EPISODE 83: Recipes and Authority, from Intelligent Speech
Transcription
Note: this is mostly an automatic transcription, lightly edited and corrected. Punctuation and formatting are not perfect.
Aven: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Aven
Mark: [00:00:01] And I'm Mark.
Aven: [00:00:02] Today we're going to talk about recipes, which we've talked about before on this podcast, but it's going to be a little bit different first though. We want to say a quick thank you to our latest Patrion supporter, Jacob Piekarski. Thank you so much for supporting us and to anyone else who'd like to join.
You can find a link to our Patreon in our description. Thank you again for everyone who supports us.
Mark: [00:00:24] Thanks. Today's episode is a little different. It's our talk from the Intelligent Speech conference that took place online, back in June. It was a day of great panels and talks and a wonderful chance to hang out virtually with some of the best educational podcasters out there, and the great listeners who make up the audience.
Aven: [00:00:45] So we put together a talk for the event that was based on a video we made a few years ago with some additions. It's about the word recipe and as always the connections that go beyond it, no cocktail, though. If you
Mark: [00:00:58] want to see the images we showed on a slideshow during the presentation, you can follow the link in the description to the video version of this talk on YouTube.
Aven: [00:01:07] So without further ado, here's our talk: Recipes and Authority: from Medicine to Magazines.
So today the word recipe means instructions for preparing food. And there's a thriving industry and recipe books that tell you how to cook the right kinds of food in the right way. As we'll see the idea that someone with authority is telling others what to do has indeed been at the root of the word recipe since the beginning, but as we trace the history of the word and related concepts, we can also see a shift in ideas about who has authority and start to find traces of other voices coming through.
Mark: [00:01:40] Originally a recipe was a medical prescription. The word recipe is the imperative or command form of the Latin verb recipere, meaning to take. So 'recipe', 'take', that's how it was first used in English two in the 14th century as a verb, not a noun, the instruction at the beginning of a prescription, sort of like take two aspirins and call me in the morning.
We still sort of have this usage if only in the form of the abbreviation Rx, which was originally an R with a slash through it to indicate it was an abbreviation. We're still appears at the start of medical prescriptions. It was only in the 16th century that the word recipe went from being the instruction at the start of a prescription to being a noun that meant the prescription itself.
And it was only in the 17th century that the word began to be used to refer not only to medical instructions, but culinary ones too, an appropriate transferal. If you think of instructions, like take two eggs and so forth. Interestingly that Latin verb recipere also gave English through French, the word receipt.
but instead of the imperative, this word is formed from the past participle. So meaning taken. Early on it too, could be used to refer to a medical or culinary recipe first recorded in the culinary sense in reference to a recipe for Hippocras, a kind of sweetened wine in 1595. So this use of recipe receipt actually predates the use of the word recipe in this sense.
Today, of course the financial sense of receipt dominates and the culinary sense has died out though. You may still see it in older writing. So a receipt used to be a recipe , a recipe used to be a prescription. And yes, a prescription used to be something else as well. Before the word prescription gained its medical sense in the 16th century, it used to have a legal sense referring to the right to something through long use.
And before that, the Latin word praescriptio meant literally something written before from prae- before and scribere to write. So referring to a preface or introduction.
Aven: [00:04:00] And this element of writing is crucial to the idea of recipes, whether medical or culinary. An oral tradition of instructions about cooking must date back to the very origins of cooking itself. But the first written recipes we have date back to ancient Mesopotamia, and the first surviving cookbook is Roman credited to Apicius in it's probably not actually his name, but credited to him in first century, CE. The European tradition of cookbooks re- started in the late 13th century. And you should listen to Kevin Stroud's episode from the History of English on "The Form of Curry" to learn a lot more about recipe books in medieval England, and as you'd expect in a society where literacy rates were low, the first cookbooks were for the upper classes with instructions, for producing the most lavish and exotic feasts for dishes for banquets.
The earliest printed cookbooks included a number by famous cooks whose services were in great demand, most of whom, if not all, were men. Writing implies and embodies a certain type of authority. And these books were very much about experts telling the reader what to do.
Mark: [00:05:03] In the late 18th century, the rise of the middle class and later the Victorian, emphasis on domesticity led to cookbooks, focusing on home management.
And these were mainly written by women. The first cookbook written and published in the United States was in 1796 by Amelia Simmons. The first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton, whose modern cookery for private families in 1845 was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef. This immensely influential book established the format for modern writing about cookery.
In 1866, "The Domestic Cookbook" was published by Melinda Russell, a free black woman. And in 1881, Abby Fisher, a formerly enslaved woman published "What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking". These two works were the first cookbooks published by African Americans and document a much longer tradition of black cooking in the U S generally known now as soul food that had been passed down orally since the enslaved people were often forbidden to learn to write. Abby Fisher dictated the recipes in her book because she couldn't read or write. By publishing books, these women were claiming a type of authority long denied to them. Indeed recipe books historically were one kind of authority, but there has always been another thread of the authority of experience that is generations of primarily women who learned cooking from relatives.
