How Turtle Became Haute Cuisine

From calipash to calipee, turtle was unarguably the most expensive, status-laden, and morally contested feat of English gastronomy between 1750-1850.  But surprisingly, historians know very little about how it came to be so popular.  We know that at least a handful of intrepid Englishmen had tasted sea turtle by the 17^th century, but this delicacy had yet to grace fashionable London tables.  Aside from the arduous overseas journey, the stuff was apparently an acquired taste.  Many of those who did get the chance to taste it were rather ambivalent about its flavor.  One Restoration-era virtuoso reporting on his trip to the Caribbean observed, diplomatically, that it was “not offensive to the stomach.”[i]  Eating it also turned his urine “yellowish-green, and oily.”

Over the first half of the 18^th century, turtle-consumption was mostly limited to sailors and overseas adventurers.  A sea turtle containing “three score” eggs was a welcome surprise for Robinson Crusoe after having spent nearly nine months subsisting on island goats and fowls.[ii]  This small detail, keeping in line with accounts of “turtle-catching” happening in the West Indies, doubtless made the novel seem more life-like to English readers.  Indeed, the flavor of that slimy green fat defied traditional hierarchies.  King George II enjoyed red deer, ortolans and lampreys at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in 1727, but sea turtles were conspicuously absent.[iii]   

George Anson: 

How then was turtle transformed into the quintessential symbol of enlightened foodie-ism?  Perhaps no one did more to popularize turtle among London’s high society than did Baron George Anson (1697-1762).  A naval man all his life, Anson was dispatched in 1740 to attack Spanish possessions in the Caribbean during the War of Jenkins Ear.  His successes were mixed.  While he succeeded in capturing a Spanish galleon full of silver, making himself a celebrity and a very rich man, his crew didn’t fare nearly as well.  Only 188 out of 1900 men returned to England with him after his circumnavigation of the globe, the majority having succumbed to starvation or scurvy.  Anson was promptly made an MP, and was elevated to the peerage in 1747.[iv]

It didn’t take long for the secret of Anson’s success to get out.  In a first-hand account of his voyage, his official chaplain, Richard Walter, described the sea turtle as a nutritional miracle.  Exhausted and scurvy-ridden while stationed in Quibo (modern day Coiba off the coast of Panama) green sea turtles “in the greatest plenty and perfection” nourished the ailing crew back to health.  This time around, the reviews were more enthusiastic.  Walter called it “a pleasant and salubrious meat.”  In a separate account, one of Anson’s midshipmen attested “the green turtle are the sweetest, and the best meat, their fat is yellow, and their Flesh white, and exceedingly sweet.”[v] 

For the curious, self-reliant and freedom-loving British sailors, it was love at first bite.  But the Spanish prisoners (being naturally “superstitious” and “prejudiced,” Walter observed) were more reluctant, perceiving turtle to be “unwholesome, and little less than poisonous.”[vi]  But after keenly observing that none of English died from this modification to their diet, the Spanish became eager to take the plunge. 

“…they at last got so far the better of their aversion, as to be persuaded to taste it, to which the absence of all other kinds of fresh provisions might not a little contribute.  However it was with great reluctance, and very sparingly, that they first began to eat of it, but the relish improving upon them by degrees, they at last grew extremely fond of it, and preferred it to every other kind of food, and often felicitated each other on the happy experience they had acquired, and the luxurious and plentiful repasts it would always be in their power to procure, when they should again return back to their country.”[vii]

As far as I know, this was the first modern turtle feast, enjoyed among a motley crew of sailors on the sun-drenched beaches of Coiba.  Yet its convivial informality also carried symbolic weight.  Connoisseurship of turtle had unmasked the superstitious follies perpetuated by the declining Spanish Empire to its innocent subjects.  After licking their lips with turtle grease, the Spanish considered the meal “more delicious to the palate than any their haughty lords and masters could indulge in,” which Walter deemed “doubtless … the most fortunate [circumstance] that could befall them.”  The pleasure and nourishment derived from the turtle feast had symbolically liberated them from the tyranny of the Spanish crown.  "Britishness" may be an acquired taste, Walter seems to imply, but any man would be a fool not to desert a despotic political system such as Spain's in favor of a physically and spiritually nourishing one based on self-reliance and cheerful camaraderie.

Some editions of Voyage Around the World included maps
illustrations of Anson's Voyage.  This one shows the location
of Quibo (modern Coiba): location of the turtle feast.

Even so, turtle still remained a “novelty” food back in England, evidenced by the fact that three turtle body-parts were on permanent display in the collection of curiosities at Don Saltero’s Coffee House.[viii]  Nevertheless, print culture continued to nourish reptilian desires in the public’s imagination.  Throughout the 1750s, newspapers reported a number of enormous turtles brought into England, some of which reputedly clocked in at 500 pounds and measured eight feet from fin to fin.[ix]  A few months later, the London Evening Post reported that some French fishermen off of the Ile de Ré had apparently caught a turtle weighing nearly 800 pounds.[x]  The head alone apparently weighed 25 pounds, a single fin weighed 12; “the whole community made four plentiful dinners of the liver alone.” Newspapers also educated the uninitiated about the turtle’s peculiar taste.  The meat tasted recognizable, like a “three-year-old steer,” but one could not escape its peculiar musk-like smell while eating it.  The most praise was reserved for its fat, which had the consistency of butter when cooled, and “relish’d very well.”

The party starts to get weird after dinner at White's Club
(This plate of Hogarth's The Rakes Progress was supposedly
based on the actual club room)

In July of 1754, the Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer reported that Lord Anson (now First Lord of the Admiralty) had gifted a three hundred pound turtle to the gentlemen of White’s Chocolate House, one of the most notorious and exclusive gambling clubs in London.  The turtle even laid five eggs, a feat “looked on to be very extraordinary after so long a passage.”[xi]  White’s had already established a reputation for enjoying luxurious meals by the 1750s; only one month before newspapers reported Anson’s gift, the satirist George Colman observed “these gentlemen … are no less adept in the science of Eating than Gaming.”  But even to high society’s crème de la crème, turtle was a one-of-a-kind treat, evidenced by the fact that when it came time to eat the turtle, the gentlemen realized that they had to find a bigger oven. 

