Tag: Chimica degli alimenti

The Origins of Modern Food Discourse in German Culinary Treatises 1797-1855

Author di Rebecca Zani

Abstract: Questo articolo esamina i trattati culinari e gastrosofici tedeschi pubblicati tra il 1797 e il 1855. Ricostruisce una rete di scrittori (Hufeland, Langstedt, Accum, Rumohr, Anthus, Liebig, Vaerst e von Bibra) che trasformarono il discorso sul cibo da una tradizione morale-dietetica in una sintesi moderna di fisiologia, chimica e filosofia. Il trattato emerge, qui, come forma mediatrice: né libro di ricette né saggio speculativo, ma un genere che collega la conoscenza sperimentale alla vita domestica e alla riflessione morale. Attraverso temi quali la longevità e la moderazione, l’analisi chimica e le adulterazioni, la pedagogia del gusto e l’etica del piacere, questi autori delineano il passaggio dalla dietetica illuminista a una gastrosofia (nazionale) tedesca, diversa da quella francese. Il panorama qui offerto è inteso come base per ulteriori ricerche sull’emergere di un’episteme specificatamente tedesca del mangiare e del gusto.

Abstract: This article surveys German culinary and gastrosophic treatises published between 1797 and 1855. It reconstructs a network of writers (Hufeland, Langstedt, Accum, Rumohr, Anthus, Liebig, Vaerst, and von Bibra) who transformed the discourse on food from a moral-dietetic tradition into a modern synthesis of physiology, chemistry, and philosophy. The treatise emerges here as a mediating form: neither recipe book nor speculative essay, but a genre that links experimental knowledge to domestic life and moral reflection. Through themes such as longevity and moderation, chemical analysis and adulteration, the pedagogy of taste and the ethics of pleasure, these authors delineate the passage from Enlightenment dietetics to a (national) German gastrosophy, different from the French one. The panorama offered here is intended as a basis for further research into the emergence of a specifically German episteme of eating and taste.

This study proposes a first survey of German culinary (from lat. “culina”: ‘kitchen’) treatises or more generally treatises that are highly relevant in the field of food studies, or following the research path of Alois Wierlacher Kulinaristik[1], published between 1797 and 1855. During this period, France remains undoubtedly the privileged centre of a “gastronomic codification”; Germany, however, develops a corpus of texts that, in spite of its less cohesiveness, articulates what can be classified as a genuine “gastrosophic tradition”.

In this light, the treatise emerges as a privileged form of mediation: neither purely practical (like the recipe collection or the cookbook), nor merely speculative (like the aesthetic essay). Some texts pursue a rigorously technical or dietetic programme, concerned with the metabolism of food and the chemistry of digestion; others elaborate a moral and philosophical reflection on pleasure and moderation. Taken together, they mark the emergence of a gastrosophic episteme, in which the physiology of eating and the culture of taste are understood as complementary forms of knowledge.

The present paper does not aspire to exhaustiveness but offers instead a landscape of texts, intended as a starting point for further investigation into the formation of a German discourse on food between the end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century.

The first treatise that immediately captures the attention of a researcher in food studies is Christoph Martin Hufeland’s (1762-1836) Makrobiotik oder die Kunst das menschliche Leben zu verlängern printed in Jena in 1797.

Graduate in medicine at Göttingen and later one of the most celebrated physicians of his time, Hufeland conceives macrobiotics as a renewed version of Classical dietetics, as formulated by Hippocrates[2] and as a discipline distinct from medicine. While medicine aims to cure disease, macrobiotics seeks to prolong life[3] by cultivating moderation, order, and inner balance, by means for instance of the circadian rythm[4]. His diätetische Wissenschaft, a science of life through regimen, assigns to food and drink a central role in maintaining the harmony between body and soul and is «together with gymnastics, a subcategory of hygiene»[5].

Throughout the treatise, food is not confined to a single chapter but spans across the text as an essential moral and physiological concern. Yet the most explicitly dietary reflections appear in the Practical Part (Book II), particularly in the sections “Verlängerungsmittel des Lebens” and “Verkürzungsmittel des Lebens”, where he elaborates what may be called a “moral physiology of taste”: in the passage “Unmäßigkeit im Essen und Trinken, die raffinierte Kochkunst, geistige Getränke”, he identifies overindulgence as the true enemy of longevity. Excessive food, refined gastronomy, and stimulants (like wine, liquor, strong coffee, spices) are, in his words, “chemical accelerators” that exhaust the Lebenskraft and shorten human life.