One place that this usually hidden tradition can be seen is in the marginal annotations, corrections and notes in family cookbooks, where someone had added their own experience to the authority of the cookbook author, this kind of annotation combined with the way that early recipe books preserved originally oral knowledge makes those volumes invaluable sources for parts of society whose voices we too rarely hear. One thing all these early cookbooks had in common by the way, was that they included non culinary recipes too, for home remedies, cosmetics, and household products that overlap between medical and culinary recipes that we saw in the origins of the word itself is in fact, tied to historical attitudes towards the role of food and medicine.
After all, whether it's chicken soup for a cold or a spoonful of Cod liver oil to ward one off food was often considered a remedy for disease.
Aven: [00:07:44] So let's explore that connection between food and medicine and disease, which was the word disease was literally dis-ease or comfort discomfort. As early Europe in the Western world, didn't have the germ theory of disease, which only become, became the standard way of thinking in the 19th century.
The word disease came into English from old French. The first element dis- is a negative prefix. And the second aise meaning ease or comfort and also opportunity or elbow room is of unknown origin, possibly from a Celtic source or possibly from Latin ansa, handle used figuratively in the sense opportunity or occasion, maybe also elbow because Latin ansatus furnished with handles was also used to mean having the arms akimbo. In the ancient world for the Romans and the Greeks, maintaining health and avoiding disease was all about maintaining proper balance, a concept, not unique to Europe, but found in different forms in many traditional medicines around the world.
This came under the heading of diet, which for the Greek set a rather broader meaning than our usual than our English derivatives Greek diaita meant the way of living or the mode of life, including not only what one ate, but also other factors about one's life and environment. The word diaita in turn comes ultimately from a root meaning to take or handle from a promo Indo-European root *ai- , that means to give or allot; note the parallel to the etymology of recipe. And this word also gives us the word etiology. Which in medical circles today means the cause of disease. In other words, what gives you a disease, but for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and later on the medical physicians who, what gives you a disease was imbalance in the body.
And so what cured disease was what you take into the body, loosely speaking your diet, hence those recipes, the give and take of pre-modern medicine. You could say.
Mark: [00:09:34] This ancient notion, notion of balance can be traced at least as far back as the famous Greek physician, Hippocrates and his followers, and came to be called humorism.
No, not what's funny. Though we do get the modern word humor from that, but the bodily humors were four fluids in the body that were thought to regulate everything. The Greek word for humor in this medical sense was humos, meaning literally juice and coming from a root that means to pour, which also gives us words, gush, gut, funnel, and fondue, along with a host of other words, The four humors were held to be blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. These were in turn associated with different seasons elements, organs, qualities and temperaments. This is why we get the terms sanguine from Latin, for blood choleric, from the Greek for bile melancholic, literally black bile and phlegmatic from a root meaning to burn.
If you were thought to have an imbalance of these humors in your body, you wouldn't suffer from one of these temperaments. However, this could be treated with a particular food that was thought to share the qualities of the opposing humor, warm and moist for blood warm and dry for yellow bile, cold and dry for black bile and cold and moist for phlegm.
Thus by eating the right thing. You could put your system back into alignment, but of course you had to take into account the time of year, the cooking method, the geography, the climate, and so forth as these factors would also influence the cure. Remember diet, isn't just food, but a way of living and in the Hippocratic dietary regime would include more than just food, but also sleep, exercise, bathing, and even advice about sex.
All these things could influence those essential humoral qualities and thus your health.
Aven: [00:11:32] Now the Hippocratic oath, which you've probably heard of is of course, named after that physician Hippocrates. Also named after Hippocrates is that sweetened and spiced wine hippocras that we mentioned earlier because Hippocrates supposedly invented a kind of cloth filter bag called the Hippocratic sleeve that was used to strain the spices off from the wine.
And humor, by the way, coming back to that word is the later Latin term that was used by Roman physicians, such as the influential Galen who in turn, transmitted the theory of the humors to the medieval world. And that's where that notorious medieval practice of leeching came from. Too much blood making you sanguine? No problem. Use leeches. That word leech or laece it by the way was also appropriately enough, an old English word for doctor. Originally two separate and unrelated words, one for the worm, one for the profession, they seem to have fallen together or at least influenced each other. Where either comes from is a matter of some debate, though the physician word leech may be related to a root that means to collect and has derivatives related to speaking and reading.
As for the word humor, it comes from a root that means wet. So it's ironic, etymologically speaking that we talk about dry humor. It comes to have the modern sense, because the humors were thought to control your temperament and thus this then transferred to the sense of temperament or mood and from there to inclination or whim.
