17th-century 'Great British Bake Off' recipes

History Extra

All images are © Wellcome Images

 Hannah Bisaker’s puff pastry, 1692

To make puff paist
 "Take halfe a quortorh of The Finest Flower then mix yo Flower and water
 and Four white of Eggs together, mould up yo paste but not too stiff,
Then role yo Past out into a Sheete. Then lay some Butter in litle Pecies
Till you have Filled yo sheete but doe not lay it Towards The ends to neare,
 Then Dust a little Flower with yo Drudging Box then Fould it up
Twice before you put any more Then doe soe Till yo have put in
a pound keeping it a little dusted very Fine yo put it to yo Butter,
handle it a little Then cut it to yo own

Fancie Lady Ann Fanshawe's icy cream, 1651-1707

To make Icy Cream
 Take three pints of the best cream, boyle it with
a blade of Mace, or else perfume it with orang flower water
 or Amber-Greece, sweeten the Cream, with sugar let it stand
till it is quite cold, then put it into Boxes, ether of Silver
 or tinn then take, Ice chopped into small peeces and
putt it into a tub and set the Boxes in the Ice couering
them all over, and let them stand in the Ice two
hours, and the Cream Will come to be Ice in the Boxes,
then turne them out into a salvar with some of the same
Seasoned Cream, so sarue it up at the Table.

 Lady Ann Fanshawe's sugar cakes, 1651-1707

To make Sugar Cakes
 Take 2 pound of Butter, one pound of fine Sugar, the yolkes of nine
Egs, a full Spoonfull of Mace beat & searsed [sifted], as much Flower as this
will well wett making them so stiffe as you may rowle it out, then
with the Cup of a glasse of what Size you please cutt
them into round Cakes; pricke them and bake them.

 Orange pudding c1685-c1725

To make Orange Pudding
 Take 2 Oranges pare them and cut them in little pieces,
then take 12 Ounces of fine Sugar, beat them in a stone morter,
put to them 12 Ounces of butter and 12 Yolkes of Eggs,
 and beat all these together, then make a very good paste,
and lay a sheet of paste upon a dish and so lay on your pudding,
and cover it with another sheet of paste,
 and set it in the oven, an hour will bake it

 How to Cook a Husband (c1710-1725)

How to Cook a Husband

 As Mr Glass said of the hare, you must first catch him. Having done so, the mode of cooking him, so as to make a good dish of him, is as follows. Many good husbands are spoiled in the cooking; some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up. Others keep them constantly in hot water, while others freeze them by conjugal coldness. Some smother them with hatred, contention and variance, and some keep them in pickle all their lives. These women always serve them up with tongue sauce. Now it cannot be supposed that husbands will be tender and good if managed in that way. But they are, on the contrary, very delicious when managed as follows: Get a large jar called the jar of carefulness, (which all good wives have on hand), place your husband in it, and set him near the fire of conjugal love; let the fire be pretty hot, but especially let it be clear - above all, let the heat be constant. Cover him over with affection, kindness and subjection. Garnish with modest, becoming familiarity, and the spice of pleasantry; and if you had kisses and other confectionaries let them be accompanied with a sufficient portion of secrecy, mixed with prudence and moderation. We would advise all good wives to try this receipt and realise how admirable a dish a husband is when properly cooked.

When beans were the food of lust

History Extra

Illustration by Clair Rossiter

The London Cuckold, a ballad printed between c1685 and 1688, describes a man who takes leave of his “witty Wife” to “behold the glory” of the army on campaign at nearby Hounslow Heath. On his return, unaware that his wife has been unfaithful, he is lavished with attention:

 “When he came home she gave him Kisses, and Sack-Posset very good, Caudles too, she never misses, for they warm and heat the Blood Such things wilt create desire, And new kindle Cupid’s Fire; These things made him kiss his Wife, And to call her Love and Life.”

 It’s an amusing image: the guilty wife feeding her cuckolded husband with treats intended to “kindle Cupid’s fire” – stoke amorous affection and increase arousal – to make him enamoured anew and even, perhaps, more sexually appealing. But it’s her choice of foods that is most interesting: a taste of the diverse range of putative aphrodisiacs in early modern England.

