills were similar.However, as the demand for their work increased, the craft of cooperage developed into its own specialized trade. Evidence for this comes from second-and third-century funerary steles in the Bordeaux area depicting, among other specific trades, tonneliers or coopers.18

But these coopers, and the shops in which they worked (which we will call cooperages, although they were not full-blown cooperages until several centuries later), did not simply appear out of nothing. A whole industry was necessary to produce the cooperage products: sawyers to fell the trees; the merrandier, who splits out the rough staves from the logs; the doleur, who trims and planes the staves; the ‘cousin to the stave maker, the hoop maker’, as Jean-Marc Soyez termed the men who produced the willow and chestnut hoops (in the many centuries before the common use of steel hoops);19 and, finally, the cooper to assemble all the parts to produce the barrel. Sometimes these activities were carried out by the same individual; however, as demand increased, the jobs became more and more specialized.

Today’s cooper primarily just makes barrels, either for wine or whiskey. But the independent coopers and their associated craftsmen of 2,000 years ago, and even up until just a few hundred years ago, made an assortment of wooden pails, buckets, pitchers, churns,funnels, tubs, barrels, tanks, vats and other wooden objects. The buckets and pails were required to carry water from wells, springs and rivers. Pails, churns and buckets would have been needed for hand-milking cows, sheep and goats, and the more elaborate and specialized ones were used to process the milk into butter and cheese. Various styles of wooden pitchers were used at the table to pour water, wine, beer or cider.20 These pitchers have sides which were bent to produce the curved shapes we are accustomed to seeing in ceramic and glass water jugs, the construction of which would have been similar to bending wood for the larger barrels. Small tubs would have been used to mix flour for bread and larger ones were necessary for crushing the grapes. There are numerous historical prints and tapestries depicting people standing inside the tubs stamping on the grapes with their bare feet. Other tub-like containers were required for pickling fruits and vegetables, making beer and cider, salting meat, processing the wools and fabrics for clothing, washing clothing and tanning leather. And as more and more wine was made, larger tanks were needed to store some of it.

Whenever a liquid needed to be contained, and the choice of a ceramic or wooden container was required, the vast, northern European forests of mixed species provided ample opportunity for wooden buckets, tubs and barrels to meet such requirements satisfactorily. And for many of these wooden containers, oak was a primary material. Jean-Paul Lacroix estimates that the proportion of oak used in cooperage was around 45 per cent in the second century ad, rising to 100 per cent by the third century.21 Lacroix further notes that the ‘strength and durability of oak, as compared to softwoods, was a critical asset’.22 These significant factors favoured wooden, and more importantly oak, containers over amphorae for everyday use and for containers used to transport various commodities.

Despite a growing demand for wooden containers, coopers were subject to the same economic ups and downs as the Bordeaux wine merchants and other tradespeople of the period. With the Roman Empire slowly disintegrating, starting in the first century ad and extending to its demise (of its western lands at any rate) by the fifth century, there was a continuing disruption to the wine-supply chains. Roman wine traders and négociants were displaced by regional princes, bishops and monasteries, in part as a power grab with the break-up of the imperial infrastructure, and also to ensure wine for their religious services.23 As these new political entities came to power, they then attempted to tax wine as it was moved about on the rivers and roads, which to various degrees impacted on vintners and, by extension, coopers.

Other disruptions occurred when Germanic tribes pirated coastal shipping during the second to fourth centuries, periodically impacting Bordeaux’s lucrative trade with Britain. And although the trade to Britain was improved by the marriage of England’s Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1158 (perhaps aided by the marriage gift from Chancellor Thomas Becket: two chariots loaded with iron-hoopedbeer barrels),24 later it would be the Hundred Years War (1332–1453) between France and England, as well as plague and further external and internal wars, which dealt serious and periodic blows to the economic and cultural landscape.25

Further trade struggles for Bordeaux’s wine industry arose from the development and growth of vineyards throughout northern France,around such areas as Paris and beyond. They were serious competition during the early stages of their growth, but over time became less so due to their unproductive sites – eventually only certain northern regions were found suitable for grape growing: those prevailing today which we see primarily in the northern Burgundian, Alsatian and Rhine regions. Another problem encountered by Bordeaux merchants was that when they were prevented from selling into Britain, either through certain laws or crippling taxes, vintners from Portugal and Spain slipped in to fill the void.26

Not all the wine shipped from France arrived, or arrived in good shape. Some ships sank; others were pirated. Records indicate that of the wine that did arrive in Britain, often as much as 10–20 per cent was ‘corrupt’ – either having gone off during shipping or because it hadn’t been particularly good to begin with. An equal percentage was lost to leakage or barrelullage (evaporation).27

Unlike today’s overnight cross-Channel ferries, or the two-hour train trip under La Manche, a sailing voyage bringing wine to Britain could take weeks or months, what with the time involved awaiting appropriate winds and tides and stops at various ports for supplies and additional cargo.28 For example, exiting the Garonne river by sail required an outgoing tide along with an easterly breeze. Ships sailing to Britain could encounter difficult seas while also having to avoid pirates and navigate around the westward thrust of the Brittany peninsula. And the journey might be delayed by another wait for an incoming tide and easterly wind prior to entering the Thames estuary. There could be further delays awaiting London’s bureaucratic formalities, which occasionally meant that another three days would pass before the wine could finally be off-loaded at a London pier.29

The strength of Bordeaux’s early wine exports was not insignificant. By the fourteenth century it was exporting some 700,000 hectolitres annually,30 the equivalent of almost 8 million cases, in some 77,000 barrels. It was in the fourteenth century that typical loads of 20,000 tuns (the large 900-litre barrels), or the equivalent thereof, were shipped annually from Bordeaux, and from its southern neighbour Bayonne, to Bristol alone – a distance of over 900 km by sea.31 Unfortunately export figures for Bordeaux at the beginning of the first millennium are not available, but a comparison can be drawn from estimates of first-century shipments between Italy and Gaul, which are in the order of 120,000 hectolitres (or 1.3 million cases) of wine annually. Today Bordeaux’s total production is over 2 million hectolitres – some 22 million cases.32

Stemming from the Romans’ extraordinary zeal for stan dardization and taxation, one term, still very much in today’s lexicon, resulted directly from the use of cooperage during these years of oceangoing wine trading. The current word for a ship’s capacity – ‘tonnage’ – originated in that early part of the first millennium. The term evolved from the French word tun, the name for the large barrels of 900-l capacity, and from how many of these could be loaded (and thereby taxed) onto a ship. Although the term has been shifted to refer to the capacity of the cargo space, it is still the standard by which we measure and compare ships.33

From my own barrel-handling experience, and despite numerous references in the literature (which may just be repeating each other), while these 900-l barrels may have been the standard measurement for shipping wine, I find it hard to believe that they were actually the most common barrel size in use. These barrels would be almost 2 metres tall by 1 metre in diameter and full of wine would weigh 920 kg – almost a ton! I have rolled puncheons of 500–600 litres, which are difficult enough even when empty. Despite my previous praise for the ease with which barrels could be rolled up ramps, even with two or three men, plus others pulling on a rope around the 900-litre barrel, rolling a 920-kg barrel would be arduous and push the boundaries of what normal labour can achieve. When these large tuns were loaded into the ships by a block and tackle attached to the yardarm of a mast, as they most likely were, positioning them within the hold of a moving or rocking ship would be no easy feat. I suggest that the majority of the barrels shipped from France to Britain were not 900-litre tuns, even though that size was the stated measurement for the ships. I believe that the majority of the barrels were the 225-litre size – an even four of those casks making up the full 900 litres.

Several notes in the literature support this theory. Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, in their book about the history of wine in Bordeaux, wrote that the early coopers were kept busy making new barrels for each year’s harvest as the previous ones were used to ship the wine to Britain.34 However, considering the effort required for vintners to move 900-litre barrels out of a cellar, on to a cart and down the primitive roads to the Bordeaux port suggests that such a task would have been extremely difficult. Aubin and his colleagues concur, proposing: ‘It is considered, therefore, that the average capacity of the barrel is 200 to 225 litres.’35 While the ports would have had numerous hands for the labour required to shift and transport barrels, the vintner, trying to get his wine to the port, most likely did not.

Second, the Asterix was ‘fully decked’. This would have been essential to avoid swamping in heavy seas. So any cargo of barrels would have been lowered into the hold via a midship hatch and then wrestled into position. I find it difficult to believe that the crew could, or would even attempt to, roll one of these large barrels over others already placed within the hold to doublestack the larger barrels, which would have been necessary to carry the indicated loads.

As a reasonable alternative, if 900-litre barrels were routinely shipped with each vessel, perhaps they were just placed in the hold, near the hatch, with the balance of the hold space filled with smaller barrels, which would have been easier to manoeuvre. This is further supported by Pitt’s research into the Bristol shipping records, which provide historical documentation recording the number of tuns received on various ships.36 As the record of a typical ship, the Facon arrived in Bristol from Bordeaux on 2 March 1574 with ‘50 tuns’ of Bordeaux wine. The record further breaks down these
50 tuns to 35.5 that held good wine, 6.25 tuns containing corrupt wine and 5.75 of tuns that had leaked. As these tuns are delineated with quarter decimals, the figures very likely represent actual 225-litre barrels. Further, these figures add up to only 47.5 tuns. Pitt noted that the remaining 2.5 tuns were ‘other’ cargo – again adding to the idea that these could have been smaller barrels or other items of freight.

Selling wine has always been an erratic business, as today’s winemakers well know. In the Middle Ages another factor contributing to this cyclical nature, with its consequent impact on the need to produce barrels, was the fickleness of the wine-drinking public. In those early days, when beer was the main beverage for the majority of people, wine was still new to many northern Europeans, especially the emerging bourgeois class. The Celtic nobility had acquired a taste for it, but it was most likely out of commoners’ price range. Like many inexperienced wine drinkers today, some probably did not care for the rich, full-bodied wines being grown in Bordeaux, although this heavier style, with its higher alcohol content, was probably favoured by many of the vintners because they were more confident that it could be transported to their customers without serious deterioration.

