Coryat’s contemporaries also ignored his fork musings. His friends just mocked
him. What was wrong with a good old knife and a piece of bread for
shovelling food into one’s face? So it took a further 100 years before the
fork saw wider use.
There is, however, a far more tragic story of culinary invention: it involves
Denis Papin, a Frenchman whose personal triumph was the invention of what he
called “a new digester or engine for softening bones” and what we would call
a pressure cooker. Papin was born and educated in France but moved to
London, where he worked for the Irish chemist and physicist Robert Boyle.
While he assisted Boyle on projects relating to vacuums and steam, on his
boss’s self-named law and on a variety of tracts, including the turgid
Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, after hours Papin did his own
experiments. He built a vessel made of cast iron, with a lid that could be
screwed tight shut, which he placed over hot coals. Night after night he
took deliveries to the lab. There were haunches of beef, rabbits, mutton,
fruit and vegetables, all of which were subject to experiments in his
contraption.
The water, heated under intense pressure, had a higher boiling point and thus
could cook food more quickly. As he experimented, he kept detailed notes
recording both epic failures and great triumphs. “The hardest cow-beef may
be made as tender and savoury as young and choice meat,” he wrote, arguing
how useful his device could be for feeding the poor. He cooked pigeon, eel,
beans, cherries, mackerel, gooseberries and lots of beef. His machine had
uses for “cookery, voyages at sea, confectionery, making of drinks,
chemistry and dyeing”. It could also make drinks that “would not hurt the
head”.
And so he presented his hangover-curing, money-saving device to a prestigious
gathering at the Royal Society. But he mustered no interest. Five years
later he wrote with desperation that his digester was “a useful invention
grounded upon good principle… but very few people have been willing to make
use of it.” Papin faded into obscurity, ran out of money and, after his last
years were lived in poverty, his death went unrecorded. He never patented
his design, and others later became rich from copying it.
Now that a recession has made cheaper cuts of meat fashionable and sales of
pressure cookers are again on the rise, the next time a TV chef urges you to
use one to prepare some tender Moroccan-style lamb, spare a thought for the
17th-century genius who thought of the idea in the first place.
‘A History of Food in 100 Recipes’ by William Sitwell is published by
Collins (£20)
Click here to Book Accommodation in Cradock, Graaf Reinett, Hofmeyer or surrounds.
Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/9218091/Denis-Papin-A-food-hero-who-displayed-grace-under-pressure.html