The governing principle ought to be moderation, the classical aurea mediocritas[6], as summarized by the quote omnia mediocria ad vitam prolongandam sunt utilia[7]: simplicity, frugality, and restraint prolong life[8]. By contrast refined cookery called Raffinierte Kochkunst, the supposed ally of taste, becomes its most dangerous foe[9]. Hence, Hufeland establishes a moral physiology of Taste, in which food and drink are no longer merely perceived as nutritional but as moral and philosophical instruments for self-discipline, moderation, and harmony between body and soul, arguments that initially fascinated Kant[10].

In short, Hufeland’s Makrobiotik marks the passage from the classical dietetic ethics of the Enlightenment to the modern gastrosophy, where eating becomes a rational art of living well.

Chronologically following Hufeland, Friedrich Ludwig Langstedt (1750-1804), a chaplain who accompanied the 15th regiment of the army of Hanover to Madras «as an auxiliary force for the East India Company»[11], observed, from a distinctly Eurocentric standpoint, the expanding circuits of global exchange that brought colonial goods to European consumption. His Thee, Kaffee und Zucker: in historischer, chemischer, diätetischer, ökonomischer und botanischer Hinsicht erwogen printed in Nürnberg in 1800 and inspired by the Historical Account of Coffee of John Ellis[12] (1774) transforms three colonial commodities into a field of interdisciplinary investigation, where tea, coffee, and sugar are examined not as mere luxuries, but as epistemic objects linking nature, commerce, and morality.

Langstedt’s preface sets out an ambitious methodological programme: to draw together historical, chemical, dietary, economic, and botanical forms of knowledge into a single explanatory system. His tripartite structure, as suggested by the title of the treatise, follows a deliberate symmetry. Each commodity is traced from botanical origin to global dissemination, from preparation and transformation to its effects on the human body. Tea and coffee appear as invigorating agents that stimulate both nerves[13] and sociability; sugar, as a substance of sweetness whose refining processes exemplify the civilizing of taste itself. The analytic impulse is moral as much as scientific. For Langstedt, knowledge should discipline pleasure, guiding the modern consumer toward a rational enjoyment of what was once exotic. In this sense, Thee, Kaffee und Zucker participates in a wider Enlightenment effort to make appetite compatible with virtue to translate the material circuits of empire into a language of temperance and refinement.

Beneath its didactic surface, however, the text reveals the tensions of its age. Langstedt’s scientific idiom, which is precise, classificatory, empirically confident, grants moral legitimacy to goods whose origins lay in colonial labour and asymmetrical exchange. The very act of describing tea, coffee, and sugar in botanical and chemical terms renders them conceptually domestic, safely enclosed within the framework of European rationality. What remains unspoken (the plantation, the slave, the violence of extraction) marks the epistemic boundary of Enlightenment universalism. Yet his silence is not simply evasion; it reflects the limits of a discourse that sought to order the world by observing it.

From a food-studies and postcolonial analytical perspective, his treatise exemplifies how Enlightenment epistemologies contributed to the globalization of taste. The work domesticates the foreign by translating the material and human complexities of empire into scientific and moral categories. In Langstedt’s synthesis, the consumption of tea, coffee, and sugar becomes a sign of cultural progress and bodily refinement, an emblem of Europe’s modernity. Yet precisely in its erasures, the text discloses the ideological underpinnings of that modernity: the transformation of global asymmetry into a narrative of civilization.

Born in Bückeburg to a family connected with the Brandes of Hanover, apothecaries to King George III of England (later also King of Hanover[14]), Friedrich Christian Accum (1769-1838) embodies the new alliance between Naturwissenschaft scientific inquiry and Hauswirtschaft domestic economy and elevates chemistry to an analytical instrument of a gastronomic and a moral discourse. On the title page of his Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons published in London in 1820, he presents himself as «Operative Chemist, Lecturer on Practical Chemistry, Mineralogy, and on Chemistry applied to the Arts and Manufactures, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Linnean Society, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Society of Arts of Berlin». The accumulation of titles signals a self-conscious public identity: the chemist as civic guardian, mediating between the laboratory and the household.

