Babies and Cucumbers; Shakespeare and Viagra

While it may not have had the food television network to entertain it–or foodies on Twitter ad nauseum–Shakespeare’s era had abundant food, cookery, and beverages as part of its culture. Here are several assorted and sundry Elizabethan food facts served up a la Bard.

Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616. He was baptised April 26, therefore making his uncertain birthdate likely April 23—which has in the past been used by Stratford Festival’s for their opening date.

Though little is known about him, Shakespeare’s plays reveal that food was often on his mind. Works such as The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew feature elaborate banquet scenes, while Titus Andronicus concludes with a banquet fit for the truly dysfunctional family: a mother is served a pie made out of her two sons.

Shakespearean characters often use food words to insult one another. In Henry IV, a nobleman is called a “dish of skimmed milk,” and in 1 Henry VI Talbot is called a ‘‘weake and writhled shrimpe.”

On the other hand, food words are often used as terms of endearment. Prince Henry calls Falstaff “my sweet beef,” and Perdita is called “The Queen of Curds and Creame.”

There is little doubt as to what food inspired Shakespeare in his prodigious output as a playwright: he probably wrote most of his plays while slightly drunk—the same state his audience would have been in. Beer and wine were safer to drink than much of London’s water supply, and the average person, whether rich or poor, drank about a gallon of beer a day.

But the Bard never drank coffee, ate a banana, or indulged in chocolate: these items weren’t introduced into England until after he died. He would have known tomatoes, but he and his fellow Brits considered them poisonous.

An Elizabethan dish: colleflower and sippets.

The Elizabethans were certainly not afraid of sugar, however, and had a pronounced sweet tooth—probably many of them. Sugar was so popular among the aristocracy that their choppers were often in advanced states of decay. Their dental health was jeopardized further by the fact that sugar was an ingredient in their teeth cleansers.

In aristocratic kitchens, hygiene standards were just as odd: spits of meat were sometimes turned at the fireplace by means of a dog attached to a treadmill. And eventually rules came into affect prohibiting cooks from performing their duties while naked.

During Lent, people in Shakespeare’s England were supposed to stop eating meat. They could, though, keep eating puffins, because the diving birds were considered fish. Stranger still, the tail of a beaver was considered fish but not the rest of the rodent.

Detail from Cooking with Shakespeare (Greenwood Press): preparing your hounds to chase rabbits.

Whether an entree of puffin or beaver, cooking was often a brutal activity. One recipe instructs the cook to ‘‘take a red Cock that is not too olde, and beate him to death, and…flay him and quarter him in small peeces.’’ Another one says, “You must kill the Peacocke with a feather or quill pricked into her head.”

Puffin, beaver, or peacock, the most common spices in Elizabethan cookery were pepper, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and cloves. Almonds and raisins were found in 10% of the recipes of the time.

Any modern chef applauding his originality for garnishing a dish with edible flowers should note well that the Elizabethans often ate flowers in salads, including carnations, rosebuds, cowslips, and violets. Aristocrat and peasant alike would have nibbled the salad without benefit of a fork and using only a spoon, their own knife which they brought with them to the table, and their fingers.

Many foods were thought to have special powers that could affect one’s health. Raisins, according to one writer, would ‘‘increase motion unto venery, and woorke to the erection of the yeard’’— that is, they enhanced sexual desire and gave men a Viagra-like boost. Another author claimed that an infant with the flu should be put to bed on a layer of cucumbers because ‘‘feverous heate passeth into the cucumbers.’’

In their day, Billy and his pals would never have eaten these "poisonous" tomatoes.

Dietary experts also believed that some foods were better for you in certain months. For example, in October, the wealthy were advised to eat apple tarts because they “greatly comforte the stomache” (yet at the same time, they were also advised to “washe not the head in this moneth”).

Whatever and whenever an Elizabethan ate—and whether his head was washed or not—table manners were, shall we say, less than elegant. One etiquette book advised readers to avoid rinsing their mouths with wine and then spitting it onto the floor.

Another Elizabethan Ann Landers suggested that diners refrain from examining the contents of their handkerchief after blowing their nose at the dinner table—which conjures up an interesting picture of what it would have been like to dine with Shakespeare.