Apparently this didn't deter other prominent clubs, who soon conquered these pesky technological limitations.  Two months later, Anson presented another turtle to the Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers, the Royal Society’s semi-official dining club.  The event was so highly anticipated that news of the dinner was sent out by penny post, and Anson's health was drank in claret and thanks ordered to him for his "magnificent present."[xii]  

Why did these two turtle dinners garner so much attention and excitement?  Anson's ability to connect turtle-eating to Britain's growing imperial muscle certainly had something to do with it.  By 1754, when the Thursday’s Club members enjoyed the delicate green fat back in London, they not only were experiencing vicariously Anson’s overseas adventures, but they were also commemorating the edible tool that capacitated his victory over the Spanish.  By selectively introducing turtle to elite dining clubs, Anson reworked turtle consumption from the diet of swashbuckling adventurers to a genteel, manly and quasi-patriotic practice. 

---

[i] “Observations made by a curious and learned person, sailing from England, to the Caribe-Islands, communicated by the author to R. Moray” in Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 2 (1666-1667) pp. 493-500.

[ii] Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (London, 1726) p. 43.  Crusoe found the turtle flesh “the most savoury or pleasant that ever I tasted in my life.”

[iii] All archival material pertaining to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and the Corporation of London can be found at the London Metropolitan Archives, Clerkenwell.   

[iv] N.A.M Roger, “George Anson” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004). 

[v] John Philips, Midshipman, An Authentic Journal of the late expedition under Commodore Anson” (London, 1744). 

[vi] Richard Walter, A Voyage Around the World, in the years MDCCXL, Vol. 2, (London, 1748) p. 39.

[vii] Walter, ibid.

[viii] See “The Rarities display’d at Don Saltero’s coffee house” (London, 1750?).  Two (ostensibly stuffed) turtles emerging out of shells and one (decapitated) turtle head are included in the catalogue.  For more on Don Saltero’s as a permanent exhibition of curiosities, see chapter five in Brian Cowan’s The Social Life of Coffee: the Emergence of the British Coffee House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

[ix] See, for example the London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer (London, 1760).

[x] London Evening Post (London, England) October 5 1754, Issue 4198.  But this “news” was reported in several other papers too.

[xi] The Whitehall Intelligencer, (London, England) July 13-July16, 1754, Issue 1274.

[xii] A note in the Thursday’s Club dinner books dated September 2, 1754 stated the penny post letters to the members on account of Anson’s turtle cost the club 2 shillings.  Thursday’s Club Dinner Books, RSC Papers, Royal Society Archives.  

Additional note: Just ran across another blog with a lively discussion of Anson's voyage around the world as an important antecedent to Darwin's voyages.   Here's the link to check it out.  

Cultures of Connection

Check out this "map" detailing the gifting networks of the Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers, an elite dining club active in 18th century London.  Beginning in 1748, both members and benefactors presented various foods to the society –– from venison pies to "Aegyptian Lettuces," from Malaga Watermelons to West Indian turtles.

With some outside help, I was able to export all of the gifting data out of the club's dinner books and import it into Gephi, an open-source data visualization software.  The map you see below charts all gifts from 1748-1785.

Gephi calculates the strength of both "nodes" and "edges."  Nodes are the red and blue circles denoting
both gift-givers and gifts.  The edges are the grey lines between the nodes, which demonstrate the
strength of the connection between nodes.  

Feeling overwhelmed?  How about a few close-ups?  As avid readers of this blog may know, the men of the Thursday's Club had a thing about venison.  So much so that in 1749, a rule was enacted entitling men who paid annuities "no less than a haunch" to be honorary members of the club.  

Philip York, later to become Viscount Royston and the Earl of Hardwick
was the most prolific gifter of venison.  He is followed by the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury,
who donated venison to celebrate  day of the annual meeting each July.    

By this map, we can see right away that the most popular gift by far was the "haunch of venison" followed by the 'neck' and the all-important pasty.  Apparently these guys viewed it as the most fail-safe gift to give.  Stately, aristocratic, yet still quintessentially 'English,' venison would always impress fellow diners ... and would offend nobody.  We can also easily see that venison was given by all kinds of people.  Notice all the grey lines of different widths extending outwards from the "hub" of venison givers and gifts.  All of those people were connected to giving venison in some way.  

Philip York, the most illustrious
venison gifter of them all.  

Sure, the most conspicuous venison donor was the extremely powerful Philip York, later to become the 2nd Earl of Hardwick (he sent a shipment every summer for decades) but that didn't stop others from joining in when they could afford it.  Moreover, Hardwick hardly ever benefitted from his own largesse ... he only shows up on the club attendance books a handful of times.  Gifting, for Hardwick, was a performance of patronage rather than of connoisseurship.  

  

Some other edible gifts were a little more daring.  I've already mentioned Josiah Colebrooke, the club's diligent treasurer, in earlier posts.  Did I mention that he got in on the gifting action too?  

I am not yet qualified to comment on Colebrooke's angling skills, but the gifts he gave –– potted charr, 'pike and soles' and a turbot –– certainly made a different statement than did the haunches of venison.  Colebrooke was more closely allied with the middling sort –– he worked for a living, made it into the Society of Antiquaries and had enough leisure time to pursue his hobbies, such as coin collecting -– but he certainly wasn't trying to call attention to his fabulous wealth by these gifts.  

What was he trying to do?  I'm not really sure.  And it's quite possible that I might be making too much of these gifts.  Whose to say that Colebrooke wasn't simply trying to get rid of the extra stuff in the kitchen before it went bad?  In many ways this map teases us, hinting at passing conversations, subconscious motivations, and unrealized ambitions that haven't, unfortunately, been preserved for posterity.  For all the unseen patterns and relationships within my data that Gephi is able to detect, the larger meaning of this map remains, for now, a mystery.   

