The Politics of the Palate: Taste and Knowledge in Early Modern England
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The Politics of the Palate: Taste and Knowledge in Early Modern England By India Aurora Mandelkern A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Thomas W. Laqueur, Chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan Professor Christine Hastorf Spring 2015 Abstract The Politics of the Palate: Taste and Knowledge in Early Modern England by India Aurora Mandelkern Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Thomas W. Laqueur, Chair This dissertation explores the sense of taste’s significance to knowledge production in seventeenth and eighteenth century England. Biologically and culturally intertwined with our primal desire for food, scholars historically have considered our sense of taste as a poor stepsister to our detached, rational faculty of vision. Many have dismissed it as a base and primitive modality of experience in early modern Europe, which became still less important with the intellectual ferment of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Yet these very qualities, I argue, made taste an especially attractive object of study, informing larger discussions of knowledge, authority, and behavior at a moment when learned understandings of food and the body were undergoing revision. The following pages sketch a historical anthropology of taste in early modern England. During the seventeenth century, it captured the attention of physicians, scholars, critics, and cooks, animating vehement debates over the constitution of ‘useful’ knowledge and what kinds of people should have access to it. In the eighteenth century, fashionable culinary writers and a new generation of profit-minded nerve doctors reinvented the palate as an embodied mark of refinement, animating controversies about appetite, agency, and reason. In short, my project departs from conventional understandings of taste as subjective information that can neither be measured nor judged. To argue about taste, this dissertation contends, is to argue about the deepest recesses of human nature. 1 The Politics of the Palate: Taste and Knowledge in Early Modern England Chair: Thomas W. Laqueur Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………… ii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………... iv Chapter One: The Cosmology of Taste …………………………………………………. 1 Chapter Two: Taste and New Learning ………………………………………………... 16 Chapter Three: The Passions of the Palate ……………………………………….......... 39 Chapter Four: Commensality and Taste ……………………………………………….. 56 Afterward: Taste Worlds …………………………………………………..................... 76 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 83 i Acknowledgements It’s hard to believe that this project took over four years in the making, and for most of that time I wasn’t exactly sure what I was actually writing about. I am therefore especially grateful to the following institutions for giving me the benefit of the doubt and supporting my research anyway: the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, which awarded me a John Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship over 2013-2014, the Culinary Historians of New York and the Julia Child Foundation for their generous 2012 Scholar’s Grant, and the UCLA Center for Eighteenth Century Studies, which awarded me a fellowship to study at the Clark Library in Los Angeles during the winter of 2013. A Student Mentoring and Research Teams (SMART) grant from UC Berkeley allowed me to hire the fantastic Clifton Damiens over the summer of 2012 to assist me with my dining club database, one of the most laborious and time-consuming components of this project. Taste is a subject in which everyone is an expert. I feel very lucky that I have gotten to talk about it with so many people, all of whom have helped make this project what it is. I want to thank Bryan Alkemeyer, Ashley Leyba, Rachel Reeves, Jarvis Lagman, Penelope Ismay, Jakub Benes, and Francesco Spagnolo for offering sparkly nuggets of motivation and critical feedback at various stages of dissertation writing. The final chapter of this dissertation would be very different (and not in a good way) without the patience and computational expertise of Christopher Church and Keir Mierle. Chris was responsible for sparking my interest in digital history, helping me convert a few rudimentary Excel spreadsheets into a relational database that allowed me to write about my venison and turtle-loving subjects with a greater knowledge and intimacy. Keir took this database to the next level by uploading it into a web framework, teaching me some programming basics, and letting me peer into the depths of the digital rabbit hole. I am humbled by the passion and generosity of these two wonderful teachers. Of course, I never would have made it to the finish line at all if not for the wisdom of a handful of excellent professors, who have taught me (in unique and sometimes unexpected