In addition to the British market, the emerging commercial strength of the Dutch provided a powerful but short-lived marketplace for Bordeaux wine. In general the Dutch preferred sweet white wines, not the typical, heavier Bordeaux styles. Some of Bordeaux’s neighbours to the north, around Cognac, who were growing white grapes, capitalized upon this demand.37 With the Dutch taking a financial interest in some French grape estates and wine-processing operations, they added another twist – distilling the grapes. By 1725, this activity had established the famed Cognac and Armagnac brands. Distilling grapes added worth to otherwise less valuable grapes and surplus crops, reduced shipping costs by lowering the quantity of liquid needed (more bang for the buck, if you will) and ensured that the wines travelled better due to the higher alcohol levels.38

The trade with the Netherlands impacted on Bordeaux vintners, merchants and coopers in several ways. The Dutch were efficient merchants and did not send out empty ships. While wines and Cognac travelled north, filling the ships with other money-making products for the return trip south to pick up more of the French cargo was also a requirement. One of the products that filled the holds was rough barrel staves. The wood was sourced from northern Germany, Poland and from the eastern Baltic seaport of Memel, now Klaipèda, Lithuania. Memel oak continued to figure prominently, even up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as a source of staves, which were sent to Bordeaux coopers and cooperages. But those cooperages who sold to vintners in the Cognac region saw their orders decrease, since fewer barrels were required when the wine was distilled into higher-proof alcohol. As a result of these various difficulties for the Bordelais cooperages, they were able to pressure the Bordeaux city fathers into requiring upstream vintners to ship their wines in barrels smaller than the traditional 225-litre ones used by Bordeaux vintners. Customs agents taxed the wine on the number of barrels, not the volume, that passed through the city.39

London

The major recipient at the end of the Bordeaux wine hose was Britain. Early on, the Roman and Bordeaux region merchants were the prime movers, but by the fourteenth century wine merchants in London and Bristol had taken control of the business and coordinated the shipments.40 Unheralded, but providing the essential container services for the trade, were the coopers on both sides of the Channel: French coopers building barrels for exporting the wine and British coopers who repaired them and kept them sound after the cross-Channel journey, as well as making barrels for shipping other commodities back to France.

By the fourteenth century the city of London was importing a third of Britain’s wine – several million litres of wine per year, which in itself was a significant portion of Britain’s entire import trade.41 Generally the wine came in two major shipment waves, each involving hundreds of ships. Vessels carrying the just-fermented wines sailed in the autumn, akin to the Beaujolais Nouveau affair, while the wines that were allowed to mature, and had been clarified by racking, were shipped early the following year.42 The Bordeaux coopers would be busy, especially during the summer months, preparing barrels for the harvest. At the same time, their London and British counterparts made barrels for salted fish, cheese, butter and meat to be shipped to the Bordeaux wine merchants, who in turn would sell those items, along with English wool and other British exports, into the Gascon market.43 The used wine barrels should not have been reused for the British export commodities as they would adversely have impacted the products, especially the cheese and butter. However, some staves or heads were certainly reused occasionally, and perhaps a few wine barrels were slipped in unbeknownst to the merchants.

Imagine the London dock scene with the arrival of a fleet of wine-delivering ships. With several hundred ships like the Asterix crowding the Thames, such a scene, which was played out for hundreds of years, was designed to be orderly but was undoubtedly chaotic. The designated areas for unloading wine were the old Garlickhithe and Queenhithe wharfs, a few blocks downstream from London Bridge and the site of Billingsgate fish market until 1982.44 Located near this receiving area was Vintners’ Hall, the guild centre of the prestigious Vintners’ Company, the merchants who supervised the massive importation.

In the reign of Henry II (1154–89), ships had to wait before unloading while sheriffs and the king’s chamberlain tasted their way through the barrels aboard each ship – choosing one from before the mast and another aft – to decide which would be selected for the royal cellar.45 In those days the king had the right of prisage, the tradition by which he could take a percentage of a cargo and purchase an additional quantity at a set price for his household and military needs. Prisage predates the more modern system of paying customs and duty taxes.

Once the king’s casks had been designated, the ship was allowed to pull alongside the dock or moor nearby to offload their cargo. A ship’s crew would hoist the barrels and tuns out of the holds to the awaiting wine porters, the paid servants of the wine merchants. If the ship was wharfside, the porters would roll them down ramps to the dock. From ships moored in the river, the porters would ferry the barrels to the wharf in lighters: small, short-haul barges. The barrels would first be placed in the vintners’ wholesale warehouses. Then, upon sale, the porters, for set fees, would distribute the barrels to the royal cellars, to taverns and to individuals who could afford to purchase whole barrels. For destinations only a short distance away, barrels were rolled up the cobbled streets, and for delivery further afield they were loaded onto horse-drawn drays and wagons.

With senior porters, and other assistants to the wine merchants, directing the flow of hundreds of barrels, the labourers grunted and strained to roll the heavy barrels directly onto awaiting carts or place them in rows for future distribution. The shouts of the men, the rumbling of the barrels on the stones and the stomping of the impatient dray horses all would have added to a cacophony of sounds and activity. Inclement weather, especially in a drizzly London winter, must have made the whole event even more muddled.

Invariably some barrels leaked during shipment and would need repair, so amid all this dock activity were several of the London coopers, tools in hand and ready to attend to any problems. Accordingto the hand-manufacturing standards of the day, leakage was acceptable, or at least tolerated; it would be totally unacceptable by today’s standards. London coopers would plug wood leaks with small spiles, conical or wedge-shaped pieces of a softer wood which could be tapped into a hole made by an awl or chisel and which would expand upon contact with the liquid, closing the pores in the wood grain. If the leak was between two staves or two headboards, pieces of waxed string or reed could be pounded into the gap. The coopers’ repair services were also required while wines rested in London cellars awaiting sale and shipment to taverns, upper-class houses or church facilities.

Information about the earliest London coopers is gathered from the limited excavations, a few artefacts and a smattering of historical records. Old documentation describes Cooper’s Row, a small street besides the city wall that which was home to many craftsmen. Strategically located for the coopers’ business, it was just a few blocks from the wine vaults near the Tower of London and the wine and fish trade at the Thames docks.46 Twede suggests that coopers located their shops at this and other industrial sites throughout the city, congregating near the docks, breweries and flour mills, in order to provide packaging services – supplying new barrels and repairing older ones – for the products of those industries. 47 In medieval Europe it was not unusual for a street to take on the name of a trade, in this case ‘cooper’ or occasionally the variation ‘cowper’, as a reflection of the area’s original inhabitants.48 A small remnant of ancient London’s Roman-era fortress wall provides the only historic link to Cooper’s Row; the street itself is now home to several trendy shops, hotels and bars, with the cooperage link remaining in name only.

London’s original, fifteenth-century coopers’ guild-hall was on Basinghall Street, near, but not to be confused with, the Guildhall, London’s first city hall. Unfortunately, over the years, confiscations, fires and Second World War bombing took their toll, and in 1958 a new guildhall for the London coopers’ guild was purchased at 13 Devonshire Square, a late seventeenth-century merchant’s house built on the gardens of the Earl of Devonshire’s townhouse, just a few blocks from Cooper’s Row.49

On Cooper’s Row each cooper would have had a small shop, facing the street, which also served as a showroom.50 The cooper’s living quarters were usually above his shop. If he had an apprentice,the young man would have slept in the shop and eaten with the family. Most of the cooperage bucket and barrel products were built to order, but some common items might have been made for selling from a booth during one of the city’s market days.

Research suggests that medieval coopers in and around places such as London and Bristol were closely associated with the wineselling operations, which were major barrel users, and that such coopers were probably relatively independent craftsmen. The first situation has remained so to this day, while the second has changed slowly with the advent of guilds and, later, the larger, multi-man cooperages.

In those days, quality control was in the hands of the craftsman; it depended upon his pride, his skill and the sharpness of his tools. And, despite the best intentions in all three areas, making a barrel would still have been difficult. Every split, cut and shave of the barrel’s wooden components had to be made solely by hand tools; accuracy would have been difficult, especially with the harder Quercus robur, or English oak, and the equal lack of quality control within the steel and tool-manufacturing operations of the era. What with small shaping and cutting errors due to cruder tools, combined with more difficult conditions of usage (rolling on cobbled streets, lack of consistent climate control and long years of use), barrel leakage was definitely more of a problem than it is today. This would have necessitated coopers being continually available to repair the barrels as they arrived on ships, were loaded on and off wagons and were used in the wine-storage warehouses.

The earliest coopers were also probably a fairly independent lot. However, as the demand for their services increased, and rising incomes brought the taxman to their door, they, like most of the earliest craftsmen, soon realized that they would have more power to control their businesses if they combined into fraternal organizations than if they stood alone. These associations allowed master coopers to maintain the independence of their own shops, as opposed to creating larger, multi- employee cooperages, while also providing political and administrative mechanisms to fend off bureaucratic tax demands, control unscrupulous coopers, en courage minimal standards of barrel capacity and quality for their customers, train apprentices properly and provide for coopers and their families in old age and in the event of accidents or death.51

Within the world of medieval trades, coopers were among the defined crafts conducting business in London, Britain and mainland Europe. By 1196, guild rolls in Leicester listed, in addition to the coopers, the following trades: bakers, butchers, carpenters, cooks, dyers, farriers (blacksmiths), goldsmiths, hosiers (stocking and sock makers), leather workers, leechers (early physicians), masons, mercers (dry-goods merchants), millers, ostlers (horse keepers, particularly at an inn), parchment makers, plumbers, porters, potters, preachers, saddlers, shearers, shoemakers, soapmakers, tailors, tanners, turners (makers of rounded wooden objects), watermen, weavers and wool combers.52 Trade lists in London and Bristol would have included vintners, the merchants who purchased and sold wine.53 While almost all these crafts still exist today in some form or another, thankfully the physician ‘leechers’ have found other methods of healing! As a comparison, the guild rolls of 1363 from Nuremberg, Germany, added only clothiers, locksmiths, coachbuilders, hatters, toolmakers, plasterers, glaziers and painters54 – trades which were probably also encompassed by some of the Leicester guilds.