 Caudle, a warm drink of thin gruel mixed with wine or ale and sweetened or spiced, was believed to be arousing, as was sweet-posset, another mildly alcoholic confection. But the array of aphrodisiacs also included some surprises. Along with produce from kitchen garden and hedgerow (such as parsnips, carrots and nettles), warming spices including cinnamon, anise seed and coriander were high on the list. So were birds like pheasants and sparrows, as well as animal genitalia – the pizzle (penis) and testicles of bulls, boars, goats and stags. Yet, perhaps most surprising was the belief that flatulent foods such as beans and pulses increased libido.

 For early modern men and women, though, these foods were more than just sexual curiosities. They were inherently understood to be treatments for infertility, not just stimulants for increasing arousal.

 This understanding drew upon the medical idea that sexual desire and pleasure were fundamental to fertility – without them, conception was unlikely to occur, not least because men and women would be less likely to engage in intercourse. As the early 18th-century surgeon and medical writer John Marten argued: “God Almighty has…endured each [sex] with natural Instincts, prompting them to the use thereof with desire, in order to perpetuate the Species, by producing new Creatures to supply the room of those who are gone; without which desire, what rational Creature would have taken delight in so filthy, so contemptible and base thing as Venery [sexual intercourse] is?”

 Windy meats
Aphrodisiacs were believed to act in several different ways. They could heat the body; they could provide nutrition for the production of seed (sperm); and they could provide salt, to make the seed more titillating. Pulses, beans and other flatulent foods were thought to mainly affect men, and to function by creating wind and inflating the body.

 Angus McLaren, a historian of reproduction, noted that in the early modern period men were frequently recommended flatulent foods such as apples to stimulate lust. Audrey Eccles, in her work on Tudor and Stuart obstetrics and gynaecology, identified these as a category of stimulants widely known as ‘windy meats’.

 Medical authors of this era explained that erection of the male genitalia was caused by a combination of factors: blood, imagination, muscles, pressure, seed and wind. Helkiah Crooke’s 1616 book, Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man, vividly invoked the roles of blood, spirits and wind in this process: “When as in venerious appetites, the bloud & the spirits do in great quantity assemble themselves out of the veines and arteries, that member is as it were a gutte filled with winde, presently swelling and growing hard.”

 Though Crooke used wind as a metaphor for the biological processes occurring during arousal, he also noted later in his treatise that “the efficient cause [of an erection] is heate, spirites and winde, which fill and distend” the hollow parts of the penis. Medical writers agreed that foods releasing wind into the body enabled men to get and sustain an erection.

 This was important not just for the act itself, but also for ensuring that impregnation resulted. Medical doctrine explained that male seed was potent and fertile because it was hot, as well as being spirituous and salty. The heat of the seed was maintained during intercourse because it remained insulated inside the man’s body until it was placed directly into the womb or neck of the womb.

 As Alessandro Massaria’s medical book for women from the turn of the 17th century explained: “Another cause of barrenness, by the defect of the yard [penis], is too much weakness and tenderness thereof, so that it is not strongly enough erected, to inject the seed into the womb; for the strength and stiffness of the yard, very much conduces to conception, by reason of the forcible injection of the humane seed into the womb.”

 In other words, more wind meant a stiffer erection, more direct placement of seed and a better chance of conception.

 Wind also made seed more stimulating and more potent. Medical writers asserted that seed titillated and irritated the sensitive skin of the reproductive organs as it passed through them, causing arousal.

 And in his Secret Miracles of Nature (1559), Lævinus Lemnius explained that seed was made from the “windy superfluity of blood” and that foods that “will make men lusty” should create “plenty of seed, and a force of a flatulent spirit, whereby the seed may be driven forth into the Matrix [womb].” So wind enhanced both the amount and potency of the seed and the function of the male reproductive organs.

 Unlike categories of aphrodisiacs recommended for consumption by both men and women, these ‘windy meats’ were promoted only for men. In fact, wind and flatulence were thought to be particularly damaging to women.

 Philip Barrough’s 16th-century medical treatise warned that “windinesse ingendered in the wombe, doth let the fertilitie or conception, & causeth barennesse”. Jane Sharp, 17th-century author of the first female-authored midwifery manual, suggested that women should take juniper berries every morning to prevent wind from collecting in the womb and damaging fertility.

