I am working through the Thomas Cogan (1545?-1607) bread and grain sections from his influential work, Haven of Health (1584). Like the author of health manuals today, Cogan declares himself academically qualified to write on medical matters. He had two Oxford degrees, a Master of Arts, and a Batcheler of Physicke. He was a working physician, and the Headmaster of a grammar school in Manchester. Cogan addressed his book to his students, and by extension to people like us who who do not do manual labor for a living. In this post I review the gain section of the Haven of Health. It includes one absolutely phenomenal observation. That is the observation that boiling grain is natural, while making bread is artificial.

This is the only text I can think of that makes that observation through a comparison of bread with a less processed grain product, as Thomas Cogan does here with bread an frumenty.

Of such Fruits of the Field, as are nourishing.

THe chief fruits of the field are Wheate, Rye, Rice, Barly, Oates, Beanes, Chiches, Pease and Lentils.

Conceptually, fields (farms) is where staple foods were grown, and gardens it’s where fruits and vegetables were grown. This listing of grains begins with the two primary bread grains, wheat and rye, follows with rice, which was not a major grain in England, and then continues with the lesser bread grains, barley and oats, followed by pulses which were included in breads only in times of extreme need.

Wheate is divided into divers kinds by Pliny, Colu∣mella, Dodonaeus, Pena and Lobelius; it shall be suffici∣ent for us to describe the sorts of this Country, which are especially two: The one red called Robus by Columella, and the other very white and light called Siligo, whereof is made our purest manchet. Being made into Furmity and sodden with milk and sugar, or artificially made into bread; Wheate nourisheth exceeding much ^*and strongly: the hardest, thickest, heaviest, cleanest, brightest and growing in a fat soil, is ever to be chosen; for such Wheate (in Dioscorides and Galens judgement) is most nourishing.

There are two important observations to note in this passage. The first one is that wheat, which is the primary bread grain, is divided between two cultivars – red wheat and white wheat. The distinction between red and white wheat which is the distinction between a paler more yellowish pericarp versus a darer more red pericarp remains important in commerce today. Asian noodles tend to made with white wheat, India prefers white wheat for its breads, and industrial bakeries may choose white wheat for their whole wheat loaves so they come out whiter. Most wheat grown in the United States is red wheat. Red wheat tends to have a higher gluten content so the red wheat is preferred by most loaf bread bakeries.

Historically, white wheat was chosen for making the finest whitest flour. The Early Modern English manchet was made with white wheat, as was the best Roman bread. In both Early Modern England and Classical Rome, the finest flour was made by double sifted the flour from white wheat. In Latin, that grade flour was called “siligo”. At the level of recipe it is important that if you are doing recreations of historic breads from the previous 2000 years that you mill white wheat for your finer breads. The text makes clear that manchet is made with white wheat and the double dressed Roman flour, siligo.

Rye seemeth to be nothing but a wild kind of wheate, meet for Labourers, Servants and Workmen, but hea∣vy of digestion to indifferent stomachs.

Rye and wheat are both grasses. So I think we can cut Cogan some slack in his misclassification of rye as a type of wheat. What important here is his acceptance of the idea that there is something about rye that suits servants and workmen, but isn’t appropriate for students and those of us who make our sedentary livings. He is following on Galen’s lead in deprecating rye.

Barly used any way in bread, drink or broth, is ever cooling (saith Galen) and engendreth but a thin and weak juice. Before we use it in broths or Ptisan, it should be clean hulld, and washed in many waters. The decoction of Barly in chicken-broth, strained with a few blauncht almonds, and sweetned with sugar, and rosewater, is a very covenient meat for sound men, but more for them which are sick and abhor flesh.

In the Galenic health system, food was food and at the same time food was medicine. It was medicine in a sense that we cannot easily appreciate. We may, with more or less actual belief, drink chicken soup when feeling crummy, or extra garlic to fend off a cold, but these are residual behaviors from a way of thinking about food and about our bodies that is long past. A “ptisan” is a tisane — a tea created through macerating the grain. Barley candy starts with a barley water. Such waters were apparently consumed. As barley was considered “cooling” within the humoral health system, if you were in need of cooling you could drink barley water. While it seems that Cogan himself may have enjoyed barley broth made with chicken broth, blanched almonds, sugar, and rosewater barley is here assigned to people who are sick or who “abhor flesh.” Abhor! Strong word! Vegetarians!

Cardan saith that Galen maketh mention of a kind of Barly in Greece growing without a husk, and hulld by nature; which place he never citeth, because he was mistaken; for through all Galen I could never find any such thing, though of purpose I searched for it very diligently. 

I’m calling out this sentence because it so clearly shows us the Thomas Cogan is intellectually dependent on texts that are nearly 1500 years prior to his own lifetime. He is doing serious research but it is literary research. He finds a citation to Galen in a work of Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) regarding a free threshing barley in Greece, but cannot find any such reference it the work of Galen. While this displays first class scholarship – always check the references – what he does not do is check any contemporary sources of information on what grains grow in Greece in his own day. Today, it is routine to at least take a look at ethnography in case one might find insights into historic practice.

That Wheate and Rye is far more nourishing then Barly.

There is always the hierarchy. The maslin mix of wheat and rye are more nourishing than barley. The lack of nourishment attributed to barley is found in Galen, though in fact one can argue that barley is more nutritious than wheat as it actually offers more calories per 100g than does wheat.