Mutton Chops à la Mode

From antiquity to the present, cookbooks have taught us about the social protocols, the dining rituals, and the flavors of the past.  18th century Britons were no exception; they were fascinated by everything from the Roman epicure Apicius and his tales of exotic fish sauces to the sumptuous banquets described in The Forme of Cury, a medieval cookery book compiled by the cook to Richard II (1377-1399).  But only recently have the scholars of our day started to take them seriously.[1]

Late 18th century antiquarians began
 to take interest in their own culinary heritage,
 largely drawing on old cookery books.

The study of cookbooks is undoubtedly important when we think about how people imagined food and cooking, but think about it for one moment ... when was the last time you ever made something you found in a cookbook?  Let's admit it; the more intrepid among us might attempt to replicate every recipe, daunting as that may be.  But most of the time, I mostly like to read the recipe and look at the pictures, fantasizing about the meal that I will some day make time to prepare.

So if we want to know more about the actual habits of eating during the long 18th century, perhaps we should consider some alternate culinary sources.  In this spirit, I have been logging nearly 40 consecutive years of tavern menus into a database (with some much needed and much appreciated help, of course.)[2] 

We've found that real dining habits lagged significantly behind those described in cookery books.  Take, for example, two dishes with which 18th century Britons enjoyed a love/hate relationship: the "fricassee" (a fried meat dish coated in sauce) and the "ragout" (a similarly highly seasoned dish featured chopped up meat stewed in gravy, wine, herbs and spices).  Derailed as pernicious French importations in 1700, these dishes were initially blamed for everything from inciting sympathy for the Catholic religion to disguising the flavor of rancid meat.[3]

Yet even the most patriotic of British cookery book authors soon began to incorporate them into their culinary repertoire.[4]  By the 1740s, there are tons of recipes such as these, leading one to think that the dishes had been all but acculturated.  Tavern menus, however, tell a different story.  The first of these dishes did not appear at the table until 1758.  Apparently it went over well, for it gradually became integrated into the tavern bills of fare.  Yet acculturation happened slowly, and seemed to be treated more as a novelty than a dinner staple.  Below, I flagged all dishes of self-proclaimed French lineage (dishes, for example, styled a la daube, or a la mode, in addition to ragouts, fricassees and harricots.   

Graphing the Growth of 'French' Influence in Meals
at  the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street

This doesn't mean, however, that tavern fare was unsophisticated.  To the contrary, I've found evidence of immense variety in tavern fare impressive even to urbane 21st century diners.  You might have heard of Paul Greenburg's Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food,  where he points out that, today, the vast majority of restaurants offer, at most, four varieties: cod, salmon, sea bass, and tuna.  Not the case in early modern London.   Indeed, while cod and salmon made indelible marks on the English palate, so too did mackeral, trout, carp, soles, whitings, skate, lobsters, oysters, plaice, eels, thornbacks, ling, haddock and halibut.  I've graphed them according to their seasonality using Gephi, a new data visualization software, below.

Every 'Fish' Dish from 1748-1757
at the Thursday's Club on the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street
(Charted According to Season)

We need to recognize that metropolitan public dining cultures in the 18th century were quite distinct than the ones discussed in the cookery books with which we've grown so familiar.  Culinary fashions and flavors varied significantly when one chose to eat out, but this didn't mean that taste and connoisseurship mattered less in these contexts.

In the coming posts, I will highlight some other ways in which cultures of 'eating out' were evolving over the 18th century.

[1] See Steven Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present.  Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1996 and Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in 18^th Century Britain. London, Prospect Books, 1993.

[2] This has been an ongoing component of the Thursday Club Project, which has focused on the “Thursday’s Club call’d the Royal Philosophers,” a dining club semi-officially connected to the Royal Society.  (RS Archives: RSC Papers.)

[3] For example, see the criticisms of the “present luxurious and fantastical manners of eating” in Weekly Journal or British Gazeteer (London, England) Saturday April 15, 1727, Issue 101. 

[4] Despite devoting an entire chapter to criticizing the frivolity and expense of French sauces, Hannah Glasse includes numerous recipes for ragouts and fricassees in her well-received The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.  London, 1747.  

Venison Surprize

I returned from the archives in London last fall with a hard drive full of JPEGS and vague but eager dreams of storing this information within some sort of database, with which I could map quantitively the psychology of social connections forged over food.  I had uncovered the records belonging to the Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers, an 18th century dining club semi-officially affiliated with the Royal Society, and the Philosophers' meticulous attendance and dinner records lent themselves well, I thought, to this sort of thing.

Here's the contents of the dinner books
found in the archives
(Please excuse my pinkie)

I had never really worked with these kinds of sources before, and my inspiration, admittedly, was at first largely literary.  The project I had in mind reminded me of that scene in David Lodge's Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) in which a respected novelist is invited to a new cutting edge academic department –– the Centre for Computational Stylistics –– only to witness his entire literary oeuvre deflated by the state-of-the-art computers into a single adjective: "greasy."  With a few effortless keystrokes, a machine could analyze a career's worth of subconscious mores and social hang-ups, revealing literary proclivities unnoticed by the naked eye.

30 years before the Digital Humanities
became an academic buzzword,
Lodge anticipated some of its
humorous pitfalls

Nearly 30 years after this fictional work was published, I stubbornly believed that the ability to analyze my 18th century records in a similar fashion would significantly contribute to our understandings of friendship and social networking.  Linking these patterns to the elaborate records of weekly meals shared by the Thursday's Club illustrates how consumption of particular dishes in particular contexts engendered new collective tastes and civic identities.  Indeed, the the era that exalted the so-called "man of taste" it is hard to dispute the fact that the provision, sharing and connoisseurship of food were integral to the making of the gentleman.

The problem was that my rudimentary Excel spreadsheet was full of holes and wasn't able to answer the queries that I asked of it.  So this past semester, I have been working with an OpenOffice database that allows me the flexibility to address a range of queries as well as generate new ones.

