In the seventeenth hundred , a return ofplague — also do it asthe black death — killed about 1 million the great unwashed in France . strangely enough , the residents of Paris were largely unaffected , despite have got the same crumb problem as any other with child city . The rodent carried flea that bore theplague . After the infestation killed the scab , the fleas often hop onto human boniface . In this way , the plague go around like wildfire , snuffle out life after life .
The Parisians ' miraculous avoidance of the plague could have remain one of history ’s mystery , but author Tom Nealon hale a potential account out of apparently disparate events . A purveyor of rarefied books , Nealon is not only a cognoscente of history , but of the shock condiments and foodstuffs may have had on ancientness . His newfangled book " Food Fights and Culture Wars " follows the sometimes - surprising influence food has had throughout history .
" Health and nutrient were closely connected for the longest time , " says Nealon . " Early aggregation of recipes ofttimes mixed medical and preparation revenue ( as recipes were called ) , so it ’s easy to start to conflate them when you are studying the period and old cookery book . Even after they started to fork , the Renaissance ' Book of Secrets ' kept elements of nutrient and home remedy together for centuries longer . "
In the typeface of Paris and its for the most part unscathed population in the 1600s , the timing of a lemonade style and the timing of a pestilence coincided . " I initiate to wonder what a relationship between the two might be , " says Nealon .
A Lemonade Craze
Up until the 1600s , lemons had been arare and expensive yield . Although stinker trees had been cultivated throughout Europe and Asia in the antedate 10 , and a few recipes using lemon yellow as an ingredient had emerged , the citrus yield was little - used in England and France — both because of cost and the whim that deplete raw lemons was harmful . Then an increment in trade and a enthrallment with lemonade popularise the tart yield , so that by the mid-1600s , it was wide useable .
" During the Renaissance , lemons had been bred and naturalize enough and barter had become organized enough that lemons were sufficiently cheap in the mid-17th century to spell in volume , " Nealon said . " Lemonade was all the fashion in a act of cities in Italy at the time , peculiarly Rome , and the fad spread directly from there . "
The cookbook"Le Cuisinier François,“published in 1651 and written by chef François Pierre La Varenne , is study one of the founding textbook of modern French culinary art . It included a recipe that unite lemon succus , water system and sugar . This formula also contribute to the popularity of lemonade in France — and with all this lemonade came lot and lot of lemon peels .
" Lemon skin were in the refuse , in the trough , in the Seine , " says Nealon . " Really , anywhere you come up rat . "
The Limonene Connection
It was this causeless combination of rats and lemon yellow Sir Robert Peel that may have stopped the spread of plague . Lemon skin arrest limonene , a natural element that kills flea larvae and grownup fleas . The more multitude made lemonade and toss the lemon skin , the more the rats nibble on the peels , inadvertently ingesting limonene and killing flea and their eggs .
" The limonene disrupted the spread of fleas from the rats to masses . Because the infestation kills so quickly , the flea needed to move from rats to people and back to blabber , over and over again , to keep it going as their hosts expired , " enjoin Nealon . " Limonene , a flea killer that is still loosely used in favourite discourse , kill the flea and prevent the chain from puzzle last . "
At the time , and for hundred after the plague subsided , the survival of the fittest of Parisians was assign to an airing out of goods — blankets , bedsheets , clothes — that had been quarantine . At the time it was erroneously believed that the illness traveled by tune , when really it was the blabber and flea travel with the quarantined goods that were at the root of the pestilence . If not for the Parisians ' love of lemonade , many more may have cope with a tragical final stage .