In the Adulteration, Accum not only transforms chemistry into a moral technology of exposure, but also «marks a milestone in the history of the defense of public health»[15]. The preface opens with the warning «there is death in the pot», a biblical allusion that becomes the emblem of his campaign against adulteration. For him, the adulteration of food with illegal ingredients constitutes not only a commercial deceit but also a moral offence, a violation of the trust that underpins moral integrity and civil society. His empirical catalogue is at once technical and accusatory (wines clarified with lead acetate; pickles and vegetables coloured with copper salts; tea bulked and brightened with metallic pigments; coffee extended with roasted legumes; cheese tinted with vermilion or red lead). Against these practices he offers a pedagogy of detection, instructing readers in the use of simple reagents, for example barium acetate to identify sulphates and ammonia to detect copper. Chemistry thus becomes a civic instrument: the means by which ordinary consumers can reassert transparency in a market governed by opacity.

His Culinary Chemistry, printed one year after the Adulteration (1821) extends this moral empiricism to the domestic practice. Subtitled exhibiting the scientific principles of cookery with concise instructions for preparing good and wholesome pickles, vinegar, conserves, fruit jellies, marmalades, and various other alimentary substances employed in domestic economy, with observations on the chemical constitution and nutritive qualities of different kinds of food, the volume seeks to systematize cooking itself as a series of chemical operations[16]. Roasting, boiling, fermenting, and preserving are reconceived as transformations governed by identifiable reactions and the kitchen a laboratory. In aligning scientific method with culinary practice, Accum advances the belief that the mastery of chemical principles can improve nourishment.

This rationalization of food stands in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous moral sensualism of Brillat-Savarin: by “reducing” the culinary to the chemical, Accum delineates a crucial epistemological shift from an artisanal and symbolic culture of food, as summarized by Anthus, Rumohr and Vaerst, to a more procedural and scientific one and anticipates the industrialization of taste (see later Liebig).

In 1822 art historian and cultural critic Karl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) published his Geist der Kochkunst (1822) under the name of his servant Joseph König, offers a philosophical foundation for what Rumohr called an anmutiger Stil des Kochens, a “truthful” style of cooking, that reconciles pleasure, health, and moral sobriety.

As suggested by the title, Rumohr seeks to elevate culinary questions to the realm of a Philosophie des Geistes. His choice of the treatise form traditionally reserved for philosophical inquiry further underlines his ambition to confer intellectual and moral dignity upon the art of cooking. Against the dazzling virtuosity of the French Grande Cuisine, which would shortly after the publication of Rumohr’s treatise give birth to Carême and Brillat-Savarin’s cookbooks and treatises and, which Rumohr denounced as ästhetizistische Verfeinerung[17], a form of aestheticism detached from both nature and nourishment, he proposed a culinary ethics grounded in the preservation of the Eigengeschmack der Dinge, the integrity of ingredients[18]. To turn nourishment into ornament, into apicische Verderbtheit[19] means to destroy the natural character of food through excessive refinement and to corrupt both its nutritive value and its moral sense[20].

The Kochkunst is divided into three books: the first book, Über die Kochkunst überhaupt, sets out general reflections on the essence and purpose of cookery, defining it as a moral and aesthetic practice rather than mere technique. The second, Von der Zubereitung der Speisen, turns to practical aspects such as methods of preparation, treatment of ingredients, and the physiological bases of digestion, always framed within a discourse on moderation and natural order. The third, Von der Gastlichkeit, widens the perspective to the social and ethical dimension of the table, exploring the cultural forms of hospitality and conviviality as expressions of moral cultivation and refinement of manners.

For Rumohr, who bridged Platina’s Renaissance ethics of moderation with the Enlightenment ideal of reasoned taste, the true Geist der Kochkunst lays in art of preparing food in harmony with nature’s order, allowing cooking to became a vehicle of Bildung: through the disciplined cultivation of sensory judgment, moderation, and practical intelligence, the individual participated in a wider project of moral and cultural self-formation[21].

In 1838 Antonius Anthus, pseudonym of the psychiatrist, writer and humorist Gustav Blumröder (1802-1853), published his Vorlesungen über Eßkunst (Lectures on the Art of Eating) in Leipzig, a brilliant example of philosophical treatise in the form of twelve academic lectures. Written in the style of Biedermeier humoristische Philosophie characterized by the use of mock-erudite zoology, moral aphorisms, and aesthetic analogies, beneath its comic surface, Anthus unfolds a subtle cultural critique, exposing the pretensions of bourgeois refinement and the pedantry of philosophical systems by elevating the act of eating to the status of art, from which the concept of Eßkunst. He asserts that Eßkunst, the art of eating, is a discipline in its own right, rigorously distinct from cooking[22] (Kochkunst) and that the pursuit of pleasure, is not a moral failing but a human obligation[23]. In the spirit of Epicurean teaching, Anthus asserts that «Tugend ohne Genuß ist Unnatur»[24] rejects asceticism and advocates a conscious, measured enjoyment. This way, pleasure becomes not the opposite of virtue but its completion and the mere eating necessity (Eßnothwendigkeit) shall be transformed into art and refined by it.