Despite being one of only about 40 designated crafts, coopers were still a relatively minor group and remained so throughout history. Records indicate that around 1377 there were only twenty coopers in London, out of a city population of 35,000. As the population grew to 60,000 in 1540, about 50 coopers were listed on the tax rolls. By 1640, just at the start of the heyday of sail, still only some 75 coopers were working, out of a population of 300,000.55

Over the following three centuries there was an explosive demand for barrels to contain beer, rum, whale oil, herring, sugar and numerous other commodities, which required the training and engagement of thousands of coopers – but they were still a minority trade group. Since goods such as whale oil have been completely phased out, and the other products have changed their packaging needs, demand for coopers has been reduced to currently no more than 100 coopers in all of the United Kingdom, with similarly small numbers, relatively speaking, in the U.S. and Europe.

Coopers in Mainland Europe

As we’ve discussed, it appears fairly evident that it was Celtic craftsmen who first made barrels. We’ve also seen how they had gradually become part of the everyday scene by the Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe with its plentiful supply of mixed-species trees, and along the way how barrels had become more plentiful as the Romans shipped wine to all parts of Europe and later introduced wine growing into northern Europe.

Records from Germany indicate that vineyards were widespread in the Würzburg region by ad 779.56Würzburg is in central Germany, roughly 100 km southeast of Frankfurt and only about 200 km north of Heuneburg, the ancient Celtic site. As such vineyards became fully developed, with bountiful wood resources nearby and ready markets both domestically and abroad, the cooper’s skills were much in demand for the barrels and tanks utilized in many of the winemaking processes,57 and also extended into making barrels for other products. With aspirations similar to those of their brother coopers in France and Britain, German coopers also wanted to control their products and protect their markets. To do so, they too formed associations. In Würzburg, they were declared professionals in 1373,58 and the tradesman list in Nuremberg included 34 coopers doing business in the city.59

To a lesser extent, coopers and cooperages also existed in Eastern Europe and down on the Iberian Peninsula – wherever the need arose for wine barrels or everyday buckets, tubs and tanks during the medieval period. Coopers in those regions were all feeling the similar growing pains of an expanding industry – cyclic economic periods, finicky customers, inconsistent supplies and shifting alliances.

NOTES

1 Gérard Aubin, Sandrine Lavaud and Philippe Roudié, Bordeaux:Vignoble millénaire (Bordeaux, 1996), p. 9.
2 Ibid.
3 Norman Davies, The Isles (London, 1999), p. 137.
4 Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, Bordeaux, p. 12.
5 Anne Crawford, A History of the Vintners’ Company (London, 1977),p. 16.
6 Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, Bordeaux, p. 12.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Kenneth Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade (Fresno, ca, 1977), p. 97.
10 Diana Twede, ‘The Cask Age: The Technology and History of Wooden Barrels’, Packaging Technology and Science, 18 (2005), p. 256.
11 Bob Dean, ‘A 3rd Century ad Gallo-Roman Trading Vessel from Guernsey aka The St. Peter Port Wreck or “The Asterix Ship”’, www.swan.ac.uk, 2004, accessed 26 September 2012.
12 Peter H. Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 2003), p. 283; and Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 99.
13 Dean, ‘The Asterix Ship’.
14 Leslie Adkins and Roy Adkins, Introduction to the Romans (London, 1991), p. 102.
15 Dean, ‘The Asterix Ship’, p. 12.
16 Twede, ‘The Cask Age’, p. 256.
17 Jean-Paul Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie: De la forêt à la vigne et au vin (2006), http://books.google.co.nz, accessed 15 September 2012, p. 57.
18 Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, Bordeaux, p. 13.
19 Jean-Marc Soyez, Les Ebenistes du Vin, trans. Michael Mills (Lormont, France, 1991), p. 11; and Jean Taransaud, Le livre de la tonnellerie (Paris, 1976). Taransaud notes that the word for the axe to taper the staves is la doloire, while the man who actually uses the axe is le doleur, which has a number of variant spellings: le doileur, le dolleur, le dolleu,le doleure and le doleur, p. 66.
20 Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, Bordeaux, pp. 13, 103; Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, pp. 35–9, 52; and Taransaud, Le livre de la tonnellerie, pp. 72–3, 76–7, 111, 193, 215.
21 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 51.
22 Ibid.
23 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 55.
24 Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 110.
25 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 57.
26 Catherine Rachel Pitt, ‘The Wine Trade in Bristol in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, www.bris.ac.uk, 2006, accessed 20 October 2012,pp. 23–9.
27 Ibid., p. 77.
28 Crawford, A History of the Vintners’ Company, p. 15
29 Ibid.
30 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 57.
31 Pitt, ‘The Wine Trade in Bristol in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, p. 22.
32 See www.newbordeaux.com, accessed 28 March 2012.
33 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 57; and Twede, ‘The Cask Age’, p. 254.
34 Aubin, Lavaud and Roudié, Bordeaux, p. 46.
35 Ibid.
36 Pitt, ‘The Wine Trade in Bristol in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, p. 112.
37 Lacroix, Bois de Tonnellerie, p. 58.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Margery K. James, ‘The Medieval Wine Dealer’, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, x/2 (1957), pp. 45–53.
41 Crawford, A History of the Vintners’ Company, pp. 23–4.
42 James, ‘The Medieval Wine Dealer’, p. 48.
43 Ibid.
44 Crawford, A History of the Vintners’ Company, p. 15.
45 Ibid.
46 Twede, ‘The Cask Age’, p. 258.
47 Ibid.
48 The Worshipful Company of Coopers, www.coopers-hall.co.uk,
accessed 10 January 2012.
49 Ibid.
50 Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 108.
51 Ibid., p. 105.
52 Ibid., p. 106.
53 Crawford, A History of the Vintners’ Company, p. 13.
54 Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 111.
55 Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 127; and Sylvia L.Thrupp,The Merchant Class of Medieval London (1988 [1948]), http://books.google.co.nz, accessed 9 October 2012, pp. 3–4.
56 Taransaud, Le livre de la tonnellerie, p. 213.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade, p. 111.

By Henry H. Work in " Wood, Whiskey and Wine - A History of Barrels",Reaktion Books Ltd, London,2014, excerpts p. 59-80. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

La Reine de Saba, Sindbad le Marin, le Calife de Bagdad, Marco Polo : autant de figures légendaires qui évoquent les mystères de l'Orient fabuleux. Tous ont partie liée aux épices.

1298: Venise et Gênes, sempiternelles rivales, sont en guerre. Au large des côtes dalmates, les Génois prennent l'avantage. Marco Polo, célèbre voyageur revenu de Chine quelque six ans plus tôt, est fait prisonnier. Il va séjourner trois ans dans les geôles génoises. Pour tromper le temps, il raconte à son compagnon de captivité, le notaire Rusticello, de Pise, les mille et une péripéties d'un voyage en Chine qu'il a effectué avec son père et son oncle et qui a duré un quart de siècle. Marco intitule son récit La Description du monde, plus connu par la suite comme Le Livre des merveilles. Cet ouvrage devient vite l'un des « best-sellers » du Moyen ge: cent quarante-trois exemplaires manuscrits nous en sont parvenus, l'imprimerie n'existant pas encore. Sitôt achevé, le livre est traduit dans la plupart des langues romanes de l'époque : en provençal, catalan, toscan, vénitien, aragonais... L'apparition de l'imprimerie, un siècle et demi plus tard, décuple cet énorme succès d'édition. Initialement rédigé en français, il est imprimé en allemand dès 1477, à Nuremberg, puis en vénitien en 1496, et finalement dans notre langue en 1559. Marco a gardé en mémoire, avec une précision surprenante, tout ce qu'il a vu et vécu durant son long voyage et son séjour en Chine. À Khambalika, l'actuelle Pékin, le grand Khan Kubilay, empereur de Chine, lui a même confié certaines tâches ayant trait à l'administration fiscale ou aux missions diplomatiques.

En 1294, alors que les Polo reviennent de Chine, le franciscain Giovani da Montecorvino y arrive après un voyage de cinq ans. Mandé par le pape Nicolas IV auprès du grand Khan, il a reçu mandat d'établir avec lui des relations durables.

Ainsi l'Occident commence à découvrir cette Chine mystérieuse que nul n'avait jusque-là visitée ni parcourue. Certes, les grands empires de l'Ancien Monde étaient déjà en contact, mais par des cascades d'intermédiaires, sans aucune relation directe. En fait, ils s'ignoraient presque totalement. En Occident, l'Histoire s'était déroulée entre Athènes et Rome, Alexandrie et Byzance, Bagdad et Babylone. Au-delà s'étendaient, immenses, des terra incognita marquant les confins du monde connu. Seules en déferlaient parfois, via les steppes slaves, des hordes ravageuses et redoutées. Lorsque les Polo la découvrent, la Chine, de son côté, représente un très ancien et gigantesque empire autarcique placé sous la férule de souverains mongols, coupé et ignoré de l'Occident. Les Romains ne surent rien de la Chine ; aucun jamais n'y mit les pieds ; Pline lui-même en ignore l'existence, alors qu'il cite l'Inde et Ceylan, connus par ouï-dire. Pourtant, à son époque, les épices d'Extrême-Orient arrivaient déjà, via l'Orient méditerranéen, jusque sur la table des citoyens de Rome.

Dans la relation biblique du fameux voyage de la reine de Saba auprès de Salomon, environ mille ans avant notre ère, il est indiqué que « la reine fait présent au roi de quatre tonnes d'or, de pierres précieuses, et d'aromates en telles quantités qu'on n'en a jamais vu autant depuis lors1... » Ces aromates, elle les rapporte de son royaume, l'ancienne Arabie heureuse des Romains, le Yémen d'aujourd'hui. Mais que faut-il entendre au juste par ce terme d'aromates?

Pour les nutritionnistes contemporains, le mot désigne toute substance ajoutée à un aliment ou à une boisson pour en modifier le goût ou l'arôme. À l'époque, le mot « épice », apparu en France vers 1150 et dérivé du latin species, « espèce », n'existait pas encore. Mais, dès l'origine, l'or et les épices sont associés ; ils le resteront à travers l'Histoire comme synonymes des biens les plus précieux.

