What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank: A Fantasy Lover's Food Guide by Ball Krista D

Author:Ball, Krista D. [Ball, Krista D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tyche Books Ltd.
Published: 2012-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Bacteria, Germs, and Other Fun Things

Literature and movies have led us to believe that people in the past were filthy dirty. For the most part, they were right. The Tudors definitely had some hygiene challenges, though some of it has been exaggerated through our Victorian sense of hygiene, daily scrubbing, and the modern need to coat one’s body in as many artificial scents as legally possible. However, urban centres did smell, especially the larger ones in the summer time. City dwellers would have smelled like horse shit, rotting teeth, body odour, and were covered in dirt, soot, smoke, and grime. Too many people were packed into too small of a space without air conditioning or proper ventilation.

In urban situations, many of the poor did not have proper cooking facilities, or they were shared with several other families. Many times, such as in London during the industrial revolution, poor factory workers relied heavily on “fast food” vendors and kiosks, as opposed to home cooked meals, grabbing a cup of tea (drinking it at the station, since takeout mugs weren’t invented yet), and picking up a pasty or individual pie to eat along the way.

Urban centres with small kitchens might have ten individuals crammed into a one or two room apartment. If very lucky, there would be a hearth with a chimney to whisk the smoke from inside and help cut down on some of the smoke stench.

In the farm kitchens, however, things were a little different. Poor farmers still had fresh air, open fields, and the luxury of foraging in the forest. While poaching laws existed in many countries in Europe, there were rarely laws on foraging for berries, fruits, and plants. There were more animals, more private vegetable gardens, and more need for food preservation.

And, therefore, more need for cleanliness.

Let’s say your heroine is hiding from her tyrannical father, the Duke of Esto’Flora, and posing as a dairy maid apprentice (by the way, she’d probably have to pay for the privilege of that role). She would need an obsessive attention to cleanliness, or else her actions would (at best) spoil the milk and (at worst) kill everyone. (Then again, if your heroine is an assassin, well, perhaps the dairy is the perfect place for her after all.)

Today, we all know about germs. We learn about them from an early age. “Wash your hands because there are germs on them.” We coat our children in anti-bacterial soaps, sprays, and gels to kill anything remotely resembling a germ. However, two centuries ago, people did not know that germs caused them to get sick. They did understand, however, that a lack of cleanliness could taint food, which would spoil it, which was inedible, and could make people sick.

Admittedly, many didn’t care or thought it was poppycock, and had no problem wiping their bums with their hands and then prepping your food at the local tavern. Make sure your heroine practices food safety whenever she can. It would prove embarrassing getting stomach cramps while trying to rescue the captive prince in the dungeon.

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