Satirically targeting both gluttony (Schlemmerei) and false ascetic virtue (Asketismus), Anthus equates the mastery of digestion with the mastery of art and, by doing so, elevates the Eßkünstler, «Magister naturae, Directeur de la nature»[25] to a man who spiritualizes necessity through art. Thus, the act of eating becomes a symbolic metaphor for civilization itself and an art through which humanity learns, once again, to taste its own existence[26].

Anthus’ Eßkunst, as it will be the case of Rumohr and Vaerst, sought to elevate the act of eating into an object worthy of philosophical and cultural reflection. The three of them treated food not merely as sustenance but as a field of intellectual, moral, and aesthetic cultivation: taste was refined, both literally and metaphorically and from this operation a new sensitivity to good taste, which eventually formed the basis of modern gastronomic criticism, could emerge[27].

Four years after Anthus treatise, enterpreneur and chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) in Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie (Braunschweig, 1842) laid the foundations of Modern nutritional science.

By means of organic chemistry, which task is «to investigate the chemical conditions of life and of the full development of all living beings»[28], Liebig analysed food: He conceived the human body as a chemical engine that oxidizes food to produce energy and to build or repair tissue[29]. Food was thus seen as fuel for a continuous process of combustion and transformation. Within this framework, chemistry became capable of reproducing or isolating the nutritive essence of foods, shifting the understanding of nourishment from a moral or aesthetic sphere to a strictly scientific one.

Liebig’s Chimie naturalized the gastrosophic intuition of Anthus and, as in the case of Accum, grounded it in chemical rather than philosophical terms and participated to the 19th century establishment of nutritional sciences, which understood food as a sum of measurable nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates etc.) rather than as a cultural or sensory experience. From such principles Liebig inferred that protein built muscle and that carbohydrates produced heat, intuitions that directly influenced later Ludwig Feuerbach’s materialist anthropological dictum „der Mensch ist, was er ißt“: the materials ingested compose the self (through chemical transformations). 

Liebig’s fame did not rest solely on theoretical chemistry. After popularizing “beef teas” (Fleischbrühe) in the 1840s and 1850s as a medicine[30], he capitalized on his nutritional authority by co-founding the Liebig Extract of Meat Company in the 1860s. By the 1860s, he had become a public figure and entrepreneur, translating his laboratory discoveries into commercial products. His Suppe für Säuglinge, a formula for artificial infant feeding, marked one of the earliest attempts to create a scientifically engineered substitute for mother’s milk. This innovation, first publicized in the mid-1860s, positioned him at the forefront of a new science of artificial feeding[31].

In the spirit of Anthus and Rumohr, the Gastrosophie oder die Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel by Friederich Christian Eugen von Vaerst (1792-1855) published in 1851, stands at the crossroads between the moral-dietetic tradition of German thought and the emerging French-inspired European culture of gastronomy.

In fact, the Gastrosophie marks the first appearance of the very term “Gastrosophie”, coined in deliberate contrast to the more familiar Gastronomie. In this sense, Vaerst may be considered the inventor of the concept of gastrosophy as a philosophical science of eating[32]. “Gastrosophy”, as Lemke suggests, is a polysemous word meaning the doctrine of the pleasures of the table, the theory and practice of the culinary art, the aesthetics of eating, the physiology and chemistry of all edible substances and beings as well as of most beverages, the principles of good manners at the table, the study of dietetics, a critical casuistry of thinness and obesity, as well as the incorporation of well-prepared food and noble drink the creative fulfillment of a metaphysical need[33].

Divided into twelve sections each dedicated to a class of ingredients such as Meat Dishes from Four-Footed Animals, Fish and Shellfish, Lenten Dishes, as well as Proverbs and Aphorisms, Vaerst’s work builds a genuine system of culinary culture in which cooking becomes at once a science, an art, and a moral philosophy.