Il semble néanmoins que la Bible donne une acception plus large au mot « aromates » qu'elle cite notamment dans Le Cantique des cantiques où est évoquée « une oasis de grenadiers emplie d'essences rares, le nard et le safran, le roseau odorant, l'arbre à encens, la myrrhe et l'aloès, le cinnamome, les plus exquis des aromates2». Le cinnamome, qui n'est autre que la cannelle, arrivait donc bien avant notre ère sur le pourtour méditerranéen. Sur l'île de Lesbos, les élèves de la belle Sapho, poétesse du VIIe siècle avant J.-C., se parfumaient d'ailleurs déjà à la cannelle. Les poèmes saphiques mentionnent également le safran, qui poussait en Grèce où ses fleurs mauves et ses stigmates carmin étaient fort utilisés. Ces derniers servaient, avec la cannelle, à aromatiser le vin tandis que ses fleurs étaient tressées en couronne pour honorer les dieux.

À Babylone, le célèbre Nabuchodonosor, ennemi juré des Hébreux, aimait les plats et les vins épicés. Quand Alexandre le Grand pénètre en Perse, en 330 avant J.C., il découvre dans le palais de Darius II, à Persépolis, pas moins de deux cent soixante-dix-sept cuisiniers et de nombreux esclaves exclusivement préposés aux épices.

L'Égypte ancienne a fait elle aussi une grande consommation de plantes médicinales, parfums et aromates offerts en sacrifice aux dieux ou aux hommes pour les honorer, les guérir ou les embaumer. Sa situation géographique favorisait un intense commerce des épices au carrefour des voies terrestres venues de l'Orient lointain et de la mer Rouge, très tôt sillonnée par les boutres arabes.

Les Arabes stockaient en effet les précieux aromates le long de la côte somalienne, ou « Côte des épices ». Certaines préparations complexes bénéficiaient alors d'une large et riche réputation, comme le « métopion », le « crocomagne », le « kifi », le « baume royal », entre autres médications restées légendaires. L'alimentation elle-même était fortement épicée, de même que les boissons (vin, vinaigre, bière). On utilisait pour cela des plantes poussant spontanément en Égypte, mais aussi des épices venues de loin, comme la cannelle et déjà la girofle et la muscade. Le vin à la cannelle était de consommation courante et son usage ne s'est point démenti jusqu'à ce jour où l'on apprécie toujours sangrias et vins chauds.

Les premiers siècles de la civilisation latine étant marqués du sceau de la sobriété et de l'austérité, les Romains n'adoptèrent que très tardivement ces pratiques. De ce point de vue, l'avènement de l'Empire rompt avec le temps de la République. Les épices deviennent alors à la mode, et l'usage du poivre fait fureur. Pline semble le déplorer lorsqu'il écrit dans son Histoire naturelle : « Qui donc osa lancer son usage dans les aliments? Ou qui, pour stimuler son appétit, ne se contenta pas de la diète?»

Sous Tibère, Marcus Gavius Apicius, fin gourmet romain, se taille une grande célébrité par l'extravagance de ses recettes : il propose des langues de paon, de flamant rose ou de rossignol, des tétines de truie et des crêtes de coq ! Aussi richissime que dispendieux, il consume sa fortune en achetant des quantités époustouflantes d'épices dont il fait les accords les plus inattendus. Excellent dans les sucrés-salés, les aigres-doux, les mélanges d'aromates les plus subtils, il se taille un tel succès de curiosité qu'à Rome un apicius signifiait alors un cuisinier. Ses talents culinaires et son originalité lui valurent d'être entouré d'une cour très voyante de jeunes Romains qui finirent par précipiter sa ruine. Sur quoi, dans la meilleure tradition de la Rome antique, il se suicida. Mais il nous a laissé des recettes aussi étonnantes que celle de ce porcelet à la jardinière:

« On désosse le porcelet par le gosier à la façon d'une outre. On le garnit de poulet haché, de quenelles de grive, de becfigues, de ses abats en hachis, de saucisses de Lucani, de dattes dénoyautées [...], d'escargots sans leur coquille, de mauve, de bettes, de poireaux, de céleri, de brocoli bouilli, de coriandre, de poivre en grains et de pignons. On ajoute par-dessus 15 œufs et du garum au poivre. Le porcelet revenu et rôti au four est alors fendu par le dos et arrosé d'une sauce composée d'huile d'olive, de vin paillé, de miel, de garum, de poivre et de rue.»

Le garum est une sauce produite par la décomposition de viscères de poissons exposés au soleil pendant deux mois ; elle évoque le traditionnel nuoc-mâm de la cuisine vietnamienne. L'addition préalable de sel limite la prolifération de la flore bactérienne et favorise sa conservation. Quant au vin paillé, il est obtenu avec du raisin récolté avant maturité et exposé sur un lit de paille où il achève de mûrir.

En art culinaire, l'imagination d'Apicius est sans limite. Voici encore son célèbre condiment, le conditum mirabile :

« Dans un cratère de bronze allant au feu, on verse 2 sétiers de vin et 15 livres de miel (soit 3,3 litres de vin et environ 5 kg de miel). Par chauffage, on réduit le volume en remuant, mais on arrête l'ébullition par addition de vin frais. Après refroidissement, on chauffe à nouveau à plusieurs reprises. Puis, le lendemain, on écume et on aromatise avec du poivre broyé (4 onces, soit environ 120 g), 3 scrupules (3,5 g) de résine de lentisque en poudre, un dragme (environ 6 g) de safran et autant de malabâtre, 5 dattes ramollies dans du vin, les noyaux de celles-ci grillés, et du vin, encore du vin (18 setiers, soit environ 28 litres). Puis on chauffe à nouveau jusqu'à ébullition. »

Le conditum mirabile se consommait chaud ou froid... et consommait lui-même, comme on voit, de grandes quantités d'épices et de vin. Un vin fortement poivré.

Certes, à Rome, les épices n'étaient pas accessibles à toutes les bourses, mais chacun pouvait en humer les effluves en parcourant la Via piperatica, la rue du Poivre, où figurait sur les étals leur riche mosaïque aux multiples couleurs et aux fragrances puissantes ou délicates, tout près du forum de Trajan.

Lorsque les Romains conquièrent la Gaule, ils y trouvent des habitudes alimentaires peu raffinées. Seul le safran y est alors utilisé pour assaisonner les mets. Mais Rome y introduit bientôt ses propres usages culinaires qui s'y répandent rapidement, notamment l'usage du garum dans sa version parfumée à la cardamome, au cumin, à la menthe et au poivre. Quant aux vins, ils sont souvent aromatisés à l'absinthe.

Rome menacée par les Barbares, le poivre devient une nouvelle monnaie d'échange. Après le sac de 410, Alaric, roi des Wisigoths, exige que l'Empereur lui paie chaque année un tribut de 300 livres de poivre. Puis l'Empire romain s'effondre et le commerce des épices cesse brutalement en Occident. Constantinople prend alors le relais et, profitant du déclin d'Alexandrie, devient l'épicentre de ce marché. On dit qu'on y raffolait de la muscade.

Après un relatif déclin durant la période mérovingienne, les épices abondent de nouveau sur les tables des seigneurs et notables occidentaux, mais aussi, semble-t-il, dans certains monastères, comme le laisse penser Bède le Vénérable, célèbre théologien anglais qui abandonne, à sa mort en 735, une impressionnante collection d'épices et de substances voisines. La liste nous en est parvenue : poivre, sucre, raisins secs, lavande, anis, sarrasin, cannelle, girofle, cumin, coriandre, cardamome, cyperus, gingembre, gromic, réglisse, pruneaux.

Puis, dans le célèbre Capitulaire de Villis, faussement attribué à Charlemagne mais établi en réalité à la demande de son fils Louis, figure la liste de soixante et onze plantes à cultiver dans tous les domaines impériaux. Naturellement, les épices d'origine exotique en sont exclues, mais l'on y trouve l'anis, l'aneth, la sauge, le romarin, la sarriette, la menthe, le persil et la livèche.

Le grand nombre de jours maigres imposés par l'Église favorise la consommation du poisson, tandis que les huîtres, si appréciées des Romains, disparaissent complètement. Déjà à cette époque, la marée voyage. Pêchés dans la Loire, saumons et lamproies sont expédiés au loin dans une sorte de gelée parfumée de girofle, de gingembre et de diverses espèces d'herbes. Le poisson est ensuite accommodé sur les tables seigneuriales avec du persil, de la sauge, du vinaigre, du gingembre, de la cannelle, du poivre, de la girofle, des graines de paradis, du safran et de la noix de muscade.

Ainsi juge-t-on désormais son hôte à la finesse de ses mets et à la diversité de ses épices qui deviennent un véritable signe extérieur de richesse. Sous le règne de Philippe Auguste, Jean de Hauteville note :

« Entre les condiments, il préfère les plus coûteux ; car la dépense fait le mérite de la table et le prix des mets en augmente la saveur. Pour trouver des assaisonnements, pour rassembler des épices, on explore l'univers entier... »

Encore faut-il se souvenir que les mauvaises conditions de conservation des aliments et la relative pauvreté des produits disponibles expliquent aussi cet engouement. Sur la table du quidam, pois, fèves, légumes secs et racines constituaient alors l'essentiel de la nourriture. Faute de système de réfrigération, les viandes se gâtaient et les sauces épicées devaient en masquer le goût faisandé.

Il semble qu'à cette époque le gingembre domine, suivi par la cannelle, le safran, puis le clou de girofle. Présentes dans les sauces, mais aussi dans les confitures, les pâtisseries, les consommés, les dragées, les épices confèrent à ces différents mets leurs saveurs chaudes et brûlantes.

Dans un fameux ouvrage de Guillaume Tirel, dit Taillevent, cuisinier de Charles V, paru vers 1380, Le Viandier, figure un grand nombre de recettes toutes fort épicées. (Le titre du recueil prête aujourd'hui à confusion : jusqu'au XVIIe siècle, le mot viande désigne en effet les aliments en général ; il dérive du latin populaire vivandia, ce qui sert à la vie. De vivandia il nous reste la « vivandière », alias la cuisinière du régiment.) Le Viandier, qui connaît un énorme succès avant même l'invention de l'imprimerie, mais surtout après, propose bon nombre de mets épicés, tels le brouet à la cannelle, les venaisons aux clous de girofle ou le consommé de poulaille au cumin.