And that's where we get that funny sense of humor from. But getting back to the diet in order for foods to have the right effect on the humors, they have to be grown or produced in the right environment. So ecology was also an important consideration. And as we indicated earlier, they had to be eating at the right time of year. Ancient medical physicians also put stock in the astrological and cosmological influences on health.
It's interesting to note by the way that the word cosmological is from Greek cosmos, meaning not only universe and order, but also decoration and ornament and gives us not only the English word cosmos, but also cosmetic. Now trust me, this isn't a merely ornamental degression. We'll come back to it soon.
Mark: [00:13:35] So food and diet more broadly was the most important element of ancient medicine, but there were two other branches as well that were available to the ancient physician, though, both were thought to be more extreme methods. First was pharmacology, which was often just a more concentrated form of food.
Certain herbs and spices were used as medicines and culinary ingredients often started out as medicinal. These medicines were thought to have had the same, effects on bodily humors, the word pharmacy and pharmacology come from the Greek pharmakon meaning drug medicine, or even poison.
So obviously you had to, to be careful with pharmacological interventions, we don't know for sure where this Greek word comes from, but it might be connected to a root meaning to cut, from the notion of medicinal plants being cut. But speaking of cutting the third and most extreme branch of medical, of ancient medical practice was surgery, which would only be used in dire circumstances as the chances of survival in a time before sterilization and antibiotics were low.
The words, surgery and surgeon also come from Greek through Latin and French, literally meaning hand work. During the middle ages, surgery became divorced from the work of the physicians who were concerned with all that stuff about humors and astrology, and instead was performed by, believe it or not, barbers.
Well, they did have a lot of practice cutting things. For the most part surgery in the hands of these barber surgeons involved the treatment of wounded soldiers--think amputations and so forth .That red striped barber's pole you might be familiar with represents the blood involved in the barber's surgical pursuits.
It wasn't until the 19th century, that surgery became firmly part of the realm of the medical professional. Now these historical overlaps between food, medicine, cosmetics, and even haircutting may at first glance seem strange to our modern sensibilities, but when you think about it, they never really went away. In the modern drug store or pharmacy, we find not only medicines, but also food, cosmetics, hair products, and various ornaments. And if we think of the word, apothecary, the forerunner of the modern pharmacy, there's the interesting historical accident that from its root apotheke, Greek , meaning warehouse literally put away, we also get through French, the word boutique, where we buy fashionable clothing.
And what's more before they split in 1617, the London guilds representing the apothecaries and the grocers were one and the same.
Aven: [00:16:18] And of course the prime reading material you'll find in the modern pharmacy is the woman's magazine, a famous example of which Cosmo takes us back to that cosmos route, meaning order and beauty, which covered topics.
These magazines cover topics such as fashion and makeup, health, diet, lifestyle, exercise, sex recipes, and maybe even horoscopes the overlap in those ancient ideas of diet. As a way of living is still encapsulated in the women's mags of today. And the pharmacy and the women's magazine also demonstrate the gendered overlap of associations with the home and the body.
Think home remedies, health, cosmetics, fashion, food, and recipes, all things that women are socially conditioned to consider their responsibility. By the way, the word magazine comes originally from the Arabic word, excuse my pronunciation, makhazin, plural of makhzan meaning storehouse. The word came into English, through Italian and French in the 16th century with originally the same meaning, particularly a storehouse for military ammunitions.
That's why in modern English, the word magazine can still be used to refer to the cartridge containing bullets in a gun. It wasn't until the 1731 publication of The Gentleman's Magazine, that the word was used to refer to a periodical, basically as a metaphor for a storehouse of information. So, this is a nice parallel for apothecary and boutique coming from Greek apotheke, also meaning storehouse.
In any case, the original periodicals and magazines were written by men for men. And even when such material expanded to be aimed at a female audience, the publishers and writers were generally men. The original mansplaining, you might say.
Mark: [00:17:53] The first women's magazine though, being first published in 1693, it predates the term magazine was The Ladies' Mercury, a spinoff from The Athenian Mercury, which had been aimed at both men and women.
It was essentially an advice column to which women could send in questions about love, marriage, behavior, clothing, and so forth, and have them answered by what seems to have been an all male panel or manel, the Athenian Society run by London author, John Dunton and his friends. Oh, sorry. That was the panel.
The Ladies Mercury ran for only four issues, but it was a start. Several other periodicals aimed at women followed. And by 1770, we come to The Ladies Magazine. Though still conceived of and published by men, it included female writers and contributors. Indeed. The readership was encouraged to send in their own stories and poems for publication.