From the very title, Lehre meaning ‘doctrine’ or ‘teaching’, the work declares its pedagogical intent: Vaerst does not write a cookbook but a manual of education in taste and health. The preface opens with Brillat-Savarin’s maxim «la destinée des nations dépend de la manière dont elles se nourrissent», proclaiming the political and national dimension of the culinary fact: the table reflects the fate of peoples.

Sharply critical towards German culinary habits, which he saw as coarse and artisanal, Vaerst calls for a reform of taste and food education grounded in reason, hygiene, and civilisation. He distinguishes three human types the “Gourmand”, the “Gourmet” and the “Gastrosoph”: the first ruled by appetite, the second by aesthetic sensuality, and the third guided by moderation and the intellect, leading a long and healthy life. Mensura, moderation, becomes the cardinal virtue of the gastrosopher «who unites theory and practice with superior spirit» and «grows old in health, in the daily enjoyment of what is most beautiful and good»[34].

The work abounds in quotations from Rabelais, Goethe, Brillat-Savarin, and Delavigne, as well as numerous proverbs and rhymed aphorisms, weaving together irony, practical advice, moral reflection, and literary anecdote in an encyclopedic and cosmopolitan tone. From the preparation of bouillon and beefsteak to the chemistry of cooking, from the virtues of milk and butter to discussions about bread types and comparisons of national cuisines (English, French, Italian), Vaerst draws upon contemporary science and medicine, integrating comparative anatomy, physiology, food chemistry (from the role of albumin and osmazome in meat to the classification of different kinds of milk according to digestibility) and Galenic reminiscences such as the correlation diet-temperament-climate.

To conclude our panorama of German culinary treatises, we should also mention Die narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch by naturalist and early pioneer in the chemical and anthropological study of intoxicants Ernst von Bibra (1806-1878). Published in 1855 the treatise of von Bibra analyses several Genussmittel such as narcotics and stimulants. Among those we can also find coffee, tea and chocolate: Bibra implicitly broadened the concept of consumption beyond mere nutrition to include affective, social, and psychological dimensions. In his analysis, coffee’s active principle, caffeine, is isolated and quantitatively measured, its effects described as sharpening the intellect and alleviating fatigue. Similarly, the molecule of the Theobromin found in cocoa beans very likely similar to caffeine[35], makes him situate chocolate within the same family of psychoactive stimulants.

From Hufeland’s Makrobiotik to Bibra’s Die narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch, the corpus of German culinary shows several dynamics.

Anthus and Hufeland preserve the humanistic legacy of dietetics, grounding longevity and moderation in a renewed ethics of pleasure and restraint. Accum, Liebig, and von Bibra embody the chemical turn. They redefine nourishment in chemical terms. Anthus, Rumohr, and Vaerst, conversely, remain rooted in the philosophical and cultural dimensions of food, conceiving cookery and table manners as sites of moral education and aesthetic cultivation. Langstedt and Bibra extend this inquiry to the commodities of colonial trade (tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa) thereby revealing the global networks of a rising interconnected global diet. 

All in all, these authors delineate the passage from the domestic art of nourishment to the industrial science of nutrition, from Enlightenment dietetics to modern gastrosophy, from moral reflection to chemical rationalization.

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

C. W. Hufeland, Makrobiotik oder die Kunst das menschliche Leben zu verlängern, Jena, Akademische Buchhandlung, 1797;

F. L. Langstedt, Thee, Kaffee und Zucker: in historischer, chemischer, diätetischer, ökonomischer und botanischer Hinsicht erwogen, Nürnberg, in der Raspeischen Buchhandlung, 1800;

F. C. Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons: Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic Economy, and Methods of Detecting Them, London, Paternoster Row, 1820;

Id., Culinary chemistry exhibiting the scientific principles of cookery with concise instructions for preparing good and wholesome pickles, vinegar, conserves, fruit jellies, marmelades and various other alimentary substances employed in domestic economy with observations on the chemical constitution and nutritive qualities of different kinds of food, London, published by R. Ackermann, 1821;

C. F. Von Rumohr, Geist der Kochkunst von Joseph König, in der Cotta‘schen Buchhandlung, 1822;

A. Anthus [G. Blumröder], Vorlesungen über Eßkunst, Leipzig, Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1838;

J. Von Liebig, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, Verlag von Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1842;

F. C. E. Von Vaerst, Gastrosophie oder die Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel, Leipzig, Avenarius und Mendelsohn, 1851;