En 1393 paraît un autre livre, Le Mesnagier de Paris, qu'un homme d'âge mûr rédige pour sa jeune épouse. De l'art de choisir judicieusement ses domestiques au souci d'accomplir ses devoirs religieux et conjugaux – les deux allant de pair -, l'auteur passe en revue tout ce qui permettra de conduire dans la paix et la sérénité la vie du ménage. Bien entendu, les recettes de cuisine ne manquent pas et les épices y tiennent une place prépondérante. La moutarde y apparaît déjà et on note qu'« en hiver, tomates et sauces doivent être plus fortes qu'en été ». L'auteur du Ménagier innove en préconisant des mélanges d'épices desséchées que l'on allongera, le moment venu, par l'addition de verjus, de vinaigre et d'huile. Il n'y manque plus que la salade, dont la mode, introduite d'Italie, se propagera à la toute fin du Moyen Âge.

Dans les banquets, les vins aromatiques coulent à flots et l'hypocras, vin de cannelle, est souvent concurrencé par le vin au gingembre préconisé par Nostradamus, par ailleurs grand amateur de confitures. Par extension, les confitures sont aussi considérées bientôt comme des épices, de même que les confiseries, les compotes, les pains parfumés qui agrémentent les tables aristocratiques. Les croisades ayant amorcé l'entrée massive des épices exotiques sur les tables européennes, celles-ci occupent désormais tout le terrain. Viande, pain, vin, légumes, poisson, pâtisseries, tout est épicé. L'époque voit aussi apparaître le bien-nommé pain d'épices, à base de miel.

La Renaissance ne demeure pas en reste ; les mets épicés aux aromates d'Orient y tiennent toujours le haut du pavé. Les livres de recettes se multiplient ; les « lymassons qu'on dit escargots », les « es-crevisses », les « renouilles » et autres seiches n'y sont pas oubliés, toujours rehaussés de condiments appropriés.

Puis, au XVIIe siècle, apparaissent de grandes nouveautés : via l'Espagne, l'Amérique nous offre le chocolat ; d'Asie nous vient le thé, et d'Afrique le café.

Si les épices coûtaient cher aux cuisiniers et aux amateurs, elles enrichissaient en revanche la corporation des épiciers dont la profession fut sévèrement réglementée par une ordonnance édictée en 1484 par Charles VIII. Une stricte hiérarchie fut alors instaurée. Au sommet, les « pébriers souberants » (poivriers souverains), qui étaient des épiciers en gros ; ils régentaient les petits épiciers, les épiciers « ciergiers » et les épiciers apothicaires qui partageaient avec les premiers le droit de vendre épices exotiques et plantes entrant dans la fabrication des remèdes. Cette ambiguïté entretint pendant des siècles une rivalité sévère entre épiciers et apothicaires qui entendaient bien faire respecter leur propre statut, lequel, de siècle en siècle et de procès en procès, aboutit au monopole actuel des pharmaciens. Ainsi les apothicaires gagnèrent-ils successivement contre les chandeliers pour la vente du suif, contre les huiliers pour la vente de l'huile d'olive, contre les distillateurs pour la vente d'eau-de-vie, et même contre les vinaigriers et les fruitiers. Ils perdirent en revanche en 1777 la charge de vérifier les poids et balances, qui resta la prérogative des épiciers.

Quant à ces derniers, ils faisaient partie des six corps marchands, eux aussi soigneusement hiérarchisés, avec à leur tête les drapiers, puis les épiciers, les merciers, les pelletiers, les bonnetiers et les orfèvres. Devenir épicier n'était pas à la portée du premier venu. Pour acquérir le droit de vendre le moindre grain de poivre, la moindre écorce de cannelle, il fallait trois ans d'apprentissage et trois ans de compagnonnage. Après cette formation, le candidat au grade d'épicier prêtait serment en grande pompe devant le procureur du Roi et recevait ses titres de maîtrise revêtus de la signature des trois gardes apothicaires et des trois gardes épiciers, vénérables personnages équivalant à nos actuels présidents des conseils de l'Ordre.

Les apothicaires subirent un rude revers lorsque, le 11 juillet 1742, un arrêté établit entre les épiciers et eux une nécessaire coopération, ceux-là étant désormais autorisés à vendre non seulement les drogues simples, mais aussi les « grandes compositions foraines » tels que la thériaque, véritable panacée de l'époque, et le mithridate dont les vertus de contrepoison n'étaient plus à démontrer.

Épiciers et apothicaires étaient réputés pour leur âpreté au gain. Henri Leclerc nous rapporte qu'au XVe siècle, dans un Mystère de la Passion, deux personnages sont mis en scène, l'un épicier, l'autre appartenant au troisième corps marchand, le mercier : « On vient de descendre Jésus de la croix et il s'agit, pour l'ensevelir, de se procurer "un bon suaire et un bon oignement". Un mercier à qui Joseph d'Arimatie va demander le premier de ces objets, après avoir fait la nomenclature de tous les articles que contient sa boutique, offre un « sydoine », que Joseph accepte et dont il demande le prix. Mais le mercier, sachant que c'est "pour le prophète ensevelir" fait preuve d'autant de "dévocion" que de désintéressement en refusant tout paiement. Bien différente est la conduite de l'épicier chez lequel les saintes femmes sont allées chercher l'oignement : de même que le mercier, il commence par faire l'article en énumérant tous les produits qui se trouvent dans son officine. Puis il vante son "oignement", qu'il déclare "moult précieux" et doué de toutes sortes de vertus extraordinaires. Magdeleine a hâte d'en prendre possession, aussi ne songe-t-elle nullement à marchander. L'épicier lui demande ce qu'elle en veut faire... Apprenant que c'est pour oindre le corps de Jésus, il en fixe le prix à 20 livres tournois, ce qui représente une somme énorme. Magdeleine ne trouve pas que ce soit trop cher ; elle paie sans aucune observation3.»

Les épiciers s'enrichissaient, mais aussi les magistrats, notamment aux dépens des plaideurs, car il était d'usage au Moyen ge d'offrir à ces derniers des présents de grand prix. Dès qu'ils avaient obtenu gain de cause, les justiciables les rémunéraient en épices, coutume qui ne tarda pas à dégénérer en abus, les juges ayant transformé ce qui n'était au départ qu'un cadeau offert par gratitude en une incontournable obligation. Lorsque, au XVe siècle, un incendie ravagea le palais de justice de Paris, ce quatrain satirique circula :

« Certes, ce fut un triste jeu quand à Paris Dame Justice pour avoir mangé trop d'épices se mit tout le palais en feu...»

Les épices étant des espèces - végétales, s'entend -, il était inéluctable que le paiement en épices finît par se transformer en paiement en espèces - sonnantes et trébuchantes, cette fois!

À partir du XVIIe siècle, une nette évolution se fait sentir en faveur des condiments à base d'épices, mais de composition complexe. Dans le même temps, l'abus tend à diminuer et la saveur des mets à s'imposer d'elle-même. Les épices en quelque sorte se spécialisent : cannelle et gingembre, par exemple, sont désormais réservés aux seuls aliments sucrés.

Le XIXe siècle est marqué par l'œuvre de Brillat-Savarin qui consacre relativement peu de place aux épices. Tout se déroule comme si celles-ci étaient passées de mode, ce qui ne signifie nullement que la bonne chère ne fût pas toujours recherchée. Talleyrand, par exemple, en fait un argument de sa diplomatie ; son maître queux était particulièrement porté sur l'estragon, qu'il préférait aux épices exotiques. À peu près à la même époque, Napoléon faisait preuve au contraire d'une robuste rusticité, expédiant ses repas en un petit quart d'heure...

Aujourd'hui, si l'Orient continue à faire une énorme consommation d'épices – il suffit de vivre ou séjourner en Inde pour le constater -, l'Occident a quelque peu délaissé ces saveurs fortes, tant prisées au Moyen Age. Ainsi, sauf exception, le vin a cessé d'être épicé, ce privilège restant réservé à certaines liqueurs et à tels ou tels apéritifs. De même le pain d'épices a conservé son attrait malgré un relatif discrédit déjà constaté par Henri Leclerc dans son ouvrage sur les épices daté de 1929.

Pourtant, au cours des toutes dernières décennies, la recherche du dépaysement, la curiosité pour les autres cultures ont relancé le goût des épices : dans les demeures et les appartements, rares sont désormais les cuisines qui ne s'agrémentent de la traditionnelle série de petits pots à épices qui firent le charme des commerces de jadis. Pour les amateurs d'exotisme que nous sommes, mais toujours très à cheval sur la « bonne bouffe », les épices sont de retour!

NOTES

1. 1 Rois,10,10.

2. Ct 4,13-14.

3. Henri Leclerc, Les Épices, Masson, 1929.

Par Jean-Marie Pelt dans "Les Épices", Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2002,chapitre premier. Adapté pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa.

Les emblèmes

La symbolique animale que ces documents associent aux étapes successives de la conquête témoigne d'une intégration immédiate du Mythe à l'Histoire. On a déduit une origine totémique de religion de l'existence dès l'époque prédynastique de ces emblèmes qui se perpétuent tout au long de la civilisation pour représenter les provinces composant le pays (Moret : 1923). Leur caractère symbolique est manifeste : un oryx sur un pavois, par exemple, représente la région de Béni Hassan, un lièvre la province voisine d'Achmounein, un dauphin celle de Mendès, etc. Il est tentant de voir là le résultat de la fédération d'un ensemble géographique ou tribal, réalisé autour d'une divinité dont l'emblème reproduit le symbole (flèches et bouclier de la déesse Neïth pour Saïs, sceptre-ouas pour Thèbes, reliquaire du chef d'Osiris pour Abydos), ou matérialisé par une structure politique (« Muraille Blanche » figurant l'enceinte de Memphis, ou « Terre de l'Arc » désignant la marche de Basse Nubie, ajoutée par voie de conquête au pays).

On a ainsi supposé que chacune de ces enseignes représentait la première étape de la constitution politique du pays : le groupe humain de base, quel qu'il ait été, s'identifie à son totem qui représentait la puissance divine dominant localement. Cette phase constitutive suppose une cosmologie qui rende un compte satisfaisant de la hiérarchie des puissances constatée de façon empirique. En d'autres termes, une fédération divine locale a dû se former autour d'un démiurge, qu'on retrouve dans des « familles » divines honorées dans chaque capitale de province. Le lieu de la fédération se constitue ainsi autour d'un espace sacré marqué par le temenos divin, auquel se superpose celui du pouvoir dont il est le fondement : la Muraille Blanche ou le Reliquaire d'Osiris.