 Beans and pulses, particularly chickpeas, were among a host of foods identified by early modern medical authors as ‘windy meats’. Barrough, for example, argued that when a man could not fulfil his marital duties (sexually satisfy his wife and make her a mother) “windie meates are good for him, as be chiche peason, beanes, scallions [onions], leekes, the roote and seed of persneppes, pine nuttus, sweet almonds… and other such like”.

 The English translation of Jacques Ferrand’s 1623 treatise Erotomania similarly listed various foods he believed would, through their heat and flatulence, provoke lust, including soft eggs, pine nuts, pistachios, carrots, parsnips, onions, oysters, chestnuts and chickpeas.

 Herbals produced by botanical writers offered similar ideas. John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum of 1640 stated that: “Cicers [chickpeas], as Galen saith, are no lesse windy meate than Beanes, but yet nourish more, they provoke venery, and is thought to increase sperme.”

 Another flatulent food described by botanical treatises as an aphrodisiac was the aubergine, or ‘mad apple’. “They breed much windinesse, and thereby peradventure bodily lust,” commented Parkinson. Likewise, William Salmon wrote in the early 18th century that “they yield but little Nourishment, and breed much Wind, whereby ’tis possible they may provoke Bodily Lust”.

 Thunder but no rain
However, not all medical writers agreed that ‘windy meats’ boosted fertility. Even Lemnius stated that: “Some of our lascivious women will say, that such men that trouble their wives to no purpose, do thunder, but there follows no rain, they do not water the inward ground of the matrix. They have their veins puffed up with wind, but there wants seed.”

 This insinuated that wind, though allowing men to engage in sexual activity, did not enhance the quality of a man’s seed and, thus, did not improve fertility.

 Similarly, a late 17th‑century medical tract by Swiss physician Théophile Bonet confidently dismissed windy meats, stating: “It is commonly reported of Aphrodisiacks, that Flatus or wind is necessary to Venery: but though in Boys erection or distension of the Penis may seem from Flatus, and these may concur by accident, yet they cannot nor ought not to be reckoned among Aphrodisiacks; those things indeed that excite the Spirits stir up Venery, and so make the Seed turgid, but so do not those things that breed or excite wind.”

 Bonet, again, did not discount the idea that wind could cause the penis to swell, but observed that ‘windy meats’ did not improve the quality of a man’s seed, so did not deserve to be classified as sexual stimulants.

 These criticisms became more common as the period progressed and, by the 18th century, windy meats had lost their prestige. New understandings of the anatomy of the penis revealed that wind did not inflate the penis or enhance male potency and attention shifted to the role muscles and blood flow played in sexual abilities.

 Jennifer Evans is a historian at the University of Hertfordshire, with a special interest in medicine and sexual health in early modern Britain.

How to make 17th-century chocolate for Valentine's Day

History Extra

To make Chocolate

 Take your Choco Nutts and put them over the fire either In earthern pott, or kettle or frying pan keeping them stirring with a brass spoone till they be very hott and of black browne, then take them and pull of[f] the shells with your fingers. They must look of a black colour though not to[o] much burnt.

 Then you must pound them in a great iron or brass mortar and seeth [sieve] them through a fine lawne [linen] seeth [sieve], and soe pound them againe and soe seeth it till all getts through, then take two pound of the powder and three quarters of a pound of good white sugar about 5d or 6d per pound being seethed [sieved] all one as the Choco Nutts, then put a Nuttmeg and half and ounce of Cinnamon and pound it well together and seeth it as herein before mentioned and to each pound of Choco Nutt the like quantity.

 When you have mixt it altogether, take your mortar and putt it on the fire and make it pretty hott and take the pestle also, then putt the stuff in it and beat it till it comes to a smooth past[e], then take it out and weigh it into Quarters of pounds then Roll it round in your hands and putt it on a Quarter of sheet of paper and take the paper into your two hands and chafe it up and down till it comes to a short Roll.