E. V. Bibra, Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch, Nürnberg, Verlag von Wilhelm Schmid, 1855.

Selected Secondary Sources from a Food Studies Viewpoint

F. L. Hart, A History of the Adulteration of Food Before 1906, in «Journal of Farm Economics», XXXIV, 1952, n. 1, pp. 73-83;

W. Rehm, Rumohrs Geist der Kochkunst und der Geist der Goethezeit, in Festgabe für Eduard Berend zum 75. Geburtstag am 5, Dezember 1958, Weimar, 1959, pp. 210-34;

H. J. Teuteberg, Kaffeetrinken sozialgeschichtlich betrachtet, in «Scripta Mercaturae», XIV, 1980, n. 1, pp. 27-54;

Id., Die Rolle des Fleischextrakts für die Ernährungswissenschaften und den Aufstieg der Suppenindustrie, in «Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte», Beiheft 70, Stuttgart, Steiner, 1990;

Id., Die Rolle des Fleischextrakts für die Ernährungswissenschaften und den Aufstieg der Suppenindustrie, in «Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte», Beiheft 70, Stuttgart, Steiner, 1990;

M. R. Finlay, Quackery and Cookery: Justus von Liebig’s extract of meat and the theory of nutrition in the Victorian Age, in «Bulletin of the History of Medicine», LXVI, 1992, n. 3, pp. 404-18;

W. Fuld, Nachwort, in F. C. E. Von Vaerst, Gastrosophie, oder Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel, Frankfurt am Main, Insel, 1992;

W. Schödel, Vom Hunger nach Kultur: Zur Entstehung der deutschen Gastrosophie, in Esskultur und Literatur, edited by H. J. Schings, München, Wilhelm Fink, 1995, pp. 95-118;

B. Santich, Looking for Flavour, Kent Town (Australia), Wakefield Press, 1996;

W. H. Brock, Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997;

A. W. Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert, München, Oldenbourg, 1998;

J. Aschoff, Bicentennial Anniversary of Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland’s Makrobiotik, in «Chronobiology International», XV, 1998, n. 1, pp. 1-7;

E. Y. Dilk, Ein „practischer Aesthetiker“. Studien zu Leben und Werk Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Hildesheim u. a., Olms, 2000;

K. Pfeifer, Medizin der Goethezeit: Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland und die Heilkunst des 18. Jahrhunderts, Köln, Böhlau, 2000;

T. M. Hauer, Carl Friedrich von Rumohr und der Geist der bürgerlichen Küche, Dissertation, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), 2000;

L. Rosenfeld, Justus Liebig and Animal Chemistry, in «Clinical Chemistry», XLIX, 2003, n. 10, pp. 1696-1707;

A. Menninger, Genuß im kulturellen Wandel. Tabak, Kaffee, Tee und Schokolade in Europa (16.-19. Jahrhundert), Stuttgart, Steiner, 2004;

H. Rössler, Germans from Hanover in the British Sugar Industry, 1750-1900, in Migration and Transfer from Germany to Britain 1660-1914, edited by S. Manz et al., Berlin, K. G. Saur, 2007, pp. 49-64;

A. Bastek-A. Von Müller (eds.), Kunst, Küche, Kalkül. Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) und die Entdeckung der Kulturgeschichte, Petersberg, Michael Imhof, 2010;

C. Tzoref-Ashkenazi, The Experienced Traveller as a Professional Author: Friedrich Ludwig Langstedt, Georg Forster and Colonialism Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany, in «History», XCV, 2010, n. 317, pp. 2-24;

Id., The Travel Writer as Translator: The Case of Friedrich Ludwig Langstedt (1750-1804), in Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750-1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender, edited by A. E. Martin and S. Pickford, London/New York, Routledge, 2013;

H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einfürung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016;

D. Laugt-H. Koepnick (eds.), Ethik des Essens: Einführung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2017;

H. Lemke, Aesthetic Practice of Cookery, in Culinary Turn, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2017, pp. 215-18;

J. P. André, Frederick Accum: An important nineteenth-century chemist fallen into oblivion, in «Bulletin for the History of Chemistry», XLIII, 2018, pp. 79-88;

K. Roth, Aufstieg und Fall des Fredrick Accum: Da ist der Tod im Topf, in «Chemie in unserer Zeit», LVIII, 2024, n. 3, pp. 156-68;

A. D. Dayan, Accum and Food Adulteration: A Forgotten Bicentennial, in «Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine», CXIV, 2021, n. 11, pp. 556-58;

C. Lieffers, They Perished in the Cause of Science: Justus von Liebig’s Food for Infants, in «Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences», LXXIX, 2024, n. 1, pp. 1-22.