The same information in the OpenOffice database

Over the course of the summer, my worthy and efficacious readers will learn of my findings.  But because my very first post on Homo Gastronomicus, over one year ago, addressed the special status of venison among members of the Thursday's Club, I'll begin by playing around with the database as a tool ... to track man's love of tasty treats.

First, I tracked all the venison references made in the first fifteen years of the club's weekly meetings.  Below, I show how often it was served as a gift versus how often it was served in the bill of fare without reference nor further comment.  Venison was obviously something out of the ordinary, appearing as a gift 47% of the time it was served.  But that's nothing too surprising.

Moreover, out of the venison references listed in the bills of fare, the ones that were received as gifts were larger and more expensive cuts –– such as haunches and necks.  On the chart below, you can see that the venison dishes that frequently appeared on the normal bill of fare mostly comprised of pasties and pies, dishes typically prepared with less expensive cuts of meat mixed with giblets, vegetables and herbs.  (Gifts are marked as blue, while dishes on the regular bill of fare are red.)

Finally, I wondered what attendance looked like when a juicy haunch was gifted to the club.  One would think that it would be disproportionately higher.  After all, who would turn down this aristocratic delicacy, especially when washed down with a few glasses of claret?  Surely its consumption would be a pretty big deal.

But surprisingly, the mean attendance between 1748-1762 was only marginally higher when a haunch of venison was on the table.  Venison dinners attracted an average of 15.8 members per meeting, while the average attendance hovered around 15.5.   What does this mean?

It seems hard to believe that the members didn't care whether venison was served or not.  After all, venison was the most frequently gifted food to the club, and annual gifts of a haunch could secure honorary membership for the donor.  Perhaps the evidence suggests instead that gifts were not very well publicized.  Venison dinners, as a result, took place on a largely ad-hoc basis.  Sort of like a secret pop-up catering to the well-connected gentleman "in the know."

The Best Vegetable of the Salad Kind

When it comes to history of the early modern salad, F.R.S. John Evelyn usually gets most of the attention.  Famous for his vegetable friendly cookery book, Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (1699) he helped define the salad as "certain Esculent Plants and Herbs, improv'd by Culture, Industry, and Art of the Gard'ner ... to be eaten Raw or Green, Blanch'd or Candied..."

John Evelyn, author of Acetaria, 1699

Don't get me wrong; Acetaria is a fine piece of work.  He even teaches you how to make salad dressing: "the Yolks of fresh and new-laid Eggs, boil'd moderately hard, to be mingl'd and mash'd with the Mustard, Oyl, and Vinegar."  Little different, Reader, from the dressings I throw together today.  And in case you are unsure just how to plate the salad at your next dinner party, Evelyn has you covered.  "That the Saladiere, (Sallet-Dishes) be of Porcelane, or of the Holland-Delft-Ware; neither too deep nor shallow..."

But Evelyn was hardly the only intellectual to pay attention to the vegetable kingdom.

I noticed a gentleman by the name of Philip Miller who began to attend dinners of the Thursday's Club in the Spring of 1752.  He dined with the club frequently, attending two to three dinners a month on average.  But he was always noted down as a "visitor."  Of whom?  I wondered.  Where did he come from?

Apparently, Miller was anxious to please.  For three consecutive weeks during the summer of 1753, Mr. Miller entertained the club with Aegyptian lettuces.  What did this mean?

Apparently Miller had some serious botanical connections.  He had been appointed chief gardener to the Chelsea Physic Garden since 1722.  This garden, founded in 1673, was designed for the purpose of growing new medicinal herbs and plants.  In fact, written into the garden's lease was the requirement that the garden provide 50 seedling samples to the Royal Society each year, until the total of 1000 had been provided.  Miller excelled at this task.

Philip Miller also authored the widely-read The Gardener's Dictionary, which classified 14 different kinds of lettuce, ranging from the "common garden" varieties to progressively more exotic and esteemed "Silesia" "Aleppo" and "Black Cos."  Lettuces were valued in those days for their delicate qualities; coarser varieties, Miller attested, were only appropriate for "stewing rather than salleting."

I enjoyed flipping through this manual, as it provides a nice glimpse into the tastes of contemporary Londoners as set apart from the rest of the kingdom.  "The most valuable of all the Sorts of Lettuces in England are the Versailles, the Silesia, and Cos," Miller claims, "tho' some People are very fond of the Royal and Imperial Lettuces; but they seldom sell so well in the London Markets as the other, nor are so generally esteem'd.

Guess Miller's expertise worked in his favor; he was elected a full-time member in July of 1753.  The minute book noted, however, that Miller hadn't exactly been a stranger all this time:

"Mr Phillip Miller having been an Antient Member of this Society but being out of Town when the regulation of the Society was made in 1749 and having Applyed as a Candidate ever since June 1752 it was unanimously Agreed that the present Vacancy should be supplyed." 

Oh the suspense!  Miller is voted in, and another guy is kicked out.  

I don't know about you, Reader, but for me, there's a touch of melancholy to this story.  Once content to go out and share a meal with his friends and colleagues, Miller must have been slightly taken aback to return from "out of town, " only to be coldly greeted as a "visitor," and then be pushed to the margins of the coterie for an entire year.  Sounds pretty harsh.

What provoked the need for these men to institutionalize their weekly meals, to demarcate for them a specific time and place?  And how did the formation of clubs affect friendships, acquaintance networks, the unspoken protocols of social life?  For Philip Miller was not unlike an English Rip van Winkle.  Time passes in his absence, and he eventually wakes up groggy and slightly baffled, forced to face the consequences of falling too long asleep.

By Porter and Limonade Inspir'd

Zounds!  A Dearth of recent Updates might have led my worthy Readers to believe that the Lady of Quality hath forever abandoned her Researches into the Tastes and Appetites of 18th Century Britons.  And although I entertain little Doubt that my inquisitive and efficacious Readers have had far more worthwhile Businesses on their Minds than to await the Thoughts and Opinions of this Blog's humble Authoress, I assure my Readers that from hereafter I shall endeavor to ensure that dreaded Grant Proposals and Dissertation-Writing will not, in the future, interfere with the Regularity of my Posts.

