1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,440 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey 2 00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,039 Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and today we've got 3 00:00:09,039 --> 00:00:12,600 Speaker 1: another classic episode for you. This one is about how 4 00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:16,960 Speaker 1: a coincidental fad for lemonade may have once saved Paris 5 00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:22,120 Speaker 1: from an outbreak of the Black Plague. Hey there, brain Stuff, 6 00:00:22,160 --> 00:00:25,560 Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb. Here in the seventeenth century, a return 7 00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:28,600 Speaker 1: of plague, also known as the Black Death, killed about 8 00:00:28,640 --> 00:00:32,159 Speaker 1: one million people in France. Oddly enough, the residents of 9 00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:35,800 Speaker 1: Paris were largely unaffected, despite having the same rat problem 10 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:38,760 Speaker 1: as any other large city. The rodents carried fleas that 11 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:41,559 Speaker 1: bore the plague. After the plague killed the rats, the 12 00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:45,000 Speaker 1: fleas often hopped onto human hosts. In this way, the 13 00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:49,360 Speaker 1: plague spread like wildfire, snuffing out life after life. The 14 00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:52,319 Speaker 1: Parisian's miraculous avoidance of the plague could have remained one 15 00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:56,280 Speaker 1: of history's mysteries, but author Tom Neelin squeezed a potential 16 00:00:56,280 --> 00:01:00,160 Speaker 1: explanation out of seemingly desperated events. A purveyor of rares, 17 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:02,640 Speaker 1: Neilon is not only a connoisseur of history, but of 18 00:01:02,720 --> 00:01:05,600 Speaker 1: the impact the condiments and food stuffs may have had 19 00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:08,640 Speaker 1: on antiquity. His new book of Food Fights and Culture 20 00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:12,840 Speaker 1: Wars follows these sometimes surprising influence food has had throughout history. 21 00:01:13,319 --> 00:01:16,520 Speaker 1: Neilan says health and food were intimately connected for the 22 00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:20,440 Speaker 1: longest time. Early collections of recipes frequently mixed medical and 23 00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:23,880 Speaker 1: cookery receipts, as recipes were called, so it's easy to 24 00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:26,640 Speaker 1: start to conflate them when you're studying the period and 25 00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:30,480 Speaker 1: old cookbooks even after they started to separate. The Renaissance 26 00:01:30,520 --> 00:01:33,240 Speaker 1: Book of Secrets kept elements of food and home remedies 27 00:01:33,240 --> 00:01:36,840 Speaker 1: together for centuries longer. In the case of Paris and 28 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:40,399 Speaker 1: it's largely unscathed population in the sixteen hundreds, the timing 29 00:01:40,440 --> 00:01:43,800 Speaker 1: of a lemonade trend and the timing of a plague coincided, 30 00:01:43,959 --> 00:01:46,720 Speaker 1: and Neilan wondered whether it was more than a coincidence. 31 00:01:47,360 --> 00:01:49,840 Speaker 1: Up until the sixteen hundreds, lemons had been a rare 32 00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:53,120 Speaker 1: and expensive fruit. All the lemon trees had been cultivated 33 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:55,720 Speaker 1: throughout Europe and Asia in the preceding decades, and a 34 00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:58,760 Speaker 1: few recipes using lemon as an ingredient had emerged. The 35 00:01:58,760 --> 00:02:01,560 Speaker 1: citrus fruit was a little used in England and France, 36 00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:04,520 Speaker 1: both because of cost and the notion that eating raw 37 00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:07,600 Speaker 1: lemons was harmful. Then an increase in trade and a 38 00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:10,960 Speaker 1: fascination with lemonade popularized the tart fruit, so that by 39 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:14,760 Speaker 1: the mid sixteen hundreds it was widely available. Nielan explains, 40 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:18,040 Speaker 1: during the Renaissance, lemons had been bread and domesticated enough, 41 00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:21,040 Speaker 1: and trade had become organized enough that lemons were sufficiently 42 00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:24,440 Speaker 1: inexpensive in the mid seventeenth century to import in bulk. 43 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:27,360 Speaker 1: Lemonade was all the fashion in a number of cities 44 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:30,040 Speaker 1: in Italy at the time, especially Rome, and the fad 45 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:34,240 Speaker 1: spread from there. The cookbook liquis ineur Francois, published in 46 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:37,960 Speaker 1: sixteen fifty one and written by chef Francois Pierre Lavarenne, 47 00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:41,600 Speaker 1: is considered one of the founding texts of modern French cuisine. 48 00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:45,080 Speaker 1: It included a recipe that combined lemon juice, water and sugar. 49 00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:48,840 Speaker 1: This recipe also contributed to the popularity of lemonade in France. 50 00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:51,799 Speaker 1: And with all this lemonade came lots and lots of 51 00:02:51,919 --> 00:02:55,480 Speaker 1: lemon peels. Lemon peels were everywhere, in the garbage, in 52 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,799 Speaker 1: the gutter, in the river, anywhere that you could find rats. 53 00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:02,440 Speaker 1: It was this tuitous combination of rats and lemon peels 54 00:03:02,480 --> 00:03:05,280 Speaker 1: that may have stopped the spread of plague. Lemon peels 55 00:03:05,280 --> 00:03:08,799 Speaker 1: contain lemoning, a natural ingredient that kills flea larvae and 56 00:03:08,919 --> 00:03:12,079 Speaker 1: adult fleas. The more people that made lemonade and discarded 57 00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:14,840 Speaker 1: the lemon peels, the more the rats nibbled on the peels, 58 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:19,120 Speaker 1: inadvertently ingesting lemoning and killing fleas and their eggs. Neil 59 00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:21,880 Speaker 1: And says the lemoning disrupted the spread of fleas from 60 00:03:21,880 --> 00:03:24,959 Speaker 1: the rats to people because the plague kills so quickly, 61 00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:27,280 Speaker 1: the fleas needed to move from rats to people back 62 00:03:27,320 --> 00:03:29,840 Speaker 1: to rats over and over again to keep it going 63 00:03:29,960 --> 00:03:33,239 Speaker 1: as their hosts expired. Lemoning, a flea killer that is 64 00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:35,840 Speaker 1: still broadly used in pet treatments, killed the fleas and 65 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:39,080 Speaker 1: prevented the chain from getting going. At the time, and 66 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:42,520 Speaker 1: four centuries after the plague subsided, the survival of Parisians 67 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:45,880 Speaker 1: was attributed to an airing out of goods blankets, bedsheets, 68 00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:48,880 Speaker 1: clothes that had been quarantined. At the time. It was 69 00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:52,040 Speaker 1: mistakenly believed that the illness traveled by air, when it 70 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:54,840 Speaker 1: was really the rats and fleas traveling with the quarantined 71 00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:57,480 Speaker 1: goods that were at the root of the plague. If 72 00:03:57,520 --> 00:04:00,120 Speaker 1: not for Parisians love of lemonade, many more may have 73 00:04:00,160 --> 00:04:07,680 Speaker 1: met a tragic end. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. 74 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:10,880 Speaker 1: Dove and produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Clang. For 75 00:04:10,960 --> 00:04:12,840 Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics, visit how 76 00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:15,400 Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of 77 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:18,159 Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit 78 00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:20,960 Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 79 00:04:21,040 --> 00:04:22,039 Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.