CONCEPTS OF DIET AND NUTRITION
fresh, uncooked eggs, sole, red mullet, pike, perch, dace, crayfish, and
currants. Meat and fish should be eaten with a mash of old verjuice
grapes and a little vinegar, and cooked in a third of a goblet of the
same. The preferred drink should be a little French white wine or
claret, much diluted with boiled water.41
With the vast majority of nutritional advice geared toward the thin
upper crust of medieval society, it was not until the Renaissance that
doctors turned their attention to the health care and nutritional needs
of the poor. In the mid-sixteenth century the Montpellier physician
Jacques Dubois, also known as Sylvius, published several regimens for
the poor and for plague and famine victims. Dubois follows medieval
medical doctrine with his statement that people engaged in heavy
physical labor have different dietary needs from those with a more
sedentary lifestyle, in which category he counts the nobility and intel-
lectuals. Coarse food is recommended for day laborers, peasants, arti-
sans, and journeymen, and easily digestible delicate food for the rich,
for bureaucrats and scholars.42
In accordance with humoral pathology, the leisure class is advised to
stay away from cold, humid food such as dairy foods, cheese, fish, and
various fruits and vegetables. Food that heats and dries the body is
equally bad, and so are leeks, onions, garlic, chives, mustard, salt, and
smoked meat, dry vegetables, lentils, peas, and beans. Pork is prefer-
able to beef. Other recommended foods are white bread, the meat of
birds, veal that is fried rather than boiled, fresh eggs, and tangy fruits
such as oranges, lemons, cherries, quinces, and black currants. Clear
wine and not beer should be the beverage of choice.
For the poor, of course, it is not a question of choice. They have to
eat whatever they can find to stay alive. And the foods Dubois lists
were generally regarded as heavy and coarse, which, of course, me-
dieval physicians had recommended for laborers in the first place. The
cookery of the poor, according to the sixteenth-century author, con-
sists mainly of gruel, soups, and ragouts whose main ingredient is
bread. Cheaper types of bread included barley, rye, and oat breads,
and in times of famine, breads from ground rice, beans, millet, chest-
nuts, bran, or any other edible plant. The bread is cooked in water
with butter, stock, cow’s milk, cider, cabbage, or beer. Dubois does
recommend some herbs, especially those cultivated in Europe, such as
rosemary, sage, hyssop, savory, thyme, marjoram, and the leaves and
seeds of the laurel tree. They are to be used ground and in spice mixes.
Soups or potages are made with herbs, squash, cucumbers, onions,
leeks, turnips, and other common tubers, as well as lard, beef, tripe,
227
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