 English medical notebook, 1575-1663 (Wellcome Library MS.6812, p.137)

Everything you know about 17th-century London is wrong

History Extra

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plotters, 1605. Contrary to popular belief, Guy Fawkes was not executed for masterminding the Gunpowder Plot. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)

In a city as historically dense as London, facts and faces can get jumbled as readily as oats in a box of muesli. Take the statue of Lady Justice on top of the Old Bailey [the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales], for example: many believe that she is blindfolded; she is not. Tourists look for the Union Flag above Buckingham Palace as a sign that the queen is at home; in fact it means she’s away. Even cast-iron ‘truths’ can turn out to be distortions: while the Tower of London did indeed see famous beheadings in the Tudor period, more than half of all executions in the fortress were conducted in the 20th century.
Of all eras, the 17th century seems to have generated more mistruths than most. This was a period that saw the beginnings of the press (newspapers), the first stirrings of scientific discourse and the city’s great chroniclers such as Pepys, Evelyn and, latterly, Defoe. It was also a time of tumultuous events, with plague, war, fire and political upheaval striking the nation as rarely before. Many of us carry around a working knowledge of these heady days, but how much of it is accurate? Here are four myths busted…

 

Guy Fawkes was not executed for masterminding the Gunpowder Plot

The century began with a bang. Almost. Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators famously plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and the king with them. But it didn’t quite happen as many of us believe...
Every year, thousands of people make life-size effigies of the Catholic Yorkshireman, then set him on fire for the delight of their children. This is the man who plotted not just to bring down the system, but to blow up the king and his government too. In 1605, his actions were branded as treachery and treason. Today, we would call him a terrorist. But does Fawkes truly deserve the animosity of centuries?
His story is well known to every British school child. Guy Fawkes, real name Guido Fawkes, was angry at the state for its anti-Catholic prejudice. He brought together a team of conspirators intent on killing King James and his cronies during the State Opening of Parliament. Under the cover of night they broke into the House of Lords and loaded the cellar with barrels of gunpowder. The plot was, however, discovered on the eve of success, thanks to an anonymous tip-off. Fawkes was arrested, tortured and eventually gave the names of his auxiliaries. All were eventually captured and executed.
But this story is wrong in almost every respect.
Fawkes was not the ringleader. He was merely the first to be captured when the guards caught him red-handed and alone in the gunpowder cellar. The true mastermind was Robert Catesby. He led the team of 13 conspirators – Fawkes had no special place in the hierarchy, but was chosen to light the fuse at the assassination attempt. Nor was he born as Guido. That was a nickname he adopted while fighting for the Catholic Spanish in the Eighty Years’ War. Plain old Guy was his birth name.
And contrary to popular belief, the conspirators did not break into the Houses of Parliament. In fact, they took a lease out on the undercroft and had lawful access to the space. The gunpowder stash was built up over a number of months before the plague-delayed opening of Parliament on 5 November.
Fawkes did indeed receive the death penalty for High Treason, and was dragged to the gallows in Old Palace Yard to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This terrifying procedure would first see the condemned man dangle by the neck until barely conscious. After being cut down, his genitals would be sliced off and his belly opened. His entrails would then be scooped out and burnt with his testicles. Finally, the fading man would be chopped into parts, which would, in gory sequel, be displayed in public locations as a warning to others.
It didn’t quite happen like that, though. Before the executioner could begin the gruesome act, Fawkes leapt from the gallows, breaking his neck and sparing himself the excruciating fate the law had set out for him. In short, he was not executed, but took his own life.
Other conspirators also escaped the chop. Ringleader Robert Catesby and several others were killed in a gunfight with authorities in Staffordshire, while another plotter died from illness at the Tower of London before he could stand trial.

 

