Welcome to the first video in the Pleasant Vices series,
I'm Tasha Marks and I'm a food historian and artist.
Today I'm with Dr. Jennifer Evans and we're looking at aphrodisiacs.
I've been studying aphrodisiacs in the Early Modern period, so in the 17th and 18th centuries
since around 2008 and my first book was on aphrodisiacs which was published in 2014.
Historically aphrodisiacs were not just recreational they were functional.
Historically aphrodisiacs were cures for infertility as much as anything else so they had a functional purpos.
Yes, in the 17th century the way that they understood sex and reproduction meant that both men and
women needed to experience sexual pleasure and desire in order for conception to happen
So it was really important to get that kind of balance right.
Medical theory in the Early Modern period was very much influenced by religion
and it was suggested that after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden
God imbued every single plant in the world with a particular characteristic
that showed what its medical virtue was, so we end up with plants like strawberries being associated with
women's bodies and men's bodies being associated with carrots and any other phallic-shaped vegetables.
Or asparagus- I think if y ou have a dirty enough mind anything to be an aphrodisiac.
Absolutely
The other thing was, as well, food in itself is a very sensuous activity
If you've ever factored a date's choice of restaurant or their ability to cook
into your choice to go home with them then that's the aphrodisiac qualities of food at work.
Food is about the senses; about taste and texture and smell, it is a sensual activity.
So when we think of aphrodisiacs we often think of luxury foods like lobsters and oysters and things like that
but historically those are not the most interesting ones and at some point in history
everything on this table was considered an aphrodisiac.
The Early Modern period saw the rise of the kitchen physic
people who could just whip up a remedy from things that were readily available
things in the garden or in the hedgerows or if you did have a little bit more money
there were some very interesting aphrodisiacs on the market which you could purchase.
In the 18th century you get the rise of what are described as patent medicines
things that you can buy ready-made that are sent to you and that advertised widely in the newspapers
And one of my absolute favorites is the Prolific elixir, they described it as
a medicine of inestimable worth for curing barreness in women and imbecility in men
and endowed the body with a balmy warmth and moisture.
and thereby rejuvenated the whole body to such an extent
that it would make everyone prolific as it suggested in the title.
So it might be strange to sound like you wanted to be warm and balmy
but this was also an era where the body was... medical discourse was focused around the four humours
Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile and the balance of these within
an individual's body would make up their individual constitution.
And in fact the most important features of the four humors for reproduction is to be warm and moist.
A body that is cold was described as a body that was frigid unable to feel pleasure
and unable to conceive and you want a bit of moisture because a body that's too dry
and was seen as inappropriate, would dry out the seed and stop a conception happening.
Yes they thought the seed was made from salty particles from the blood.
So the idea of being both salty and warm and balmy was the ultimate, I suppose, the ultimate aphrodisiac after all.
And if you think about words like salacious the sal in salacious is thought to come from salt.
So salt being the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Perhaps one of most interesting aphrodisiacs suggested in the 17th century
was for those people whose bodies were already warm and so you didn't want to overheat the body
and so they are offered what come to be called windy meats
and this encompasses peas, beans, chickpeas and nuts
and it might sound like the least sexy of foods you could possibly eat
but in the 17th century they believed that men's bodies need wind in order to be able to work sexually
so any food that releases wind into the body is seen as particularly appropriate
for an encouraging sexual activity.
My favorite quote in a medical text ever for explaining why they work
which says that the male member needs to be blown up like a wind sock
Well... yeah....
So windy meats were things like beans and peas so we have our beans on the table here
the other thing that was was considered an aphrodisiac in the Early Modern period were potatoes
not because of any particular quality of them but because they'd only been introduced to England
in the 1600s and as a new object people just tried to sell them as an aphrodisiac as a sort of tagline.
So next time you have a jacket potato with baked beans you'll think about it very differently
Never seemed so sexy!
Of the core historical aphrodisiacs, ones that appear in many texts throughout history
not just the Early Modern period are milk, nuts and honey- many nuts are considered aphrodisiacs
for their relationship to the seed and in the Victorian era going a nutting was a euphemism for fornication
not just because of this aphrodisiac link but also because it gave men and women
an excuse to go off into the woods alone together.
So one of the more unusual and historical aphrodisiacs is ambergris
I have it here that little lump in there is the ambergris which has been left in sugar
and ambergris comes from the stomach of a sperm whale, it's a buildup of the undigested squid beaks
which the whales feed on and it builds up in the whale stomach and is expelled one way or another
and it floats out at sea and fossilising into a sort of oceanic truffle
Until one day, maybe 50 to 100 years later, it washes up on the beach and people go hunting for it
and this sort of smelly looking rock might not sound like much but per gram it's worth more than gold
so it's one of the most expensive ingredients, it's mystery and it's cost is part of the reason
why historically it was considered an aphrodisiac and we found it in lots of different recipes for the time.
I find it really funny that sort of that medical renaissance idea that the religion was linked to medicine
so that God left clues behind when Adam and Eve werepushed out the Garden of Eden
that's coming back now and I've seen it on Instagram where they have you know to eat walnuts for your brain
you know eat kidney beans for your kidneys and you know that whole idea of aphrodisiacs being
resemblant of sexual body plants that is still very much prevalent today.
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