2 - The Art of Early Modern Cookery

Summary

This chapter explores the ways in which the practice of cookery and the act of eating were understood as analogous to the making and experiencing of literature in early modern writing – a set of similarities that was both exciting and disquieting. It begins with the word “conceit,” which could refer either to a wittily rhetorical piece of language or to something dainty and edible. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which eating causes distinctions between people and practices both to be made and to break down in this period (especially in the work of Shakespeare and Jonson). It ends with a discussion of the place of food in the writings of Margaret Cavendish – who distinguishes her own labours from the typical culinary work of women even as she sees Nature as a productive cook – and John Milton, who places a striking emphasis on prelapsarian eating as common to human and angel, while recognizing food as the most devilish of temptations.