Food History

Last night’s post got me thinking. Some people integrate their health issues with their food and have a wonderfully co-ordinated existence and some of us have sad addictions to chocolate and chips and spend a lot of the time in justification.

It’s never as simple as understanding current medical principles and applying them. Every now and then a book emerges that explains the current views in simple or suposedly simple terms and gives guidelines. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce one of these books today.

If you’re interested in exploring food and health in more modern ways, then Talia, who comments here from time to time, has a forum with lots of stuff on emotional aspects of eating and lots of information branching off it. Emotional aspects of eating are only one part of food as medicine - if you want more, just say so in the notes and I’ll find you links to other parts.

Today’s book is Food Remedies. Facts About Foods and Their Medicinal Uses. It’s by Florence Daniel and was published in 1908. In theory, there are no remnants of Medieval science - it’s a thoroughly modern book (just not very recent). In practice, as early as the introduction, Daniel acknowledges a debt to Culpepper, and Culpepper frames his whole herbal in terms of the elements and humours and planetary influences. So her influences are modern (Dr Fernie’s Meals Medicinal), Ancient (the Talmud - though I guess it depends which part of the Talmud just how Ancient), late Medieval/Renaissance (Culpepper) and traditional (her mother).

Daniel takes us through a range of fruits and vegetables and discusses their medicinal uses. These plants are:
Almond, Apple, Asparagus, Banana, Barley, Blackberry, Blackcurrant, Brazil Nuts, Beans, Peas, Lentils, Beet, Cabbage, Caraway Seed, Carrot, Celery, Cresses, Chestnut, Cinnamon, Coconut, Coffee, Date, Elderberry, Fig, Grape, Gooseberry, Lavender, Lemon, Lettuce, Nettle, Nuts, Oats, Olive, Onion, Orange, Parsley, Pear, Peanut, Pineapple, Pine Kernel, Plum, Prune, Potato, Radish, Raspberry, Rice, Rhubarb, Sage, Strawberry, Spinach, Tomato, Turnip, Thyme, Walnut and Wheat. Quite a list, but also quite a limited list. And the rest of the book comprises indices - ways of getting at the information on each of these frutis and vegetables and herbs.

Florence Daniel is strongly fruitarian. She says on page 3 “I have myself known wonderful cures to follow on the adoption of a fruitarian dietary in cases of cancer, tumour, gout, eczema, all kinds of inflammatory complaints, and wounds that refused to heal.” She gives a general justifcation for this and cites pros and cons from various authorities.

From a modern scientific point of view, the material in this books lack validation and proof. From a food history point of view it’s fascinating.

Take her first article, on almonds. She suggests that almond soup is an excellent substitute for beef-tea for convalescents. Beef-tea was terribly standard for the invalid in 1908 - it was a pure bouillon made from good meat. Her almond soup alternative, however, is an old dish - I have seen similar recipes for broth to be used as a base for dishes five hundred years earlier.

It is made by simply blanching and pounding a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds with half a pint of milk, or vegetable stock. Another pint of milk or stock is then to be added and the whole warmed. After this add another pint and a half of stock if the soup is to be a vegetable one, or rice water if milk has been used.

In other words, one way in which older recipes have been retained or reintroduced into our diets has been through fads in food medicine. This is why Culpepper is as important in Daniel’s introduction as Dr Fernie.

I love these food history byways.

I wonder if anyone is collating medicinal treatises and food medicine books and comparing them with much earlier cookbooks? I hope so. If no-one is, then maybe one day I will. Food history is so much more than the history of cookbooks, and these food-as-medicine-manuals give us important clues on some of the wider roles food can play in a society.