  1. A. Wierlacher, Kulinaristik. Lehre, Forschung, Praxis, Berlin, LIT, 2010. ↑
  2. Cfr H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einführung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016, p. 255. ↑
  3. Starting points for such interest in longevity were an article by G. C. Lichtenberg (1793) «on the conditions for a long life, emphasizing the benefits of a well-regulated manner of living» and Francis Bacon’s Historia Vitae et Mortis, published in London in 1623. Cfr J. Aschoff, Biological Rhythms and the Behavior of Man, Berlin, Springer, 1998, p. 5. ↑
  4. As recalls Aschoff, «The 24-hour period which is imparted to all inhabitants of the terrestrial body by its uniform rotation is especially distinct in the physical economy of man. In all diseases this regular period makes its appearance, and all other so marvelously punctual terms in our physical history are, after all, determined by this single period. It is, so to speak, the unit of our natural chronology»: ivi, p. 6. ↑
  5. R. Unna, Lebensverlängerung und Lebensverkürzung. Studien zur Geschichte der Lebenswissenschaften, München, Oldenbourg, 2012, p. 276. ↑
  6. «Der Mittelton in allen Stücken, die aurea mediocritas, die Horaz so schön besang, von der Hume sagt, dass sie das Beste auf dieser Erde sey, ist auch zur Verlängerung des Lebens am konvenabelsten»: C. W. Hufeland, Makrobiotik oder die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlängern, Jena, Akademische Buchhandlung, 1797, pp. 228-29. ↑
  7. Ivi, p. 228. ↑
  8. As we can infer from the last chapters of Hufeland’s work, a revealing subtext of Makrobiotik is Luigi Cornaro’s Discorsi della vita sobria (1558), a work that had long circulated as a moral exhortation to temperance. ↑
  9. «Die zu raffinirte Kochkunst, muß ich diese Freundin unseres Gaumens hier als die größte Feindin unsers Lebens, als eine der verderblichsten Erfindungen zu Abkürzung desselben bezeichnen»: C. W. Hufeland, Makrobiotik oder die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlängern, Jena, Akademische Buchhandlung, 1797, p. 406. ↑
  10. Cfr H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einführung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016, p. 256-57. ↑
  11. Tzoref-Ashkenazi, The Experienced Traveller as a Professional Author: Friedrich Ludwig Langstedt, Georg Forster and Colonialism Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany, in «History», XCV, 2010, n. 317, pp. 2-24: 8. ↑
  12. Ivi, p. 12, n. 24. ↑
  13. „Nervenkrankheiten (…). Unter diesen Ursachen ist Uebermaß in gesitreichen Getränken einer der beträchtlichsten; aber der erste Ursprung dieser schädlichen Gewohnheit ist oft der Schwäche und Entkräftung des Systemsn beizumessen, die man sich durch die tägliche Gewohnheit des Theetrinkens zuzieht“: F. L. Langstedt, Ueber die Wirkungen des Thees auf den menschlichen Körper und die Ursachen der Nervenkrankheiten, Leipzig, Breitkopf, 1800, p. 73. ↑
  14. P. André, Frederick Accum: An Important Nineteenth-Century Chemist Fallen into Oblivion, in «Bulletin for the History of Chemistry», XLIII, 2018, p. 81. ↑
  15. Ivi, p. 86. «A partial report in 1855 of a Parliamentary Select Committee enquiry into the Adulteration of Food, Drinks and Drugs confirmed the frequency of fraud and the use of dangerous adulterants as in Accum’s time. Subsequent government action eventually resulted in the first effective UK law, the Sale of Foods and Drugs Act 1875, which recognized Official Analysts and included penalties for adulteration and fraud and which supported much further scientific work and regulation to keep consumer protection in line with manufacturers’ changing practices»: A. D. Dayan, Accum and Food Adulteration: A Forgotten Bicentennial, in «Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine», CXIV, 2021, n. 11, p. 556. ↑