The Great Fire of London was not the greatest of all London’s fires

September 1666, and it seemed to Londoners that the whole world was aflame. Samuel Pepys described the scene:
“We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin.”
The Great Fire of London, as it came to be known, certainly devastated the City of London. An estimated 80,000 people lived there; 70,000 became homeless. Almost all the City of London’s churches were destroyed, including the medieval St Paul’s Cathedral. To those who bore witness, it must have felt like the greatest calamity in the city’s history.
In many ways, however, the Great Fire was just another of many such tragedies, because London has fallen to conflagration on numerous occasions. The earliest came at the hands of Boudica in around 60 AD, less than 20 years after the founding of the Roman town. Suetonius, the Governor of Britain, had to decide where to make his stand against Boudica’s rebellion. London was not ideal as a battleground and he pulled all troops out of the town. The city was defenceless, and the Queen of the Iceni was merciless. If Roman accounts are to be believed, she slaughtered thousands of inhabitants and set the town ablaze. If you dig deep enough, anywhere in the City of London you can still find a thick destruction layer of ash and red debris from this conflagration.
Other fires followed. Archaeology suggests another great Roman fire around 125 AD, in which all but the most sturdy buildings were consumed. We do not know the death toll. 1087, the year that William the Conqueror died, also saw a mighty blaze comparable to the Great Fire. It, too, destroyed St Paul’s Cathedral, wrecking “other churches and the largest and fairest part of the whole city”. The calamity was repeated just two generations later in the great fire of 1135. In fact, fires were such a common occurrence that the medieval city must have remained as pockmarked as its disease-ravaged denizens.

_{Samuel Pepys. Colourised version of the painting by John Hayls. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)}
The most tragic blaze occurred in 1212. It started in Southwark, taking hold of St Mary Overie (what today we call Southwark Cathedral). Londoners rushed from the city onto the newly built London Bridge to lend assistance, and to gawp. Alas, the wind was up. Sparks from the fire arced across the Thames to the northern end of the bridge, where they took hold. Trapped between the two fires, the horrified onlookers succumbed to smoke inhalation, or jumped to their ends in the treacherous Thames. Later accounts put the subsequent death toll as high as 3,000. Although likely to be an exaggeration, there is no doubt that this incident ranks as one of London’s worst disasters. By comparison, the Great Fire of 1666 is thought to have claimed just six lives, according to official records (but amid such confusion, and with the limitations of 17th century communication, it would be impossible to accurately account for everybody. Many more people surely lost their lives in the crowded tenements of the City of London).
The early fires of London are mostly obscure today. We remember the 1666 conflagration partly because it was so well recorded by Pepys and others, but also because it served as the fountainhead for so much of the modern city. The cathedral and churches of Sir Christopher Wren soon arose like gleaming white phoenixes. Brick and stone replaced wood and straw as the chief building materials. The fire also accelerated the growth of what would become the West End. The fields of Covent Garden and Holborn had already disappeared beneath a tide of development. The fire served as a fillip for more house building around the periphery of the City of London. In the years immediately following the fire, districts such as Soho and Bloomsbury began to spread out as wealthy merchants and nobles sought new housing away from the ancient centre. Like a rose bush pruned, London must be disfigured before it can grow.

 

The Great Fire of London did not wipe out the Great Plague

Which brings us on to one of the great canards in London’s history. Did the 1666 fire really put an end to the Great Plague? It’s a claim that’s tempted educators for centuries. The timing looks perfect: everybody falls ill in 1665, then a vast, cleansing fire wipes out the disease in 1666. A neat and tidy ‘just-so’ story, but correlation does not always imply causation.
For starters, the plague had eased considerably by September 1666, the month of the fire. Already by February that year the Royal Court and entourage had moved back to the capital. In March, the Lord Chancellor deemed London as crowded as it had ever been seen. When the Great Fire swept through London half a year later, it struck a city that was already well on the road to recovery. It should also be remembered that the fire only damaged the City proper. The suburbs, including plague-intensive regions such as St Giles, were completely untouched by the blaze. The fire had no direct effect on the disease in these quarters.
While the Great Fire did not wipe out the plague, it did help bring about conditions that would be less favourable to further outbreaks. The city was rebuilt to better standards, and (slightly) more sanitary conditions prevailed. These improvements were no doubt a contributory factor in keeping plague at bay in the centuries since.

_{'The Pestilence 1665’. Illustration of figures burying bodies in the aftermath of the plague. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)}
A few other myths persist about the Great Plague of 1665–66. It was by no means the only disease to ravage England, nor the worst. The so-called Black Death of 1348–1350 wiped out a much higher percentage of the population – perhaps a third of England. By contrast, the 1665 plague was largely centred on London. It killed 15 per cent of those in the capital, and therefore an even smaller percentage across the country as a whole.
Earlier 17th century epidemics, notably in 1603 and 1625, were not quite so virulent as the Great Plague of 1665, but they weren’t far off. The 1665 epidemic gets more attention for several reasons. It was the last big outbreak of plague in this country. Many contemporary accounts survive, unlike earlier medieval plagues. And it just so happened to occur at a time when plenty of other major events were taking place. That the plague struck London not long after the restoration of the monarchy and just before the Great Fire of 1666 helps secure its place in our historical memory.

