Feast to cure melancholy

It's not every day you get to attend "an edible experiment". The Wellcome Collection hosted two events called Feast to Cure Melancholy. The blurb promised: "If the experiment succeeds you will take home new tools for living. Even if it fails, the evening will be an imaginative and sensory delight."

It's possible they were over-selling it slightly. I certainly didn't feel I acquired any new tools for living. On the other hand, the imaginative and sensory delight bit probably was true.

It was inspired by the Wellcome's collection of historic recipe, food and medical books, in particular Robert Burton’s 1621 work The Anatomy of Melancholy. This is a collection of advice, quotations and musings on the subject of what we would now call depression. Quite a bit of it is about food - Burton thought the melancholy man should avoid beef, venison, hare, heavy wines, cabbage and fresh-water fish, among other things.

Robert Burton

Last night's event drew heavily on the ancient and medieval theory of humours. A melancholy person was afflicted by too much cold and dry humour, and would need something hot and wet (such as duck or radishes) to balance it. A phlegmatic person is cold and wet, and could be treated with choleric foods such as wine and mutton.There were other treatments too, such as blood-letting or enemas.

Having learned all this it was time to eat - four small and unusual courses created by food artists Blanch and Shock. A couple of the dishes were "Butter-roasted onions with nutmeg and cinnamon-spiced potatoes, chestnut cream powder, spring onions and capers," and "Potted wild boar in hay-infused fat, pompion (squash) crisp, apple gel, scurvy grass and toasted hogweed seeds." This was certainly the first time I had eaten hogweed seeds, or for that matter dittander, which turns out to be a wild plant with a mustard flavour. It wasn't the best meal of my life, but it was possibly the most original.

The blurb had asked: "Can our minds benefit today from Burton’s dietary and medicinal advice on food and drink, moderation and exercise, sleeping and dreaming" Well, not as far as I could tell from last night. The theme of food and health seems timely, though, when Channel Four is broadcasting Food Hospital, looking at whether conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome and breast cancer can be helped by diet. There is some evidence that nutritional deficiencies can affect mental development and behaviour, including that lack of iron and iodine can affect children's mental development.

Certainly food for thought.