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Fermentation Cosmos in Early Modern Cuisine

The most important shift to the creation of gourmet cuisine was the publication of François Pierre La Varenne's cookbook Le Cuisinier François (The French Cook) in 1651. The French gourmet cuisine brought about the appearance of new fat-based cooking techniques and the disappearance of spices and sugars. Additionally, new advancements in chemistry led to a new culinary philosophy of nutrition, digestion, and fermentation. Rather than the old philosophies: the culinary cosmos of the four elements.

This is notable because this theory helped the French cuisine take over the Catholic cuisine from 1650 and on in Europe. However, every noble in Europe didn't dine on French cuisine. The bourgeoisie of the Dutch Republic still ate Catholic dishes but incorporated middling. While the English nobles dined on French cuisine, the lower class preferred middling bread-and-beef cuisine. Middling is the process of bringing high and low cuisine together by using fats, sugars, and exotic foodstuffs like sauces and sweets. Throughout all the empires early modern cuisine introduced "new sauces and the separation of sweet and sour, emphasized bread and beef and experimented with fat, flour, and liquid combinations in sauces and sweet dishes."

Prior to the new culinary theory of nutrition, digestion, and fermentation, classical culinary cosmos was the bases of cooking. Which is the idea that dishes are primarily created by the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. With fire or heat being the most important component of cooking. It was commonly believed that everything needed to be heated to be able to be consumed. Cold food was thought to be dangerous. So with the rise of the new culinary theory, there was a newfound respect for eating raw vegetables, fruits, ices, sorbets, iced custards, and ice cream.

The new culinary theory was now based on fermentation, rather than heat (fermentation cosmos). Additionally, instead of the four elements, there were only three important principles: salt, oil, and mercury. Which could still be thought of like the earth, water, and air elements. But these new properties were more refined. "Salt was the solid residue that resisted the heat of distillation" and was responsible for the body and taste. "Oil was the oily liquid" that made the food viscous. "Mercury was the vapor, the pure essence of whatever was being distilled" that gave the food lightness and aroma. An example of this is using fats (oil principle) such as butter, lard, or olive oil to bind with flour and salt (salt principle), and mixed with aromas (mercury principle) such as wine, vinegar, stocks, or "spirits" (essences of meat or fish) to make a sauce that would be served over bread or meat. This innovation would lead to making fats the center of cooking for the next three hundred and fifty years. Until the modernization and urbanization food in the nineteenth century.

The innovation of the fermentation cosmos was only possible because of European rulers who hired chemical physicians such Paracelsus and many other Catholic and Protestants, who believed in chemical remedies over dietary cures for illnesses that Galenist physicians would use. This research was so successful, that fermentation became the bases of life and was used to explain how the world works. For instance, lime (mercury) would bind together with water (oil) and stone (salt) to make cement. Or in the case of biology, babies were formed of ferment-like semen inside the uterus. Additionally, digestion was considered to be your stomach fermenting. Paracelsus suggested that "ferment" was spiritual, reinterpreting the links between the divine. Chemical physicians also researched more into nutrition. Sugar was found to be a salt-like property that caused all kinds of sickness such as sugary urine (diabetes) and was considered unhealthy and a dangerous substance. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, and many others were considered to be healthy foods since they fermented. Fermentation cosmos wouldn't stop being the main way to describe the physical cosmos until René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and Pierre-Simon Laplace proposed their theories of gravity to explain the world.

Gender Imbalances in Chinese Homes and Society

Beyond the physically creative architecture techniques that the Chinese used, there was an "imaginary architecture" that was implemented into a Chinese house. This imaginary architecture projected three major principles, that display a different set of messages about the relations between its inhabitants, the cosmos, and society at large, that each depicts a gender power imbalance.

The first design principle was that the Chinese house was the embodiment of Neo-Confucian values. The values of the home incorporated prominently social values, collaborative values of loyalty, and values of respect and service. The values were depicted through how the Chinese home represented generations, gender, and age. Unlike western homes, the Chinese home was not a private space or a place separated from the state. It was a smaller community in itself. A place that sheltered a clan's or family's patrilineal kinship. It was quite common for houses to shelter "five generations under one roof." In this patrilineal kinship, there are heavily influenced social concepts of Confucianist values from the Five Relationships between "ruler and subject, father and child, husband and wife, elder and younger brother and friends."There is a large emphasis on the unequal relationship between the superior and subordinate. In the case of the relationship between husband and wife, it clearly was male-dominated. Despite this, the husband was still responsible for treating the partner with kindness, consideration, and understanding.