Plague doctors did not go about their business in beaked masks

Finally, we can also pooh-pooh one of the most terrifying icons of the plague: the beaked helmet. Visual depictions of the disease often show sinister figures roaming the streets in these eccentric headpieces. They served as a kind of primitive gas mask for plague doctors. The beak-like appendage would be stuffed with lavender and other sweet smelling aromatics in a bid to ward off the foul odours often blamed for the plague. Accentuating the macabre look, the doctors would also sport a broad-brimmed hat and ankle-length overcoat. A wooden cane completed the costume, and allowed physicians to examine patients without the need for personal contact.

_{A plague doctor in protective clothing, c1656. Engraving by Paul Furst after J Colombina. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

While this protective gear is well documented on the continent, particularly in Italy, there is no good evidence that the costume was ever worn in London. It can’t be entirely ruled out, but one would have thought that such a distinctive ensemble would have made it onto the pages of Pepys’s diary, or some other first-hand account of the plague.
Matt Brown is the author of Everything You Know About London Is Wrong (Batsford, 2016).

A brief history of how we fell in love with caffeine and chocolate

History Extra

A heated debate in a coffee house on Bride Lane, Fleet Street in London, c1688. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

These everyday beverages, so integral to British life, all originally came from far-flung regions: coffee from the Arabian peninsula, tea from China, and chocolate from Mesoamerica. By a strange coincidence, all arrived on our shores almost simultaneously during the middle of the 17th century, causing much debate about their benefits (or otherwise) to the health of the nation. 
Here, Melanie King, the author of Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine, explores the origins of our obsession with caffeine and chocolate…
We may think of the 1650s as a time of puritanical austerity, with the banning of holly wreaths and the closing of theatres. But it was during these years of austerity that tea, coffee, and chocolate first went on sale in Britain. The first cup of coffee appears to have been served in 1650, in the Angel Inn in Oxford, where an enterprising Jewish merchant began the long tradition of seeing students through their exams.
The first cup of hot chocolate came seven years later, when in 1657 an advertisement informed the public that they could enjoy “an excellent West Indian drink called chocolate” at a house in Queen’s Head Alley, Bishopsgate. One year later, a “China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha,” was advertised as being sold at the Sultaness Head Coffee-House by the Royal Exchange. Tea was still an exotic novelty three years later, when Samuel Pepys reported in his diary that he had a cup of tea, “of which I had never drank before”.
The sudden arrival of these three new beverages, all from distant foreign parts, immediately became the source of much curiosity, anxiety, and debate. Entrepreneurs extolled their health benefits, while sceptics made equally dubious announcements about their supposed harmful effects. For example, a 1664 treatise by a tea merchant, entitled An Exact Description of the Growth, Quality and Vertues of the Leaf Tea, confidently claimed that tea “vanquisheth heavie Dreams, easeth the Brain, strengthneth the Memory”, while making the body “active and lusty”. As Pepys discovered, apothecaries recommended cups of tea as a decongestant.
Coffee was also widely promoted as a ‘cure-all’. A 1660 advertisement by James Gough, who sold coffee in Oxford, stated that coffee had so many advantages that “it would be too tedious to nominate everything it is good for”. He nevertheless proceeded to give potential customers a long list that included consumption, gout, spleen, dropsy, rheumatism, headaches, and digestion. It was also effective, he pointedly noted, in banishing drowsiness in “students or others who are to sit up late, or all night”. One of the grandest claims for coffee, made in 1721, was that it stopped the spread of the bubonic plague.
Chocolate, meanwhile, was promoted by various treatises, advertisements, and poems, such as In Praise of Chocolate by James Wadsworth (who wrote under the compelling pseudonym Don Diego de Vadesforte). A “lick of chocolate”, Wadsworth claimed, not only helped women to get pregnant but, nine months later, eased the pains and length of childbirth! The cosmetic effects were equally irresistible: “Twill make Old women Young and Fresh.” Little wonder that fashionable women were soon sipping chocolate in bed, assisted by a special vessel, the mancerina, that prevented them from spilling the liquid onto their sheets.
Such bold claims about these new drinks did not go unchallenged. Equally vocal bands of detractors blamed the beverages for undermining the health, morale, and industry of the nation. The fact that they were to be drunk hot became a source of concern, since hot liquids were believed to boil the blood and therefore upset the balance of the four humours [the ancient Greek theory that the health of the body was controlled by four bodily fluids – blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm]. The perils of drinking hot liquids were graphically illustrated by a Fellow of the Royal Society, Dr Stephen Hales, who studied the effects of dipping a suckling pig’s tail in a cup of tea.