La géographie religieuse a fixé ces canons en délimitant avec précision leur place dans l'ensemble dont ils sont devenus les parties et en leur reconnaissant localement une place décalquée sur le système universel dans lequel ils s'intègrent : chaque dieu se voit attribuer, à la tête de sa propre famille, le rôle que le créateur universel joue à celle du panthéon. D'où une grande similitude dans l'organisation matérielle du culte et de ses lieux, quelle que soit la divinité.

L'explication totémique de la religion n'est pas pleinement satisfaisante, d'abord parce que le système égyptien ne regroupe pas tous les éléments du totémisme. Elle cadre mal également avec l'anthropomorphisation et le passage à l'abstraction des cosmologies de l'époque historique ou le délicat problème de l'hypostase, qui est au cœur du système théocratique (Assmann : 1984). Cela n'empêche pas certains points de convergence avec des conceptions totémiques, essentiellement africaines, sans que l'on puisse parler pour autant d'emprunts structurels à ces systèmes.

Les cosmologies

Les cosmologies sont au nombre de trois, mais on peut dire qu'elles représentent des variations politiques sur un seul et même thème : la création par le soleil à partir de l'élément liquide, dont la crue annuelle du Nil a fourni l'archétype. Le premier système est celui élaboré à Héliopolis, l'ancienne ville sainte où les pharaons venaient autrefois faire reconnaître leur pouvoir, devenue aujourd'hui un quartier du Caire. La cosmologie héliopolitaine est la première parce qu'historiquement la plus ancienne, mais aussi parce que les théologiens ne cesseront d'y revenir au fil des siècles.

Elle décrit la création selon un schéma dont elle partage les grandes lignes avec ses rivales. Au début était le Noun, l'élément liquide incontrôlé, que l'on traduit souvent par « chaos ». Il ne s'agit pas d'un élément négatif, mais simplement d'une masse incréée, inorganisée et contenant en elle les germes possibles de la vie. Cet élément ne disparaît d'ailleurs pas après la création : il reste cantonné aux franges du monde organisé, qu'il menace d'envahir périodiquement si l'équilibre de l'univers vient à être rompu. Il est le séjour des forces négatives, toujours promptes à intervenir et, d'une manière plus générale, de tout ce qui échappe aux catégories de l'univers. Les âmes en peine, par exemple, qui n'ont pas bénéficié des rites funéraires appropriés, ou les enfants mort-nés, qui n'ont jamais eu la force suffisante pour accéder au monde sensible, y flottent, comme des noyés à la dérive.

C'est de ce chaos qu'est issu le soleil, dont on ne connaît pas l'origine, puisqu'« il est venu à l'existence de lui-même ». Son apparition se fait sur une butte de terre recouverte de sable vierge émergeant hors de l'eau et se matérialise par la présence d'une pierre levée, le benben, qui est l'objet d'un culte dans le temple d'Héliopolis, considéré comme le lieu même de la création. La butte de terre évoque clairement le tell émergeant des flots au plus fort des hautes eaux du fleuve, et le benben la pétrification du rayon de soleil, adorée sous l'apparence d'un obélisque tronqué posé sur une plate-forme. Ce dieu qui est son propre créateur est alternativement Rê, le soleil proprement dit, Atoum, l'Être achevé par excellence, ou encore Khepri, que l'on représentait sous la forme d'un scarabée et dont le nom signifie « transformation », à l'image de celle que l'on croyait voir accomplir au bousier qui roulait sa pilule sur les chemins.

Le démiurge tire la création de sa propre semence : en se masturbant, il met au monde un couple, le dieu Chou, le Sec, et la déesse Tefnout, l'Humide, dont le nom, évocateur, désigne le crachat, autre forme d'expulsion de la substance divine, si l'on en croit la légende d'Isis et de Rê. De l'union du Sec et de l'Humide naît un deuxième couple : le Ciel, Nout, et la Terre, Geb, une femme et un homme. Le Ciel et la Terre ont quatre enfants : Isis et Osiris, Seth et Nephtys. Cette ennéade divine répartie sur quatre générations fait le lien entre la création et les hommes. Les deux dernières générations introduisent, en effet, le règne humain en intégrant la légende osirienne, modèle de la passion qui est le lot des mortels. Le second couple est stérile. Le premier, qui est fertile, constitue le prototype de la famille royale : Osiris, roi d'Égypte, est traîtreusement assassiné par son frère Seth — qui représente donc la contrepartie négative et violente de la force organisatrice symbolisée par le pharaon. Il s'empare de son trône après sa mort. Isis, modèle de l'épouse et de la veuve, aidée par sa sœur Nephtys, reconstitue le corps dépecé de son mari. Anubis, le chacal né, dit-on, des amours illégitimes de Nephtys avec Osiris, vient à son secours pour embaumer le roi défunt. Puis elle donne le jour à un fils posthume, Horus, homonyme du dieu solaire d'Edfou et, comme lui, incarné dans un faucon. Elle le cache dans les marais du Delta, à proximité de la ville sainte de Bouto, avec la complicité de la déesse Hathor, la vache nourricière. L'enfant grandit, et, après une longue lutte contre son oncle Seth, obtient du tribunal des dieux présidé par son grand-père Geb d'être réintégré dans l'héritage de son père qui, lui, se voit confier le royaume des morts...

Sur ce schéma du règne des dieux se greffent de nombreuses légendes secondaires ou complémentaires que les théologiens ont multipliées à plaisir pour introduire une divinité locale, embellir son rôle dans la cosmologie ou assurer la fusion syncrétique de plusieurs ensembles. Il en résulte une imbrication complexe de mythes se recoupant souvent entre eux qui mettent tous en scène des dieux régnant sur la terre et soumis aux passions humaines. Il y est peu question de la création même des hommes, qui semble contemporaine de celle du monde, à une seule exception près : la légende « de l'œil de Rê ». Le Soleil perd son œil. Il envoie ses enfants, Chou et Tefnout, à la recherche du fugitif, mais le temps passe sans que ceux-ci reviennent. Il décide donc de remplacer l'absent. Entre-temps, l'œil fugitif revient et se voit remplacé. De rage, il se met à pleurer, et de ses larmes (remout) naissent les hommes (remet). Rê le transforme alors en cobra et l'accroche à son front : il est l'uraeus chargé de foudroyer les ennemis du dieu. L'aspect anecdotique de la création des hommes est ici très exceptionnel, et l'on peut supposer que cette origine est avant tout due au jeu de mots, trop tentant pour le théologien, entre le nom des larmes et celui de l'humanité.

Le thème de l'œil endommagé ou remplacé connaît plusieurs développements : il sert aussi à expliquer la naissance de la lune, second œil de Rê confié à Thot, le dieu scribe à tête d'ibis, ou œil « sain » d'Horus. Celui-ci, en effet, perdit un œil lors du combat qui l'opposa à Seth pour la possession du royaume d'Égypte; Thot le lui aurait rendu et en aurait fait le prototype de l'intégrité physique. C'est la raison pour laquelle il figure d'ordinaire sur les cercueils où il garantit au mort le plein usage de son corps.

Rê, le roi des dieux, doit lutter pour conserver un pouvoir que tentent de lui ravir chaque nuit lors de sa course dans l'au-delà des ennemis acharnés conduits par Apophis, personnification des forces négatives. Horus, à la tête des harponneurs de la barque divine, l'aide à les vaincre, consacrant ainsi une nouvelle contamination des mythes solaire et osirien. Les tentatives menées contre le roi des dieux prennent parfois un tour plus inattendu. C'est, par exemple, Isis, la Grande Magicienne, qui essaie de prendre pouvoir sur Rê en le faisant mordre par un serpent façonné dans l'argile mouillée de la salive que le dieu, devenu un vieillard débile, laisse échapper de sa bouche en partant le matin éclairer l'univers. Le roi divin est saisi par la propre puissance issue de son corps : pour être sauvé, il doit révéler à celle qui a créé ce charme le secret de son énergie vitale — les noms de ses kaou. C'était le but poursuivi par Isis qui voulait ainsi prendre pouvoir sur lui en apprenant ses noms secrets... Sans doute le vieux dieu arrive-t-il à déjouer le piège de la sorcière; mais le texte est interrompu, et on ne connaît pas la fin de l'histoire.

L'Égypte possède, elle aussi, le mythe de la révolte des hommes contre leur créateur, qui décide alors, sur le conseil de l'assemblée des dieux, de les détruire. Il envoie pour cela sur terre son œil sous la forme de la déesse Hathor, messagère de son courroux. Celle-ci dévore en un jour une partie de l'humanité puis s'endort. Rê, jugeant la punition suffisante, répand dans la nuit de la bière qui, mêlée aux eaux du Nil, a l'apparence du sang. A son réveil, la déesse lape ce breuvage et s'écroule, terrassée par l'ivresse. L'humanité est sauvée, mais Rê, déçu par elle, décide de se retirer dans le ciel, sur le dos de la vache céleste qui sera soutenue par le dieu Chou. Il remet l'administration de la terre à Thot et les serpents, insignes de la royauté, à Geb. Ainsi se trouve consommée la séparation des dieux et des hommes, chacun se voyant assigner sa place dans l'univers, qui connaît désormais l'espace et la durée — djet et neheh. Cette légende du courroux apaisé rappelle celle de la Déesse Lointaine : une lionne furieuse terrorisait la Nubie. Un messager de son père Rê la ramena, apaisée, en Égypte, sous l'apparence d'une chatte dont le Soleil fit sa gardienne.