The content also included society news, but not hard news, which was thought to be only appropriate for men, fashion and, and music. It also included a medical column written by a male doctor, but, covering such topics as breastfeeding and menstrual pains. Though earlier magazines were more targeted upper-class readers, as we come to the 19th century, there were such publications as The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine aimed more at the middle class, wife and mother. With topics such as cookery and fashion, including sewing patterns to replicate the latest looks all alongside fiction, poetry, society gossip, sheet music, and other occupations considered appropriate for genteel ladies.
This, by the way, was published by Samuel Orchard Beeton, husband of Isabella Beeton of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management fame, who also wrote for her husband's publication, in addition to being one of the first to establish the standard format of the modern recipe book.
Aven: [00:19:55] Now, as mainstream women's magazines evolved the late 19th century saw the beginning of magazines aimed specifically at Black women in America. Between 1891 and 1950, there were eight African American women's magazines published for a variety of audiences and purposes. And you will note that I could not find pictures of most of these for the slide show.
I do not think that is particularly coincidental. It is a much less studied area of, publication history. But we had Ringwood's Afro-American Journal of Fashion starting in 1891 that was aimed at providing what they saw as culture to a readership that considered themselves or aimed at being intellectual while Women's Voice starting in 1912 was one of a group of magazines giving advice to African American women, moving to cities and entering consumerist cultures that focused on fashion and domestic life. Our Women and Children starting in 1888 and Aframerican Women's Journal starting in 1935 were several of a group that attempted to speak to specific political, domestic, or religious aspirations on the part of an African American female readership. Unlike the predominantly male-run white or mainstream women's magazines, all of these were owned or edited or both by Black women.
But that didn't make them free of the impulse to instruct their readership in how best to live, which sometimes was implicitly or explicitly aimed at getting Black women to conform to white standards of beauty, respectability, sexuality, domesticity, et cetera. This was in part because of class.
They were run by elite Black ladies who were urging lower-class Black women to acquire the skills, demeanor, clothing, behaviors, and attitudes that would distance them from their history of enslavement and sexual abuse and contemporary stereotypes about Black female sexuality. These days, just to catch us up, we have modern Black women's magazines, quite a few, but such as Essence, which was started in 1970 founded by four Black men who believed in Black capitalism as a way forward, but consistently edited by Black women. And O!, The Oprah magazine founded in 2000, co-owned by Oprah and the Hearst corporation and these focus on fashion, health and wellness, lifestyle, entertainment, and culture.
Mark: [00:22:04] Back in the 19th century, mainstream women's magazines were themselves becoming more explicitly political. The Englishwomen's Journal, which started publication in 1858 discussed and promoted issues such as employment and equality for women. Furthermore, it was founded by and employed women. Today perhaps the quintessential example of the women's magazine for better or for worse, is Cosmopolitan, mostly known as Cosmo now, which has an interesting history. It went from a general interest family magazine from its inception in 1886 to basically a literary magazine in the early 20th century to a magazine catering to the modern single career woman in 1965 under the direction of editor, Helen Gurley Brown, who promoted liberated women's issues.
It was in its day a very progressive publication, even if that's hard to imagine now. Along with a number of other magazines that were seen as vehicles of female empowerment and, published many important feminist voices in the sixties and seventies, like Ms magazine and charlatan.
Sorry, not Charlotte , shop Chatelaine here in Canada. Over the last couple of decades, it has retreated from an overtly political stance and focused on telling women what's wrong with them and how consumerism can fix it. A different kind of recipe for a better life, perhaps. In recent years, it seems like Teen Vogue has stepped up to become the new politically oriented women's magazine. Founded in 2003, as an offshoot of Vogue and initially focused on fashion, it has become increasingly home to radical and political politically aware writing, especially since Trump's election in 2016, leading the resistance ever since, but without abandoning its fashion and entertainment content.
Aven: [00:23:54] But now that most women's magazines have become a repository for instructions of all types, recipes, diet plans, makeup tips, fashion rules, medical information, relationship advice, guides to good sex and so on, they are essentially selling a recipe for self improvement and holding out the same illusory promise of balance as those ancient and medieval doctors, if only their readers could follow their instructions perfectly.
Perhaps, then we have returned to that first definition of a recipe, whether it's for chocolate cake or a better life.
Mark: [00:24:25] Trust me. I know more than you. Take what I feed you and all will be well.
Aven: [00:24:30] Thanks.
For more information on this podcast. Check out our website, www.alliterative.net where you can find links to the videos, blog posts, sources, and credits, and all our contact info.
Mark: [00:24:43] And please check out our Patreon where you can pledge to support this show and our video project. You can go directly to the videos at youtube.com/alliterative
Aven: [00:24:52] our email is on the website, but the easiest way to get in touch with us is Twitter.
I'm AvenSarah a, V E N. S a R a H,
Mark: [00:25:00] and I'm alliterative. To keep up with the podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcast app or to the feed on the website,
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Thanks for listening.
Mark: [00:25:16] Bye.