_{Smart gentlemen drinking, smoking and chatting in a coffee house, c1668. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)}
Other alarming claims were made about tea drinking: it supposedly enfeebled the spirits, dried the brain, caused people to commit suicide, and led to a drop in productivity among workers, since even the lowliest labourers, as one opponent furiously noted, downed tools to enjoy a cup of tea. Coffee fared little better – it was denounced in a poem as a “decoction of the devils”, while a 1661 broadsheet claimed that it made men effeminate. In 1674, another broadsheet elaborated the effects of coffee on masculine performance, deploring this ‘heathenish liquor’ for making men unable to discharge their conjugal duties. The women of Britain were, as a result of their men sipping coffee, “languishing in an extremity of want”.
If coffee was suspect because it came from ‘heathen’ lands – the Middle East – chocolate raised suspicions because it was associated with Catholics: the Spanish monks and conquistadors who had been the first Europeans to sample and export it. Its use in Aztec rituals (it sometimes served as a substitute for blood) was also a cause for suspicion. A physician and naturalist named Martin Lister noted that chocolate may have been a suitable drink for “wild Indians” but was hardly one for the “pampered” British.
In the 1660s, chocolate even played a part in a high society sex scandal, when one of the mistresses of the Duke of York (the future James VII and II), Lady Denham, fell ill and died. The poet Andrew Marvell reported that the venom had apparently been administered in a cup of “mortal Chocolate”. An autopsy ruled out any toxin, though it also claimed (as the sceptical Samuel Pepys noted) that she had died a virgin.
Despite their many opponents, all three beverages – tea, coffee, and hot chocolate – became an established part of the British diet, and advice was quickly produced on how best to prepare and enjoy them. The philosopher and courtier Sir Kenelm Digby suggested that tea should be steeped for no longer than it took to recite Psalm 51 (about three minutes).
Pasqua Rosee, an Armenian immigrant who ran London’s first coffee shop, offered advice on how to make and drink a cup of coffee: the grounds should, he said, be boiled with spring water, the liquid then drunk on an empty stomach with no food taken for an hour afterwards. A recipe from 1667 recommended mixing coffee powder with equal quantities of butter and salad oil, proving that today’s trends such as bulletproof coffee – a mixture of coffee and butter – are nothing new. Meanwhile a doctor named Benjamin Moseley suggested that those suffering from flatulence or scurvy might wish to add mustard to their coffee.
Coffee was often consumed in coffee houses, which in London became venues for gossip, political debate and, in the eyes of the authorities, sedition. A publication entitled Rules and Orders of the Coffee House pointed out that, in these establishments, “people of all qualities and conditions” gathered, with no consideration for ranks or titles. Charles II grew so worried about the subversive political effects of coffee houses that in 1675 he ordered their closure. Such was the public indignation that within days he was forced to rescind his proclamation. Within a few decades, by the early 18^th century, there were around 3,000 coffee houses in England.
Chocolate, too, was drunk in special establishments. Unlike coffee, it was not a democratic drink that catered to all ranks of society. More expensive than both tea and coffee, chocolate became the drink of the affluent. Consequently, chocolate houses – White’s, Ozinda’s, and the Cocoa Tree – were found in the aristocratic area around Pall Mall in London. Chocolate was often spiced up with exotic ingredients. It was used for dipping wigg bread (a bread spiced with cloves, nutmeg and caraway seeds), and it might be stirred into wine, brandy, port, or sherry. Pepys’s first encounter with chocolate was in a tavern where, as a hangover cure, it was mixed with his morning draft of wine.