La cosmologie héliopolitaine, on le voit, l'emporte en s'assimilant les principaux mythes du pays. Mais elle n'est pas la seule. La ville d'Hermopolis, aujourd'hui Achmounein, à environ trois cents kilomètres au sud du Caire, qui était la capitale du XVe nome de Haute-Égypte, a élaboré sa propre cosmologie, qui fut un temps rivale de celle d'Héliopolis. Elle prend le problème à rebours de cette dernière : le soleil n'y est pas le premier, mais le dernier maillon de la chaîne. Le point de départ est le même : un chaos liquide incréé, dans lequel s'ébattent quatre couples de grenouilles et de serpents qui assemblent leurs forces pour créer et déposer un œuf sur une butte émergeant hors de l'eau. Ces couples sont chacun composés d'un élément et de sa parèdre : Noun et Naunet, l'océan primordial qu'Héliopolis intègre, comme nous l'avons vu, dans son propre système, Heh et Hehet, l'eau qui cherche sa voie, Kekou et Keket, l'obscurité, et, enfin, Amon, le dieu caché et sa parèdre Amaunet. Par la suite, lorsque le dernier élément de l'ogdoade, Amon, deviendra le dieu dynastique, le clergé thébain se chargera de reconstituer une « famille » au schéma plus humain, assurant, comme celle d'Héliopolis, la transition entre la création et le règne humain.

es systèmes héliopolitain et hermopolitain, ainsi que les grands mythes populaires comme celui d'Osiris, présentent des éléments tirés du substrat profond de la civilisation, dont certains ont des résonances dans les civilisations africaines : Anubis rappelle le chacal incestueux au rôle prométhéen antérieur aux Nommos chez les Dogons du Mali, dont la cosmogonie repose également sur huit dieux fondateurs. On pourrait, d'ailleurs, multiplier ce type de rapprochements : Amon est, ici comme là, le bélier d'or céleste, au front orné de cornes-crochet et d'une calebasse évoquant le disque solaire; Osiris rappelle le Lébé, dont la résurrection est annoncée par la repousse du mil, tandis que, plus profondément encore et au-delà du verbe créateur, l'individu est composé d'une âme et d'une énergie vitale (Griaule : 1966, 28-31; 113-120; 66; 194 sq.), que les Égyptiens appelaient ba et ka...

Du Mythe à l'Histoire

La troisième cosmogonie est, elle, beaucoup plus achevée d'un point de vue théologique. Nous la connaissons par un document unique, tardif puisqu'il date du règne du souverain kouchite Chabaka, à la charnière du VIIe et du VIe siècle avant notre ère : une grande dalle de granit provenant du temple de Ptah à Memphis et conservée au British Museum. Elle se présente comme la copie d'un ancien papyrus « mangé aux vers » et combine les éléments des deux précédentes tout en reconnaissant au dieu local, Ptah, le rôle du démiurge. On pourrait même dire que ce sont les éléments héliopolitains et osiriens qui dominent, avec toutefois une recherche très nette de l'abstraction dans la formulation du mécanisme de la création qui se fait par l'exercice combiné de la pensée et du verbe.

Ce texte date manifestement de l'Ancien Empire, période où Memphis joua le premier rôle national, et sans doute même de la Ve dynastie, c'est-à-dire de l'époque où la doctrine héliopolitaine l'a définitivement emporté. C'est également de la Ve dynastie que date le premier document connu d'un autre type, dont le but est, explicitement, de rendre compte de la continuité qui lie les hommes aux dieux : la Pierre de Palerme.

Elle appartient à la catégorie des annales, qui nous sont parvenues en relativement grand nombre sous la forme de listes royales agrémentées ou non de commentaires. La plus célèbre est l'œuvre de Manéthon, un prêtre de Sébennytos (aujourd'hui Samanoud sur la rive occidentale de la branche de Damiette dans le Delta) qui vivait à l'époque grecque, sous le règne des deux premiers Ptolémées. C'est lui qui a déterminé le découpage de la chronologie historique en trente dynasties, depuis l'unification du pays par Ménès, auquel on a assimilé Narmer, jusqu'à la conquête macédonienne. Ses Aegyptiaca ne nous sont, malheureusement, parvenues que de façon très fragmentaire à travers des œuvres tardives (Helck : 1956). Les listes antérieures datent presque toutes de l'époque ramesside. La plus importante est un papyrus rédigé sous le règne de Ramsès II conservé au Musée de Turin, sur lequel Champollion fut le premier à travailler, et qui porte une liste organisée par dynasties allant des origines au Nouvel Empire. C'est sans doute d'une liste de ce type que se sont inspirées les « tables » comme celles de la « Chambre des Ancêtres » de Karnak, aujourd'hui au Louvre, ou du temple funéraire de Séthi Ier à Abydos, celle que l'on a retrouvée à Saqqara dans le tombeau de Tounroï, un contemporain de Ramsès II, et d'autres de moindre ampleur (Grimal : 1986, 597 sq.).

La Pierre de Palerme est une plaque de pierre noire fragmentaire donnant la liste des rois depuis Aha, le premier souverain de la Ire dynastie, et au moins jusqu'au troisième de la Ve dynastie, Néferirkarê. Malheureusement, ce document est incomplet et de provenance inconnue : il est entré au Musée de Palerme par legs en 1877, et, depuis, six nouveaux fragments sont apparus dans le commerce, qui sont conservés maintenant au Musée du Caire et à l'University College de Londres. On a mis en doute leur authenticité et leur appartenance même à la Pierre de Palerme, et une vive controverse se développe à leur sujet depuis presque un siècle.

Les fragments du Caire énumèrent des rois qui, au début, portent alternativement la couronne de Haute et de Basse-Égypte. Manéthon et le Canon de Turin, présentent, eux, tout en conservant la structure annalistique, une formulation cosmologique des origines : l'intégration du Mythe à l'Histoire se fait par le recours à l'ge d'Or, pendant lequel les dieux ont régné sur terre. Les listes royales reproduisent les données des cosmogonies et plus particulièrement de celle de Memphis : au départ se trouve le fondateur, Ptah, dont le rôle est ici proche de celui de Chnoum, le potier qui a créé l'humanité sur son tour, façonnant le réceptacle de l'étincelle divine dans le matériau depuis toujours à la disposition de l'homme : l'argile. Rê lui succède. Soleil qui crée la vie en dissipant les ténèbres, il est le prototype de la royauté, qu'il cédera à Chou, l'air, séparateur de la Terre et du Ciel.

Ainsi sont mis en place les temps principaux de la création. Les compilateurs grecs de Manéthon ne s'y sont pas trompés, qui ont vu dans Ptah Héphaïstos, le dieu forgeron, et dans Rê Hélios, le soleil. Chou et son successeur Geb, la Terre, se partagent le rôle de Kronos et de Zeus chez Diodore de Sicile, qui reconnaît ainsi en Geb le père des hommes. On voit que l'Histoire est un prolongement du Mythe et qu'il n'existe, pour les Égyptiens, aucune solution de continuité entre les dieux et les hommes : leur société est une reproduction quotidienne de la création et se doit, en tant que telle, de refléter l'ordre du cosmos à tous ses niveaux. Son mode de constitution suit donc volontairement celui de l'univers, ce qui n'est pas sans influencer les analyses contemporaines qui en sont faites.

Osiris succède à Geb, et, après l'usurpation de Seth, Horus monte sur son trône. Le Canon de Turin donne ensuite une séquence de trois dieux : Thot, dont nous avons vu plus haut le rôle, Maât, et un Horus dont le nom est perdu... Maât tient une place à part dans le panthéon : elle n'est pas, à proprement parler, une déesse, mais plutôt une entité abstraite. Elle représente l'équilibre auquel l'univers est arrivé grâce à la création, c'est-à-dire sa conformité à la vérité de sa nature. En tant que telle, elle est la mesure de toutes choses, de la justice à l'intégration de l'âme du mort dans l'ordre universel lors du jugement dernier. Elle lui sert alors de contrepoids pour équilibrer sa pesée sur la balance de Thot. Elle est également la nourriture des dieux, auxquels elle apporte son harmonie. Ainsi, le règne de Maât est l'ge d'Or que chaque souverain va entreprendre de faire régner à nouveau en affrontant les forces négatives traditionnelles qui cherchent chaque jour à entraver la course du soleil : Maât est le point de départ d'une histoire cyclique.

Neuf dieux leur succèdent, qu'Eusèbe assimile aux héros grecs. Ils assurent, comme ceux-ci, la transition vers le pouvoir des fondateurs humains : les « âmes » (akhou) d'Hiérakonpolis, Bouto et Héliopolis, dont la série se clôt par les « compagnons d'Horus ». Sans doute faut-il voir là le reflet des luttes qui ont conduit à l'unification du pays, et pour lesquelles le Canon de Turin reconnaît plusieurs lignées locales. Il distingue clairement le premier « roi de Haute et Basse-Égypte»

(nysout-bity) Meni, dont il répète deux fois le nom, mais avec une différence d'importance : la première fois, il l'écrit avec un déterminatif humain, la seconde, avec un déterminatif divin (Gardiner : 1959, pl. I; Malek, BIFAO 68 (1982), 95). Ce Meni — Ménès chez Ératosthène et Manéthon — est-il, comme on le pense généralement, Narmer, ou simplement une façon de désigner, comme c'est l'habitude dans les textes, « quelqu'un » en général dont on a perdu le nom ? On penserait alors au roi Scorpion ou à quelque autre, dont le nom ne nous serait pas parvenu. On comprend tout de même mal pourquoi il est nommé deux fois. Est-ce parce qu'il est passé de la situation de « untel » à celle de « roi untel », changeant de nom en même temps que de statut, le document voyant en lui l'incarnation non individualisée de la somme des détenteurs locaux du pouvoir fondue en un archétype de l'unité ? Cela expliquerait que la Pierre de Palerme ne connaisse comme premier roi qu'un Aha, qui serait alors un autre nom, celui « d'Horus », de Narmer-Ménès...Meni, dont il répète deux fois le nom, mais avec une différence d'importance : la première fois, il l'écrit avec un déterminatif humain, la seconde, avec un déterminatif divin (Gardiner : 1959, pl. I; Malek, BIFAO 68 (1982), 95). Ce Meni — Ménès chez Ératosthène et Manéthon — est-il, comme on le pense généralement, Narmer, ou simplement une façon de désigner, comme c'est l'habitude dans les textes, « quelqu'un » en général dont on a perdu le nom ? On penserait alors au roi Scorpion ou à quelque autre, dont le nom ne nous serait pas parvenu. On comprend tout de même mal pourquoi il est nommé deux fois. Est-ce parce qu'il est passé de la situation de « untel » à celle de « roi untel », changeant de nom en même temps que de statut, le document voyant en lui l'incarnation non individualisée de la somme des détenteurs locaux du pouvoir fondue en un archétype de l'unité ? Cela expliquerait que la Pierre de Palerme ne connaisse comme premier roi qu'un Aha, qui serait alors un autre nom, celui « d'Horus », de Narmer-Ménès...

