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ABSTRACT
This article uses John Evelyn’s Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (1699), a short book on the garden’s edible products, to highlight the place of food in early modern science. Exemplifying the period’s epistemic dynamism, Evelyn blended facts and interpretations gleaned from the garden, the library, the body, and the table. Food was a kind of quotidian trading zone, a potential meeting place for publics and ideas, and Evelyn was able to find points of contact and exchange between these diverse sources. Acetaria distilled the many flavors of early modern knowledge making and illustrated food’s capacity to hold them in tasteful harmony.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the generous assistance of the journal’s editors, staff, and anonymous peer reviewers, as well as Paola Bertucci, Lesley Cormack, and Frederick Mills.
Notes
1. Evelyn, Diary, 1044 (all italics in all citations are original unless otherwise indicated).
2. See e.g. Chambers, “Wild Pastorall Encounter”; Darley, John Evelyn; Harris and Hunter, eds., John Evelyn; Levine, Between the Ancients, 3–32; O’Malley and Wolschke-Bulmahn, eds., John Evelyn’s “Elysium Britannicum”; and Parry, “John Evelyn.”
3. Evelyn, Diary, 732–3, 933, 974.
4. Chambers, “Evelyn, John”; Darley, John Evelyn, 147 and 229; and Evelyn, Diary, 452.
5. Cowley, introductory letter to “The Garden,” in Essays, 67.
6. See e.g. Bennett and Mandelbrote, The Garden; Bushnell, Green Desire; Chambers, Planters; Prest, Garden of Eden; and Willes, Making.
7. J. E., Acetaria, 108; Boyle, “Queries Concerning Vegetation,” 799.
8. “An Accompt,” 1073.
9. J. E., Acetaria, [Dedication viii]; Keynes, John Evelyn, 236. Acetaria was appended to Sylva in its 1706 and 1729 editions.
10. J. E., Acetaria, [Appendix i]; Driver, ed., John Evelyn, Cook; Harris, “Living in the Neighborhood,” 203–4, citing Add MS 78337, “Medical and culinary recipes,” Vol. CLXX, Evelyn Papers, British Library.
11. Albala, The Banquet, 77; see also Peterson, Acquired Taste, 141; and Gentilcore, Food and Health, 128–9.
12. Klein and Spary, “Introduction,” 2.
13. Mowl, Gentlemen & Players, 25.
14. Galison, Image and Logic, 781–844.
15. Long, Artisan/Practitioners, 95; see also Long, “Trading Zones.”
16. Smith, Body of the Artisan, 7–8.
17. Ibid., 22; Long, Artisan/Practitioners, 4–5.
18. Roberts, et al., eds., Mindful Hand.
19. See also Valleriani, “Epistemology,” 16.
20. Harkness, Jewel House, 13.
21. Platte [Plat], Jewell House, Book 1, 96 and 31.
22. Platte [Plat], Jewell House, B3r-B3v, [Preface 5–6].
23. Harkness, Jewel House, 252. For an important counterpoint, see Thick, Sir Hugh Plat.
24. Hunter, “Sisters,” 186.
25. Evelyn, Diary, 724.
26. Robinson, “An Account”; Dale, “An Abstract of a Letter”; and Thirsk, Food, 231.
27. The Closet.
28. Spiller, “Introductory Note,” xxii; Elyot, Castel of Helth; and Boorde, Hereafter foloweth.
29. Gentilcore, Food and Health, especially chapter 3; Shapin, “How to Eat.”
30. G. M., The English Huswife, Book 2 of Countrey Contentments; May, Accomplisht Cook, 144–8; Rabisha, Whole Body of Cookery, 95.
31. Leong, “Herbals She Peruseth”; Laroche, Medical Authority.
32. See e.g. Leong, “Collecting Knowledge”; Darley, John Evelyn, 94–5.
33. Wall, Recipes for Thought, 1.
34. Ibid., 9.
35. Pennell, “Perfecting Practice?” 246–7; “economies of truth” is from Shapin, Social History of Truth, 406. See also Wall, Recipes for Thought, chapter 5; and Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance.”
36. Guerrini, “Ghastly Kitchen.”
37. Evelyn, Directions, xxx–xxxvi.
38. Parry, “John Evelyn,” 136.
39. Letter from John Evelyn to Abraham Cowley, August 24, 1666, in Chambers and Galbraith, eds., Letterbooks, 418–19.
40. Cowley, “The Garden,” 74.
41. Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole; see Prest, Garden of Eden for further discussion.