And since today the sun shines upon the Fertile-Grounds Coffee-House in the Eastern Bay, where the Lady of Quality presently writes, I was pleased to notice that this Coffee-House offered several pleasant cold drinks to regale the Palate.  Reader, I ordered a Lemonade.

"Limonade" on a sunny Berkeley Day

Lemonade, or "Limonade" was hardly unknown in 18th century Britain.  Even my beloved Thursday's Club –– the elite dinner club to which botanists, physicians, and other sundry Royal Society virtuosi subscribed –– was familiar with this refreshing drink.

While the original club rules only made provisions for wine, an amended rule in 1760 reflected these evolving tastes:

NB: As many of the Gentleman chose to drink Limonade, and Porter, the Treasurer always estimated these liquors at Equal in value to a bottle of wine, and paid 2 shillings in every reckoning for them, whatever numbers the company was.

Today's lemonade is rather simple –– nothing but a simple concoction of lemon juice, water, and sugar –– consumed on lazy summer days to quench one's thirst.  But I wondered what this early modern "Limonade" really entailed.

Tissot touted the medicinal properties
of lemonade, which were translated
for the English public's benefit

Seems like the same 'quenching properties' of lemonade were recognized then as now, although 18th century physicians tended to give it a decidedly medicinal flair.  The French physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot, for example, proposed it as a potential remedy to "malignant fevers" and "strokes in the sun,"calling it "the best drink in this disorder."  But in the case of a lemon scarcity, "Water and Vinegar" was deemed an appropriate substitute.  Hmm.  

But what about the Porter?  In the 18th century, this too was known as a peculiar London novelty beverage.  Contemporary recipes list a host of ingredients essential to brewing a good batch, ranging from Cinnamon to Liquorice Root, and from Treacle and "India Berries."

Although I've seen a handful of "Porter-Lemonade" concoctions –– sometimes described as a variation of the "Shandy" for sale at upscale modern British pubs –– I was not certain whether the custom was alive at this point in the 18th century.  It didn't take long, however, until my researches led me to discover yet another 18th century club: "The Robin Hood Society."  Seems like these guys had a particular penchant for the two drinks, either consumed separately or as a mixture.

"It is observable," wrote one satirist, "that among the Orators of this Society, those who quaff Porter, generally speak with great Gravity, unmeaning and solemnity, and un-interrupted dullness; while, on the other hand, those who drink Lemonade are impertinently witty, unseasonable smart, and acutely ridiculous. (1764)

Who knew that porter and lemonade were perceived to be so beneficial to the arts of elocution?  Normally you'd think a simple shot of liquid courage would do the trick.  But yet another satire remarked, "The writings of different authors have been compared to wines: but the orations delivered here can be resembled to nothing so properly as the liquors of the Society; for while they are once so weighty and so sharp, they seem to be an equal mixture of porter and lemonade." (1755)

"Debating Society, Picadilly" by Thomas Rowlandson (1808)
The Robin Hood Society met at a tavern, however, and I doubt
it was nearly as fancy

It is rather remarkable that the Thursday's Club seemed to announce its members' preferences for porter and lemonade at the exact same time that the literature about the Robin Hoods was first popping up.  One would think, therefore, that these two drinks were most likely valued by members of the Thursday's Club who wished to present themselves as cultured, health-conscious and progressive individuals thirsty for a lively intellectual debate without the soporific qualities induced by wine.

Sort of like a literati's Kombucha, I suppose.

A Predilection for (Food) Collection

As this Blog enters its seventh month of existence, my wise and efficacious readers most likely have gathered that the records of the Royal Society's semi-official dining club, "The Thursday's Club called the Royal Philosophers," have proven essential to the Lady of Quality's dissertation research.  Indeed, for 38 years –– from 1748 through 1785 –– this club assiduously recorded everything the members ate for dinner, from "Beef-Stake Pye" all the way down to the butter and cheese.

But alas.  In 1786, for some unknown reason, the treasurer ceased to record the 'Bill of Fare' in the dinner books.  (However, he unflaggingly continued to keep the attendance records for years.)

Why?  Did the Bill of Fare no longer matter to him?

In Annals of the Royal Society Club, published in 1917,  Sir Archibald Geikie attributes this unfortunate event to mere happenstance, proclaiming the two minutes of extra work being "too much for the increasingly feeble fingers of the devoted treasurer."

But I'm skeptical.  After all, the treasurer's hand-writing post-1786 resembles that of a man in perfectly good health (even for a physician, no less).  Thus, noble readers, I here propose an alternative explanation.  The 'Bill of Fare' ceased to be recorded in 1786 because it was no longer integral to the club's identity.

I implore you, noble reader, to hear me out.

Knowledge in the 18th century was often gleaned by
collecting and classifying like objects.
So why not food?

First, what we think of as "scientific research" today was, during the 18th century, heavily intertwined with the practice of antiquarian collecting (read more about it in my last post.)   Writing down what was eaten every week was an act of empirical observation.  When "chines of beef" were donated to the club, the treasurer would always weigh and measure them, duly recording his findings in the dinner books.  This zest for documentation also extended to the flavors of different foods.  For a bunch of guys who were trying exotic fruits for the very first time, the collective consensus that the flavor of cantaloupe was "equal if not superior to pine apple," was not just a piece of subjective whimsy.  It was a serious attempt to deduce standards of taste.  "Science" wasn't done in labs in those days; it was practiced in places like taverns and coffee-houses.  And more often than not, people would experiment on themselves.