The second aspect was that the Chinese house was a cosmic space. The house was designed as a shelter to thwart away evil influences by channeling cosmic energies (qi) through means of incorporating Feng shui (also known as geomancy). Depending on the season, astral cycle, landscape's configuration of hills, rocks, trees, and water streams, and the house's arrangement, orientation, and details of roofs or gates, an arbitrary amount of energy would be produced. However, since the cosmic energy was such an arbitrary concept, it would be used in both moral and immoral ways. The moral way is by adding Feng shui to a local community temple. Yet, it other times Feng shui would be used competitively to raise the value of one's house at the expense of others. For example, if someone built a part of their house against the norm, their house would be considered a threat. Since it was throwing off the cosmic energy. In one detailed account, a fight broke out over Feng shui. Additionally, this methodology was also incorporated inside the home. Symmetry, orientations, arrangements of objects, and cleanliness were important factors to cosmic energy. Even in poorer homes cleanliness and tidiness were highly desired since it would compensate for the cramped quarters. Sweeping was a daily task that was thought to be an act of purifying the room of pollutions such as dirt. As the Chinese historian, Sima Guang writes, "The servants of the inner and outer quarters and the concubines all rise at the first crow of the cock. After combing their hair, washing, and getting dressed, the male servants should sweep the halls and front courtyard; the doorman and older servants should sweep the middle courtyard, while the maids sweep the living quarters, arrange tables and chairs, and prepare for the toilet of the master and mistress." Through cleaning, the gender segregation of the Chinese household can be seen.

The third component was that the house was a space of culture, by depicting the Chinese view of humanity. The house was a domestic domain that marked the separation of the undomesticated world. Commonly symbolized through walls and gates. Gates were first a physical barrier and second a kind of notice board for the outside world. Walls were the boundaries of a patriarchal domain. The home culture was also a place where family rules could be enforced, causing divides in the upbringing of the inhabitants. Most commonly, there was a wide gender distinction. Women were often hidden away within the inner walls to do wifely domestic duties. While men would be house representatives. In terms of the marriage duties, "Men would grow up, marry and likely die in the house win which he, his father and paternal grandfather had been born and in which his mother would live until her death. Women would leave their natal home on marriage to become a stranger in a new house." Women wouldn't be accepted into a new home until they aired a child. Often new brides would be treated badly by the senior members of a household. In extreme cases, junior brides were treated like unpaid servants and forced to do unpleasant chores. Additionally, to women, marriage was thought of as a descent into hell. "The analogy of the wedding process with death is made explicit: the bride describes herself as being prepared for death, and the wedding process as the crossing of the yellow river that is the boundary between this life and the next. Shes appeals for justice, citing the valuable and unrecognized contribution she has made to her family. Her language is bitter and unrestrained, and she even curses the matchmaker and her future husband's family. Such lamenting can take place only within her parents' household and must cease halfway on the road to her new home, when the invisible boundary has been crossed." As a result of this, men and women faced two vastly different lives.

The confinement of women was a method of controlling their sexuality. It was thought that women needed to be controlled so that they may not get pregnant by an outsider and then try to claim a state in the male's domain. In addition, wives were often represented as "gossiping troublemakers eager to stir up strife between otherwise devoted brothers, the root of family discord, requiring strict patriarchal control."As a result, they were untrusted and were always considered to be involved in an illicit sexual relationship if they were in the company of another male.

Even though a couple would be married, husbands and wives did not stay in the same private room for long. During the day, men would go out or work in their studies so that they can avoid any unnecessary contact with female relatives. Women weren't allowed to leave the inner perimeter. If a woman had to leave the inner perimeter, they must cover their face with a veil or her sleeve. However, the inner quarters did provide women with some control over the patriarchal order. Since they had their own private room that men were not usually permitted to enter.

On all social levels and aspects of the Chinese home, the seclusion of women was ingrained into society. A married woman was a virtually a prisoner in her husband's domain while the husband "never had to leave his parents or his home, he knew which lineage and which landscape he belonged to from the time he began to understand the world."