42. Bono, Word of God, 230. For more on Bacon and food, see Stuart, Bloodless Revolution, chapter 1.
43. J. E., Acetaria, [Dedication viii].
44. Ibid., 128.
45. Letter from John Evelyn to Samuel Pepys, August 26, 1689, in de la Bédoyère, ed. Particular Friends, 189.
46. de Bonnefons, Le jardinier; Philocepos, trans., French Gardiner; and Evelyn, Diary, 395.
47. Evelyn, Kalendarium Hortense, 56.
48. J. E., Acetaria, [Preface i].
49. Ibid., 108.
50. Campbell-Culver, “Introduction,” xv.
51. J. E., Acetaria, [Preface ix]; Rubel, “But, Did the English,” 187; Thick, Neat House Gardens, 23; and Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture, 36.
52. Letter from John Evelyn to Robert Boyle, August 8, 1659, in Chambers and Galbraith, eds., Letterbooks, 253; Hunter, Science and the Shape, 75–84.
53. J. E., Acetaria, 131–2.
54. Ibid., 111.
55. Ibid., 123.
56. Ibid., 87.
57. J. E. Sylva, [“To the Reader” v]; Evelyn, Elysium Britannicum, 42.
58. Mandelbrote, “John Evelyn,” 73.
59. Parry, “John Evelyn,” 135.
60. J. E. Acetaria, 146 and 190; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5, 513.
61. J. E., Acetaria, 146.
62. Ibid., 148–49, 151. For more on Evelyn’s dietary theology, see Stuart, Bloodless Revolution, chapter 6.
63. J. E., Acetaria, 142; Harvey, “Anatomical Examination.”
64. J. E., Acetaria, 146.
65. Ibid., 149 and 144; compare Gassendus, The Mirrour, Book 5: 140.
66. J. E., Acetaria, 150.
67. Guerrini, “Health,” 351; Crab, English Hermite; Physiologus [Tryon], Way to Health; see also Stuart, Bloodless Revolution, chapters 3 and 5; and Gentilcore, Food and Health, chapter 6.
68. J. E., Acetaria, [Dedication xiii-xiv].
69. Ibid., 168.
70. Ibid., 125.
71. Ibid., 190; Evelyn, Diary, 846.
72. J. E., Acetaria, 175, 77.
73. Ibid., 65.
74. Ibid., 75.
75. Ibid., 85–6.
76. Ibid., 40.
77. Lister, Journey to Paris, 155; J. E., Acetaria, 43.
78. J. E., Acetaria, [Appendix xxxiii].
79. Hooke, Micrographia, [Preface 17].
80. See Keynes, John Evelyn, 236; Driver, John Evelyn, Cook, 176.
81. Evelyn, Diary, 423.
82. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment; see also von Hoffmann, From Gluttony, chapter 5.
83. J. E., Acetaria, 51.
84. Albala, Eating Right, 8; Flandrin, “From Dietetics to Gastronomy.”
85. J. E., Acetaria, 130–31.
86. Ibid., 12, 29.
87. Ibid., Acetaria, 100.
88. Appelbaum, “Rhetoric and Epistemology,” 12.
89. J. E., Acetaria, 91.
90. Ibid., 93, quoting John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 5, 333–6. For recent analyses of food and eating in Paradise Lost, see, for example, Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, especially 187–200; Gigante, Taste, 22–46; Goldstein, Eating and Ethics, 171–204; Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves, 131–68; Tigner, “Eating with Eve”; and Wall, Recipes for Thought, 61–3.
91. J. E., Acetaria, [Dedication xvi].
92. Corneanu, Regimens of the Mind; Bono, Word of God, 218.
93. Shapin, Social History of Truth.
94. See von Hoffmann, From Gluttony for more on the gustatory, intellectual, and social significance of “taste” in this period, and for de Bonnefons’s similar interest in taste and pleasure.
95. von Hoffmann, From Gluttony, especially chapter 4.
96. J. E., Acetaria, 176.
97. Ibid., 27.
98. Ibid., 82.
99. Ibid., 94–5.
100. Grew, Anatomy, 279–95; for more on Evelyn and Grew, see Leslie “Without Design.”
101. J. E., Acetaria, title page and 123; translation from Maggie Campbell-Culver in Evelyn, Directions, 251n184.
102. J. E., Acetaria, [Dedication xviii].
103. Ibid., [Dedication xv].