3 - Instinct and the Body of the Early Modern Cook
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2024
Summary
Abstract
Of the many ingredients required in the early modern kitchen, instinct was one of the more elusive but key elements in preparing food and medicine. Ben Jonson's The Staple of News and Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts both feature unruly cooks who use their instincts in the kitchen. Even as they point emphatically to their bodies, these cooks also comment explicitly on how they make knowledge through their art. Turning first to Paracelsus’ alternative interpretations of embodied knowledge, this essay charts how debates about instinct feature in seventeenth-century printed recipe collections and in Jonson and Massinger's plays. As this chapter shows, instinct was an important conceptual tool that intersected with the period's natural philosophy.
Keywords: instinct, cooking, drama, printed recipe books, Paracelsus, natural philosophy
On the early modern stage, cooks are fleshy and temperamental. Mimicking the sensory impressions of the kitchen—including the odours of sweat, fat, or frying—these seventeenth-century makers have something of a Falstaffian zest for the banquets they prepare for others. They point to the creativity inherent in the art of cookery and also imply that the cook's body plays an important role in the processes of creating new, consumable fancies. Ben Jonson's Lickfinger in The Staple of News (performed 1625) and Philip Massinger's Furnace in A New Way to Pay Old Debts (performed c. 1625 or 1626) repeatedly call attention to their bodies. Lickfinger, with his allusive name, points to the symbiotic relationship between the cook's senses and the perfection of his craft. Likewise, Furnace is just as fiery as the materials with which he works. In contrast to our own post-Cartesian perspective of the physical self as distinct from the mind, the early moderns understood their bodies as embedded within an animate environment, shaped by the Galenic humours, and never self-contained. As this essay will show, the concept of bodily instinct, particularly the instinct of the cook, illustrates another aspect of early modern understandings of the body. In turning to instinct, the cooks discussed here are able to harness their bodily resources and felicitous skills in the kitchen to transmit their fancies to the dishes they create.
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- In the Kitchen, 1550-1800Reading English Cooking at Home and Abroad, pp. 71 - 88Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022