Par Nicolas Grimal dans "Histoire de l'Égypte Ancienne", Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1988, chapitre II. Adapté pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa.

In the previous two papers in this journal Grigson and Armitage descríbed how we believe that domestic cattle evolved and changed in Britain from the Neolithic through to the beginning of modern times. Their evidence for the changes is based on analysis and interpretation of the skeletal remains, including horn cores that are retrieved from archaeological excavation. Although these skeletal remains represent only a minute fraction of the actual numbers of cattle that were killed throughout the 3,000 years under discussion, we believe that we are beginning to put together a fairly clear picture of the history of domestic livestock. Obviously there are great gaps and there are parts ofthe country from where we have no archaeological evidence, but we are continuously working on new material and new methods that are helping with reconstruction of the history of breeds.

What I tried to do in my talk at Stoneleigh in November 1981 was to link up the biologicals tudies of skeletal remains with the abundant written and pictorial evidence that is available for the 18th century, which was the period when it may be said that modem principies of cattle breeding began. Although this documentary evidence for the 18th century is remarkably detailed and gives many records of numbers, sizes, and weights of cattle, it is, all the same, highly biased because in the main it relates only to the small proportion of carefully nurtured, and often very inbred, cattle that were kept by rich landowners.

During the 18th century, supposedly as a result of the industrial revolution, the human population of Britain doubled, although it was still below 10 million in 1800. This remarkable increase gave rise to much discussion by farmers, politicians, and contemporary historians. There was a general concern as to how the country could produce enough food if the numbers of people continued to increase, and it was this situation that provided the background for Malthus to write his famous essay on the "Principie o{ Population" in 1798. In the context of his law of necessity, which he claimed prevents a population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, Malthus commented on the increase in size of cattle in the latter part of the 18th century. Despite the better quality meat that was available, he was concerned at the gloomy prospect, as he wrote. that the London labourers who were accustomed to eat fine wheaten bread might in time be reduced to "living like Scotch peasants".


Somewhat later, in his history of cattle in Britain, Youatt in 1834 tried to estimate the amount of meat eaten in London. He reckoned that at that time each person purchased an average of 1/2 lb of meat a day (including bone) and he made the following comment, "This is a very high calculation compared with that of Paris, where each person is supposed to consume but 80 lb in the year; and Brussels where 89 lb forms the allotment of each; but ours is a meat-eating population and composed mostly of Protestants."

The eating of meat was a matter of great concern to the 18th century British, who were moving in great numbers away from the country in to the new industrial towns. A huge demand for meat and milk products accompanied these moves and it is a question much discussed by historians how it was satisfied. It seems th at although there must have been an increase in the numbers of cattle bred for beef, the main change came from the abandonment of oxen for traction and their replacement by horses. In earlier times, oxen were the chief plough animais in Britain, and they were not fattened off for meat until they were over 1O years old. During the 18th century this practice almost entirely ceased and bullocks were reared and fattened only as beef animais, although they were often still kept until they were over six years old.

The second means by which an increase in the supply of meat was achieved was by improvement in the size and weight of the carcase and it must be remembered that more meat for the table was not the only requirement of an increasing human population. Tallow was needed in enormous quantities for lighting, and it was forth is that 18th century cattle (and sheep) were so greatly prized for their fat.

It is difficult to give average figures for the sizes and weights of different breeds of cattle in the 18th century, as there are large numbers of figures in the literature, and they vary widely.It seems, however, that there was a very marked overall increase in weight in the ordinary run of cattle, a part from the especially improved breeds, through out the century. It was of course weight rather than size that was important, and indeed with improved cattle, the breeders were at pains to reduce the amount of bone relative to meat in the carcase. In 1710 the average carcase weight of an ox was supposed to have been around 370 lb, while that of a calf was 50 1b. By 1795 Youatt quotes the average carcase weight as 550 lb and 105 lb for a calf, while many improved breeds could produce carcases of well o ver 1,OOO lb in weight.

This increase in carcase weight, as well as the increase in milk production that occurred in the 18th century, was due in the first place to better feeding policies, also to the activities of a few landowners who succeeded in transforming certain breeds into specialised beef or dairy cattle by their policies of interbreeding and outbreeding. Perhaps the most accurate information on the sizes and appearances of 18th century cattle can be found in the works of George Garrard, who in 1800 produced his "Description o{ the Different Varieties of Oxen Common in the British Isles".

Garrard was an artist and sculptor who made the most detailed records, by measurement, engraving, and modelling of individual contemporary cattle, for the Board of Agriculture. The table with this article presents the withers heights of some of the individual cows, bulls, and oxen that Garrard portrayed in engravings and in models, which were made to the scale of two and a quarter inches to a foot. (In the table, the dimensions have·been changed from feet and inches to centimetres so that they can be compared with those recorded by Armitage.) The breeds are listed in the order of their height, and it can be seen that these range from the tiny Shetland bull with a shoulder height of under ten hands to the giant 16 1/2 hands improved shorthorn. It is interesting to observe that the Shetland and Highland cattle of Garrard's day were still no larger than their Medieval ancestors.

The two breeds of cattle that far surpassed all others in improvement during the 18th century were first the Longhorn and then the Shorthorn. lmprovement of the Longhorn breed began at the end of the 17th century, and its history is well known so it will only be mentioned as a brief summary here. A blacksmith named Welby was one of the first people to attempt systematic improvement; he bred a herd from the stock of Sir Thomas Gresley, who lived near Burton-on-Trent. Welby was succeeded by Mr Webster of Canley, near Coventry, wbo had cattle from the same stock and brought in more animais from Lancashire and Westmorland for interbreeding.



Then in about 1760 Robert Bakewell, who was already gaining a reputation for sheep breeding, turned his attention to cattle. He purchased a bull from Westmorland and two heifers from Mr Webster. From these animais Bakewell's entire stock of Longborns was bred, and it would be interesting to know whether it was from tbese inbred animais that the characteristic downswept, forward pointing horns arose. There is no evidence as
far as we are aware for this horn shape in the archaeological record before the time of Bakewell; neither have we seen any earlier pictures of British cattle with this type of horn.

Before Bakewell's time the unimproved Longhorns were large rangy cattle, not particularly good as plough oxen, but adequate for the production of ordinary beef and milk. The true Longhorn breed shared with the Gloucester, as it does today, the white streak, or finching, down the middle of the back. The cattle were expected to fatten to between 560 and 840 lb, which is interesting to compare with tbe latest modern stipulation tbat Longhorn bull calves should weigh 950 lb at 400 days. Bakewell began tbe system of improvement which is still in favour today, with the important exception that what he and his fellow breeders were interested in was fat. Apart from this, be aimed to produce Longhorn cattle that matured early, had barrel-shaped bodies and short legs, and as much reduction as possible in the bone of the carcase.

Bakewell acbieved bis aims by intensive inbreeding of his stock, as may be seen in the pedigree of the famous, 'Fat Longhorned Ox' and in the engraving of this beast, but the cattle had a low milk yield and tbeir fecundity was reduced. Perhaps mainly for these reasons, the Longhorn had a dramatic but short-lived success and by tbe end of the century the breed was being replaced in popularity by the Shorthorn. These cattle appear to bave been more robust than the Longhorn breed and more resistant to the worst side-effects of inbreeding and improvement. They were also outcrossed more repeatedly with Scottish cattle, which helped to keep them hardy. Their great success over the Longhorns, however, was probably dueto their higher milk yield; some cows giving seven gallons a day.

Shorthorn cattle were imported from Holland at the end of the 17th century. They were first given the name of Holderness cattle, after the name of the district in Yorkshire where they became established. Later, during Garrard's time, they became known as Teeswater cattle, from the name of the district where the famous Colling brothers lived. Charles and Robert Colling were responsible for such skilful improvement in the breed that by the end of the 18th century they had overtaken the Longhorns as the favoured breed and so they remained throughout the 19th century.

The most famous Shorthorn animal was probably the 'Durham' or 'Wonderful Ox' shown in an cngraving by Garrard. The pedigree of this remarkable animal is also shown. It was bred from a common cow that was put to the Colling's famous bull, 'Favourite'. At five years old, in February 1801, the Durham Ox was sold by the Colling brothers to Mr Bulmer of Harmby in Yorkshire for £ 140. At this time the live weight of the ox was 3,024 lb. Mr Bulmer obtained a carriage for the ox and travelled with him for five weeks. He then sold the ox and carriage on 14 May 1801 to a Mr John Day for £ 250. Youatt wrote that on the same day, the ox could have been resold for £ 525, on 13 June for £ l,OOO, and on 8 July for £ 2,000. Mr Day resisted these offers, however, and travelled with the ox, exhibiting it to the public, for nearly six years until it was finally slaughtered in 1807 after dislocating a hip.



Just as the Friesian may be said to have been the predominant breed in Britain over the past 50 years so the Longhorn and then the Shorthorn were the popular breeds of the 18th century, but as today, there were always other highly successful breeds. The diverse and ancient breeds of cattle that had evolved over millennia in the different pasture lands of Britain were still favoured in their own localities. Garrard's own first choice appears to have been the North Devons, which he considered to be an almost perfect breed. In the 18th century, the North Devons had much the same appearance and colouring as at the present day; they were medium-sized cattle of a beautiful dark red colour. The large size of the oxen was particularly commended as they were still used for most of the ploughing in Devon and Somerset. The ox pictured here, according to Garrard, was "in that yoke of oxen , mentioned in the Annals of Agriculture to have been purchased of Mr Pippins of Dulverton, to carry on the experiments at Woburn."

The history of breed improvement and livestock husbandry in the 18th century is filled with fascinating details about individual farmers and their animais. These details fillin the gaps which are left in the history of earlier periods from when we have only skeletal remains for study. It is unlikely however, that the essential elements in the partnership between man and cattle were any different in the 18th century from the time when Neolithic farmers husbanded their livestock 5,000 years ago, or from those of today.

By Dr Juliet Clutton-Brock, of the British Museum (Natural History) Department of Zoology, published in "The Ark February 1982" pp.55-59. Adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.