Indeed, discerning the different flavors of fruit was a serious matter

But not only was the 'Bill of Fare' a matter of empirical observation; it also forged a "common taste" shared among the members.  I have already mentioned that members of the Thursday's Club did not all share the same social rank.  Sure, all of them were well-off by the standards of the day, but they could range from nobles to apothecaries, from politicians to poets.  By writing down everything that they ate, they were proclaiming to the world, and to posterity, that they were men who were cosmopolitan enough to know what a pineapple tasted like, but preferred the English "Apple Pye" to all other sweets.  They were men who happily dined on "Calves Head Hashed" and "Tongues and Udders," but disdained suspiciously French "Fricassees."  They were men who, by means of their urban street-smarts and savoir-faire, could dine on twenty different kinds of fresh fish and have cauliflowers in winter.  

By 1786, the Bill of Fare no longer performed the same scientific and social "work" that it once did.  Antiquarian collecting was losing relevance as the principal means of organizing knowledge.  And pineapples and cantaloupes were no longer complete edible novelties to those who could afford them.

In the 19th century, we start getting the menu with all of its a la carte options.  But the 18th century 'Bill of Fare' was an entirely different beast.

Lessons in Coin Collecting

What might a humble coin collector tell us about the 18th century meal?  In my last couple of posts, I introduced a new character to my worthy readers: Josiah Colebrooke, the punctilious treasurer to the Thursday's Club.

(New readers: you can catch up here.)

But I haven't yet figured out why he had such a bone to pick with the Earl of Chesterfield: the man who sought to enter the club based on a display of wit rather than a delectable edible gift, thereby going against the club rules.

Who was Josiah Colebrooke, after all?  An apothecary by trade, his long-standing membership in both the Society of Antiquaries and the Thursday's Club (he was the treasurer to both) suggests that he was dedicated to learning, self-improvement and the study of the past.

In 1776, shortly after his death, I found this document (to the left) advertising the auction of his most prized possession:  his coin collection.  Turns out that the guy had amassed a lot of them over the course of his life.  The document runs seven pages long.

The records show that Colebrooke possessed a variety of Roman, Greek and Byzantine coins, but the great majority were of English origin.  For a man of such dedication, I was surprised to find that most of them weren't terribly valuable; most cost between a pound or two: a respectable sum for the average guy, I suppose, but by no means a fortune.

I mean, Colebrooke was constantly asking his fellow Thursday's Club members to shell out a guinea (1 pound and 1 shilling) left and right to pay for all their "venison carriages" and bottles of claret.  His beloved coin collection would have been a pittance to them.  

(The priciest one, in case you were wondering, cost nearly seven pounds and is described as: "A very fine penny of Henry I, with the young face, very scarce.")

A penny of Henry I:
Who knows if this was  Colebrooke's most treasured coin?

I scoured ECCO for traces of Josiah Colebrooke, and found that he is remembered best for his accounting skills, his interest in antiquarian studies, and his coins.  But what might knowledge of his hobbies have to do with his obsession with keeping to "club rules" and his hostility to the Earl of Chesterfield?

A couple ideas:

In Colebrooke's letter of protest over the admission of Chesterfield, he draws a distinction between principles of admission based on substantial forms, such as may be tasted, and ephemeral, immeasurable things such as wit and humour.  Perhaps there's a parallel between Colebrooke's love of coins for their material uniqueness rather than their monetary value (otherwise, he wouldn't be collecting them!) and his privileging of ingestible foods over ineffable performances of "wit."

When venison was gifted to the club, it was served
as a haunch, as a neck, and in pasty form.

Additionally, learning a little more about Colebrooke's professional and social life makes it ever more apparent that he and the Earl of Chesterfield were born in very different social worlds.  Colebrooke was a guy with a day-job and no title, and ended up spending his free time keeping the books for the clubs he participated in.  In the same letter of protest to the club, he doesn't hesitate to single out Chesterfield's elite status.

"a nobleman chosen a member of a dining club for communicating a petition to the king, will appear very abstruse ... posterity will be at a loss, to know whether this petition etc was not a name given to some new dish of that nobleman's invention" 

Well, I'm not quite convinced that any 21st century reader would be fooled into thinking a "petition" was an Enlightenment delicacy.  Regardless, does Colebrooke suspect that the perception of Chesterfield's apparent "wittiness" is informed by his noble birth?  Maybe.  For even if venison and turtle were known as elite foods, they actually seem to level the playing field within the confines of the club.  After all, anyone –– nobleman or gentleman, the rules say –– may present them as gifts and reap the social rewards.  And once served up on the table, everyone is entitled to appreciate them.

We often think of "taste" as marking distinctions between individuals rather than bringing people together.  But for the petulant Mr. Colebrooke, it seems like the provision and sharing of food created for him a "common taste" that softened status distinctions within the society.

Meeting Questionable Standards in 1757

Did I mention that the year 1757 –– the same year that this conflict between Mr. Colebrooke and Lord Chesterfield went down –– was kind of a big deal in the history of "taste" among philosophers?

(For readers just catching up, my last post outlined a controversy within the Thursday's Club over the question of "wit" as an adequate criterion for honorary membership.)

For Hume, food was always
an apt metaphor
(Can't you tell?)

First, in 1757, David Hume penned his famous essay "Of the Standard of Taste," which likened the art of flavor detection to that of aesthetic judgment.  Both of these faculties, according to Hume, operated in the same way:  

Wherever the organs are so fine as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: this we call delicacy of taste, whether we employ these terms in the literal or metaphorical sense....

Gustatory taste, for Hume, was a particularly apt example of aesthetic taste: our faculty of judgment.  But virtually on Hume's heels came the publication of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.

If sweet was beautiful, what
tasted sublime?

Does anyone out there in the republic of bloggers happen to know what Edmund Burke's favorite food was?  The Enquiry makes him out to be quite the sugar fiend.  Indeed, "sweetness," in Burke's opinion, was "the beautiful of the taste."

But Burke didn't hold much confidence in our tongues.  After all, he asked, how can we really quantify the quality of our taste?  Do we truly enjoy the flavor of foods in of themselves, or do we simply enjoy the sensation of feeling full?  Do we really like the taste of opium?  Or do we like how it makes us feel?  Depending on our unique physiological constitutions, the sense of taste could be relentlessly subjective.  