ways) a great deal. Thomas Laqueur has been there since the very beginning, when I had little else to go on aside from a bunch of disconnected ideas about eighteenth century cookbooks. I was inspired, daunted, and challenged by him: to think more expansively, to become a better writer. He’s a major reason why this dissertation ended up being so much fun to write. James Vernon was also there from the beginning; as a matter of fact, his mentorship and thoughtful feedback gave me the confidence to get this project off the ground. Towards the end, this project profited from careful readings and critical feedback by Jonathan Sheehan and Christine Hastorf. I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to work with such talented people. Thanks to the sundry third-wave coffee shops of San Francisco, for the caffeine and the temporary office space. Thanks to Charles Mackey, with whom I have broken a whole lot of bread (and excellent cheese) over this long road. But my deepest and most heartfelt thanks go to my amazing parents. This dissertation is dedicated to them. ii Introduction In 1687, Hans Sloane, the Irish-born antiquarian and botanist, traveled to Jamaica as the personal physician to the second Duke of Abermarle, the newly appointed Governor of Jamaica. Abermarle did not take well to the harsh new climate; he died the following year. Yet Sloane traveled around the West Indies for several months longer, avidly collecting plant and insect specimens around the island. In 1707 he finally published the first volume of his findings, to which he appended a lengthy introduction describing the customs and foodways of the island.1 Sloane’s antipathy towards the Jamaican fare was no secret.2 Basic staples such as beef and veal commanded exorbitant sums, as meat rotted in a matter of hours under the oppressive sun. But because the livestock fed on calabash leaves, which grew like weeds all over Jamaica, even fresh meat had a terrible flavor. “Everything,” Sloane gasped, “tasted so strong of it that there is no using with pleasure any thing made therewith.”3 Neither could Sloane stomach the Jamaican cassava bread, which he found so dry that it had to be dipped in sugar-water in order to make it palatable. (It did keep men healthy, Sloane observed, in spite of its insipid taste.) African slaves, cattle, and poultry all fed on Indian corn, but Sloane had trouble recognizing it as human food. A sense of déjà vu pervades Sloane’s descriptions of these alien comestibles. They were visceral reminders of famine foods. There had always been circumstances, Sloane noted, where men resorted to stalks and leaves, or even leather and clothing when nothing else was at hand. Yet none of these things became the food of mankind by choice. As Sloane wandered the towns, markets, and plantations of Jamaica, he recoiled at the sight of snakes and lizards being savored by polite and “understanding” people, “with a very good and nice Palate.” Rats and raccoons, bred among the sugarcanes to sweeten their meat, were sold in local markets as delicacies. Sloane knew that such strange tastes were not unique to the West Indies. [H]owever strange to us,” he concluded, strange and un-food-like foods “are very greedily sought after by those us’d to them. The Person not us’d to eat Whales, Squirrils, or Elephants, would think them a strange Dish; yet those us’d to them, prefer them to other Victuals.” He had read how the peoples of the East Indies dined on bird’s nests, the Hottentots feasted on the guts of cattle and sheep, and that grasshoppers, in ancient Greece, had been “eat[en] like shrimps.” Even then, the diversity of human taste preferences was a well-trodden subject. Sloane’s observations were hardly original. The stakes, however, were new. The residual effects of the Columbian Exchange had breathed new vigor into ancient discussions. If the diversity of human taste 1 Sloane’s work, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, St. Christopher’s and Jamaica (London, 1707) is popularly known as the Natural History of Jamaica. 2 Sloane’s account was eventually satirized by the William King, who published a satirical send-up of Sloane’s interest in Jamaican food in his third installment of Useful Transactions in Philosophy (London, 1709) entitled “Concerning several sorts of odd dishes used by epicures and nice eaters throughout the world.” 3 Sloane tells us that the Calabash plant was even rumored to kill horses by sticking to their teeth, making it impossible to open their mouths to feed. While there are two plants colloquially known as the “calabash” in the Carribean today, Sloane was most likely referring to lagenaria siceraria, known as the “long melon” or “bottle gourd.” The vine has a bitter taste and can cause ulcers in its eaters stomach. iii preferences was environmentally informed, why did American Indians, displaced African slaves, as well as the ancient Romans all consider Cossi (cotton tree worms) “so great a dainty?” Sloane wondered.