Odd as some of these complaints and prescriptions might seem to us today, the health benefits of coffee, tea, and chocolate are still today the subject of much debate and scientific study. We may not have broadsheets anymore, but the internet is full of testimony about the pros and cons of drinking coffee; the fat-burning and cancer-fighting properties of green tea; and the cholesterol-lowering and memory-boosting powers of chocolate. These three drinks have as strong a hold on us as ever.
Melanie King is a freelance writer of historical non-fiction. Her book Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine (Bodleian Publishing) is out now. To find out more, click here.

17th-century Great British Bake Off recipes

History Extra

All images are © Wellcome Images

Hannah Bisaker’s puff pastry, 1692

To make puff paist
"Take halfe a quortorh of The Finest Flower then mix yo Flower and water and
Four white of Eggs together, mould up yo paste but not too stiff,
Then role yo Past out into a Sheete. Then lay some Butter in litle Pecies
Till you have Filled yo sheete but doe not lay it Towards The ends to neare,
Then Dust a little Flower with yo Drudging Box then Fould it up
Twice before you put any more Then doe soe Till yo have put in
a pound keeping it a little dusted very Fine yo put it to yo Butter,
handle it a little Then cut it to yo own Fancie

 

Lady Ann Fanshawe's icy cream, 1651-1707

To make Icy Cream
Take three pints of the best cream, boyle it with
a blade of Mace, or else perfume it with orang flower water
or Amber-Greece, sweeten the Cream, with sugar let it stand
till it is quite cold, then put it into Boxes, ether of Silver
or tinn then take, Ice chopped into small peeces and
putt it into a tub and set the Boxes in the Ice couering
them all over, and let them stand in the Ice two
hours, and the Cream Will come to be Ice in the Boxes,
then turne them out into a salvar with some of the same
Seasoned Cream, so sarue it up at the Table.

Lady Ann Fanshawe's sugar cakes, 1651-1707

To make Sugar Cakes
Take 2 pound of Butter, one pound of fine Sugar, the yolkes of nine
Egs, a full Spoonfull of Mace beat & searsed [sifted], as much Flower as this
will well wett making them so stiffe as you may rowle it out, then
with the Cup of a glasse of what Size you please cutt them into
round Cakes & pricke them and bake them.

 

Orange pudding c1685-c1725

To make Orange Pudding
Take 2 Oranges pare them and cut them in little pieces,
then take 12 Ounces of fine Sugar, beat them in a stone morter,
put to them 12 Ounces of butter and 12 Yolkes of Eggs,
and beat all these together, then make a very good paste,
and lay a sheet of paste upon a dish and so lay on your pudding,
and cover it with another sheet of paste,
and set it in the oven, an hour will bake it

How to Cook a Husband (c1710-1725)

How to Cook a Husband
As Mr Glass said of the hare, you must first catch him. Having done so,
the mode of cooking him, so as to make a good dish of him, is as follows.
Many good husbands are spoiled in the cooking; some women go about
it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up. Others keep them
constantly in hot water, while others freeze them by conjugal coldness.
Some smother them with hatred, contention and variance, and some keep
them in pickle all their lives. These women always serve them up with tongue
sauce. Now it cannot be supposed that husbands will be tender and good if
managed in that way. But they are, on the contrary, very delicious when
managed as follows: Get a large jar called the jar of carefulness, (which all
good wives have on hand), place your husband in it, and set him near the
fire of conjugal love; let the fire be pretty hot, but especially let it be clear - above
all, let the heat be constant. Cover him over with affection, kindness and
subjection. Garnish with modest, becoming familiarity, and the spice of
pleasantry; and if you had kisses and other confectionaries let them be
accompanied with a sufficient portion of secrecy, mixed with prudence and
moderation. We would advise all good wives to try this receipt and realise
how admirable a dish a husband is when properly cooked.
In our July podcast, Dr Sara Pennell explores changing attitudes to food in the early modern period. To listen, click here.
More recipes can be found at the Wellcome Library.