Did the members of the Thursday's Club draw upon either of these ideas when it came to the subject of Lord Chesterfield and his witty letter?  As I write this, I'm still not sure.

For it seemed like Colebrooke's biggest bone to pick with Chesterfield was not whether a "standard of wit" could be devised.  Why of course it could!  (Guess he wasn't much of a skeptic.)  Instead, he appears more concerned about what the antiquarians of the future would think.

"The great difficulty and labour under is, how this minute may be interpreted by some future philosopher  into whose hands this manuscript may possibly fall ... when a higher entertainment is offered to our understandings, unless the ingredients that compose it are specified, posterity will be at a loss, to know whether this petition etc was not a name given to some new dish of that nobleman's invention..."

It's always comforting to know that even 250 years ago, someone was expecting that I would come along and try to explain the wheelings and dealings of this club to the entire blogosphere.  But I don't really know whether Colebrooke, by saying this, is merely rationalizing a dislike for the Earl of Chesterfield.  If he's so concerned about posterity, what aspect of the club's prestige is he trying to protect? 

A Dash of Wit at the Dinner Table

The Earl of Chesterfield:
A potential honorary member?  

So I've been racking my brain going over this minor confrontation within the Thursday's Club that occurred in 1757.  In October of that year, the Earl of Chesterfield (the guy pictured to the right) wrote a letter to the king that was apparently so witty and snarky that his cousin (who happened to be a long-term member) proposed him as an honorary member of the club.

But this wasn't taken too kindly by Josiah Colebrooke –– apothecary, antiquarian, and the club's faithful treasurer.  After all, if my readers remember, honorary membership was only bestowed upon those who had graced the club dining table with a) a haunch (or greater) of venison b) a turtle, or c) an exceptionally large chine of beef.

And Lord Chesterfield had done none of those things.


What to do?  In protest, Colebrooke pens a long epistle in which he asks for a copy of the letter to transcribe in the club minute books.

Here's an excerpt:

"A nobleman chose a member of a dining club, for communicating a petition to the King, will appear very abstruse, unless a description further than the word petition implys, be added; every one knows the meaning of the words Venison, Turtle, and Chine of Beef, the things are objects of our senses, we know the tast of them, but when a higher entertainment is offered to our understandings, unless the Ingredients that compose it are specifyed, Posterity will be at a loss, to know whether this petition etc was not a name given to some new dish of that Nobleman's invention.  You will pardon my taking up so much of your time, but as my records have hitherto taken notice of Substantial forms only, such as may be tasted, Tho Wit and Humour entertain the mind, yet as it will be very difficult to express them in a bill Fare without giving them at full length, I must beg the favour of you to furnish me with a Copy of this Petition..."

A sense of humor is all fine and dandy, Colebrooke seems to say, but how on earth does one measure it?  Indeed, while the sense of taste had been shown to be utterly subjective in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the art of flavor detection seemed pretty manageable when set beside the art of conversation.

So what happened?  Alas, dear readers.  The five empty pages in the minute book that follow this epistolary supplication testify to the failure of Colebrooke's plea.

Hopes Thwarted, Letter Lost: Empty Pages 

Will Lord Chesterfield get into the Thursday's Club?  Does Colebrooke make an ultimatum?  And how do contemporary understandings of "wit" and "taste" in the mid-18th century influence the course of events?

Readers, there is much much more to this story, so stay tuned.

Men of the Upper Crust

My last post took a peek at the sweet treats most frequently served to the Thursday's Club over 1748-49, when the club first started recording its weekly dinners.  40 years later, the club mysteriously stopped recording its meals.  But what happened in between then?

Joseph Banks: Botanist, Collector, Gastronome
(I think he looks the part)

The club had witnessed some pretty significant changes over this period.  In 1779, the botanist Joseph Banks (most famous for his travels with Captain Cook) was elected President of the Society.  Banks was quite the dinner party aficionado; he headed the Thursday's Club for 42 years, and it was said that when he wasn't collecting exotic plants abroad, he patronized 12 different eating clubs in London. 

Then, in 1784, the club relocated from the Mitre Tavern to the popular Crown and Anchor on the Strand (only after drawing up a few new dinner provisions, which you can read about here).  The Crown and Anchor appears quite frequently in accounts of 18th century public dining.  Because of its large size and central location, it served as venue for everything from political rallies to charity events to Masonic meetings.   

So what did members get for dessert at this new location, almost 40 years after my last post?  You would think that, given the changed venue, and the greater availability of sugar and exotic fruits, we would see a little more creativity in the offerings. 

But lo and behold; my amateur "Pye Chart" reveals virtually the same sugary culprits: Gooseberry Pye, Marrow Pudding, and the marked persistence of the apple.  There are a few variations, of course –– dumplings and tarts popping up every now and then –– but pye remains the most ubiquitous form of pastry.  There are a few new additions, such as "Almond Cake," "Hunting Pudding" "Blamange" and the rather mysterious "Fruit Pyes," but these dishes are few and far between.      

To me, this suggests that the club members, whilst at the Mitre, cultivated a particular proclivity for the dish, which was, by the 1780s, ingrained as an unwritten tradition.  Apple Pie was, of course, believed to be a quintessential English dish in the 18th century; I've run across a couple poems about it throughout the course of my research.  You certainly can't say that about the suspiciously francophillic "Blamange."  

To the right, I've added an example "menu page" that demonstrates how the information was set down on the page at this time.  Notice all the repetition; the second half of the menu looks like a mirror image of the first half, and the roast (here a 'chine of mutton') constitutes the center piece.  I'm pretty sure this list resembles the way the dinner looked like when it was set upon the table.  It doesn't look like a modern-day menu in the slightest, with a progression from appetizer to main course to dessert.  But it doesn't say whether there was any rhyme or reason as to how the dishes were eaten.

Sweet Teeth

Zounds!  It's been a long day, good readers, and the Authoress of this Blog confesses that she has spent the past few hours recovering from her foray into the world of data, forms, and countless spreadsheets.  Entering 40 years of dinners into a database is no walk in the park, and working with a program that refuses to recognize anything other than the Gregorian Calendar (England used the Julian until 1752) doesn't make matters any easier.

