The Origin of the Modern Western Diet

Ever wonder why dessert is served after dinner? Modern cooking evolved out of 17th-century ideas about diet and nutrition

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Sumptuous spread from the 16th century might have included blanc-mange (a puree of rice and chicken) and a side dish of cameline sauce (made of crushed almonds, bread crumbs and spices moistened with sour grape juice), accompanied by mulled red wine, or hypocras. By the 17th century, the foods looked more familiar to the modern eye: roast turkey, green salad with oil and vinegar dressing, and sprakling white wine.

Were we to attend a 16th-century court banquet in France or England, the food would seem strange indeed to anyone accustomed to traditional Western cooking. Dishes might include blancmange—a thick puree of rice and chicken moistened with milk from ground almonds and then sprinkled with sugar and fried pork fat. Roast suckling pig might be accompanied by a cameline sauce, a side dish made of sour grape juice thickened with bread crumbs, ground raisins and crushed almonds and spiced with cinnamon and cloves. Other offerings might include fava beans cooked in meat stock and sprinkled with chopped mint—or quince paste, a sweetmeat of quinces and sugar or honey. To wash it all down, we would probably drink hypocras, a mulled red wine seasoned with ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves and sugar.

Fast-forward 100 years, however, and the food would be reassuringly familiar. On the table in the late 1600s might be beef bouillon, oysters, anchovies and a roast turkey with gravy. These dishes might be served alongside mushrooms cooked in cream and parsley, a green salad with a dressing of oil and vinegar, fresh pears, lemon sherbet, and even cool, sparkling white wine.

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