  16. However there, as André underlines, «there are interesting remarks on the origin of some foods (tea, coffee, etc.) as well as historical details, for instances on eating habits in ancient civilizations»: P. André, Frederick Accum: An Important Nineteenth-Century Chemist Fallen into Oblivion, in «Bulletin for the History of Chemistry», XLIII, 2018, p. 83. ↑
  17. Cfr H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einführung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016, p. 115. ↑
  18. Ivi, p. 176. ↑
  19. K. F. V. Rumohr, Geist der Kochkunst, Stuttgart, Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1822, p. 9. ↑
  20. Ivi, p. 239. ↑
  21. Ivi, pp. 470-71. ↑
  22. «Wie in anderen Künsten und Wissenschaften hat man eben auch in der Eßkunst noch kein bestimmtes Prinzip. Ein Umstand, der besonders dadurch erklärlich wird, daß die Welt bis auf gegenwärtige Vorlesungen eine Eßkunst selber nicht hatte»: A. Anthus, Über die Eßkunst, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1838, p. 157.  ↑
  23. «Der Mensch ist zu einem frohen Lebensgenuß nicht bloß berechtigt; er ist dazu verpflichtet»: ivi, p. 116. ↑
  24. Ivi, p. 117. ↑
  25. Ivi, p. 31. ↑
  26. «Wer könnte … in der Anschauung dieser zum Theil essender, zum Theil gegessen werdender Wesen das schöne Wechselspiel der Komi-Tragoͤdie des Lebens verkennen?»: ivi, p. 25. ↑
  27. For a conceptualisation of haute cuisine, see: H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einfürung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016. ↑
  28. „Die organische Chemie hat zur Aufgabe die Erforschung der chemischen Bedingungen des Lebens und der vollendeten Entwickelung aller Organismen“: V. Liebig, Organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie, Braunschweig, Vieweg, 1840, p. 21. ↑
  29. In his own words, „in der organischen Natur begegnen wir … einer nicht minder umfaßenden Klasse von Veränderungen, die sie durch den Einfluß der Luft erfahren; es ist dies der Act der allmäligen Verbindung ihrer verbrennlichen Elemente mit dem Sauerstoff der Luft“: J. V. Liebig, Organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie, cited, p. 256.  ↑
  30. Cfr M. R. Finlay, Quackery and Cookery: Justus von Liebig’s Extract of Meat and the Theory of Nutrition in the Victorian Age, in «Bulletin of the History of Medicine», LXVI, 1992, n. 3, p. 404. ↑
  31. Cfr C. Lieffers, They Perished in the Cause of Science: Justus von Liebig’s Food for Infants, in «Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences», LXXIX, 2024, n. 1, pp. 3-4. ↑
  32. Cfr H. Lemke, Ethik des Essens: Einführung in die Gastrosophie, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2016, p. 56. ↑
  33. Cfr 1) Die Lehre von der Freuden der Tafel. 2) Theorie und Praxis der Kochkunst. 3) Die Ästhetik der Esskunst. 4) Physiologie und Chemie aller essbaren Substanzen und Wesen sowie der meisten Getränke. 5) Die Prinzipien des (guten) Benehmens bei Tisch. 6) Das Studium der Diätetik, eine kritische Kasuistik der Magersucht und der Fettleibigkeit. 7) Und ex cathedra die streng verschärfte Kontrolle sämtlicher sozialen und ökonomischen Pflichtleistungen, wie Viehzucht, Gartenkultur, Fischfang, Ackerbau, Jagd. usw., welche nicht nur für den Fortbestand der auf Nahrung angewiesenen Menschheit notwendig sind, sondern auch dem Wohl jedes einzelnen dienen, dem seine Mahlzeit ein Fest und die Einverleibung schön zubereiteter Speisen und edler Getränke die schöpferische Erfüllung eines metaphysischen Bedürfnisses ist. Ivi, pp. 56-57. ↑
  34. «Der Gastrosoph wird, indem er Theorie und Praxis mit überlegenem Geiste verbindet, mit Gesundheit alt werden. Ja, dies ist zugleich seine eigenste Aufgabe: gesund und alt werden in der angenehmsten Weise, im täglichen Genuß der wohlschmeckendsten Speisen»: F. C. E. Von Vaerst, Gastrosophie oder die Lehre von den Freuden der Tafel, Leipzig, Avenarius und Mendelsohn, 1851, p. VII. ↑
  35. “sehr wahrscheinlich … ähnlich dem Kafeein”: E. V. Bibra, Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch, Nürnberg, Verlag von Wilhelm Schmid, 1855, p. 120. ↑

(fasc. 56-57, 15 settembre 2025, vol. II)