So for today, I'm going to examine just the first two years of available records from the Thursday's Club, which begin in March, 1748.  (Mind you, these aren't the first meetings of the club's official incarnation ... the 1743-1747 records have been lost.)   And I suspect that going through everything set on the table –– from the profusion of pidgeon pyes to the perennial supplements of butter and cheese –– might fatigue my readers' tender appetites.  So, what the hell, let's just start with dessert.  

The pie-chart below breaks down all of the desserts consumed at the weekly meetings at the Mitre Tavern (the weekly meeting place) between 1748-1749.
 

I won't lie, readers; I was a little taken aback by my findings.  No Malaga Watermelons, no Jamaica Pepper, no Parmesan Cheese expertly aged to survive both fire and burial.  Instead, "Apple Pye," a rather ubiquitous and versatile dish that was consumed by the rich and poor alike, appeared on the table most often in these years.  Never since the Cider Craze of the 1670s have I witnessed such enthusiasm for the fruit.  A slight variation on this theme –– Apple Pye "Creamed" –– came in fourth, after Plumb and Marrow Pudding, respectively.  We get apple custard, which actually sounds pretty tasty, only once, but all in all, apple concoctions (codlings included) constitute nearly 40% of the desserts.  Seems like the most favored desserts of the R.S. primarily contained local fruits that corresponded to the rhythms of the season. 

R.S. Mystery Money

I haven't blogged about the Thursday's Club in a while, but I was back at Carlton Terrace last week browsing through a few things before I head off to other archives.  And quite by accident, I found the following piece of paper folded into the Thursday's Club minute book.

This one (dated the 28th of June, 1790) was one of four scraps of paper that listed the attendance at the anniversary dinners.  What can we find out from this?  Well, there were 22 attendees, 7 of whom weren't members but attended as guests of others.  (The Thursday's Club rule books constantly complain about excessive numbers of "strangers" attending the dinners and passed a flurry of rules to manage the party crashers.)

But what particularly interests me is the note written underneath the list of names: "Seven shillings found under the table."

You're probably thinking, my judicious Readers, that this little note is hardly extraordinary.  Nevertheless, it might provide some insight into how respectability factored into how these dinners.  Why didn't anyone claim the money for himself?  Or why didn't the man who found it simply pocket it himself and keep his mouth shut?  In 1784, the Club and the Crown and Anchor Tavern decided that dinner would be charged at 4 shillings a head, so 7 shillings wasn't insubstantial.  We only know that, ultimately, the money was deemed the property of the club.

The Thursday's Club certainly catered to the upper strata of society, (one had to be a fellow of the Royal Society in order to even qualify for membership) but within that category, we can see that there are peers, doctors, officers and commoners alike present at the dinner.  And once you're in, it seems, everyone governed himself according to the same rules of propriety.

Post-Script: Regrettably, the Thursday's Club stopped recording their Bills of Fare in 1786, so I wasn't able to find out what they actually ate for dinner that day.  However, I have previously mentioned that the Royal Society offers an excellent (and ridiculously cheap) lunch for readers and fellows alike.  

A Healthfull and Nourishing Sallet for 2.75

I am very pleased to report that the spirit of Mr. Evelyn, F.R.S is alive and well over here.

Overcooked Turbot and Toasted Cheese

I was randomly trolling one of my favorite sites –– 18^th Century Journals Online –– the other night and came across this little quote from The Humourist:

“At Dinner we had many Excuses from
 the Lady of the House for our indifferent Fare,
 and she had as many Declarations from us,
 her Guests, that all was very good.”

I’ve looked at zillions of committee books and minutes dealing with dinners of various kinds, and while these sources are useful in deciphering who was at a particular meal, and sometimes what is served, it’s difficult to figure out what the experience of the dinner was like.  At the end of the day, of course, the sensation of taste can only be physically experienced alone, but social context profoundly influences the performance of taste.  Nobody dares to criticize the food while he is a guest in a stranger’s home.  The commensality of the table causes the picky connoisseur to fall silent.

So if propriety obscures the nitty gritty politics of the dinner table, we can often only piece together the experience of the meal from what we hear in retrospect –– the complaints.  I already mentioned the finicky Freemason who withdrew from the Brethren in 1790 because he got a bad seat at dinner, but I’ve run across a slew of other complaints too.  After the Sons of the Clergy Banquet held on the 14^th of May, 1789, the minute book stated,

“After the steward and their deputies had dined, the dinner was served up in the hall at 2 past 5 o clock the tables were covered with great profusion, the turbot was fine and in great plenty. In fact ... every person was perfectly satisfied.  The wine was served by Mr Lewis master of the new London Tavern Cheapside and NO COMPLAINT.” 

Did I mention that the said Mr Lewis wined and dined them on champagne in order to get the gig?  (It's in the minutes.)  

This guy looks pretty serious about his meal,
but who knows if the fowl was cooked to his liking?
Rowlandson, "The Glutton"

Similarly, at a meeting recorded on Feb 17, 1784, the Thursday's Club minute books record:

“Mr Simkin [the Crown and Anchor proprietor] has made such promises of mending the commons so greatly that no person will in future complain of his dinners…”[1]

Complaining of his dinners?  With the profusion of venison and turtle gifts to the Club, I didn’t know there were any problems until I ran across these things.  But these little asides tell us a lot about the more subjective side of dining.  Nobody wants to whine in public, and we don't exactly know who is complaining, but it's important to keep in mind that diners were, in addition to reveling about the new dishes they were eating, also grumbling and whining about the quality of what they were eating and how it was served.  In any case, it seems like more and more people were developing ‘complaints’ in the latter end of the 18^th century.  It might just be a coincidence that all of these things occur within a ten year time frame, but I wonder if the notion of respectable dining was changing in some way.  And if so, why? 

---

[1] My favorite new stipulation being, “When toasted cheese is called for, he be allowed to charge it.”