Thursday, November 23, 2017

What Did 17th Century Food Taste Like?

From Res Obscura:
What can we learn about how people ate in the seventeenth century? And even if we can piece together historical recipes, can we ever really know what their food tasted like?

This might seem like a relatively unimportant question. For one thing, the senses of other people are always going to be, at some level, unknowable, because they are so deeply subjective. Not only can I not know what Velázquez's fried eggs tasted like three hundred years ago, I arguably can't know what my neighbor's taste like. And why does the question matter, anyway? A very clear case can be made for the importance of the history of medicine and disease, or the histories of slavery, global commerce, warfare, and social change.

By comparison, the taste of food doesn't seem to have the same stature. Fried eggs don't change the course of history.

But taste does change history. (Read more.)
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2 comments:

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

Arguably, fried eggs taste, mainly, as fried eggs. Whether Velásquez' or your neighbours.

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

"A very clear case can be made for the importance of the history of medicine and disease, or the histories of slavery, global commerce, warfare, and social change."

This importance however involves importance of avoiding abuses, history which is not such.

Or which is lopsided.

"The poor farmers had no tractors"

Next whine:

"The poor farmers made up 90 % in the Middle Ages!"

Yes, and with 90 % farmers and perhaps little farming export, a farmer family was producing in medium the food for 1 and 1/9 of a family.

Some somewhat more, if their manorial overlord wanted farming produce to sell to towns ... or even not, since producing for his family was less than the total of 1/9.

This means, less work to be done, and of course less need of tractors!