Food for Angels

In my last post on Milton's Paradise Lost I referred to the episode where, prior to the Fall, the archangel Raphael visits Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and dines with them - see http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/forbidden-fruit.html

Eve crushes grapes to make a non-alcoholic drink and makes mead - presumably also without alcohol - from berries, and also "from sweet kernels pressed / ... tempers dulcet creams" (Book V, ll. 346-47).  I assume that by kernels Milton means nuts and that Eve makes some form of nut cream to feed Raphael.  

As luck would have it, there are seventeenth-century recipes for almond cream, a dish that I am familiar with. The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight In Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, and Cookery - how's that for the title of a cookery book! - published in 1675, provides the following recipe:  

Forbidden Fruit

In my previous two posts on Jacobean revenge drama I explored the way food adopts more negative connotations, being used for nefarious purposes or to symbolise corruption (see   http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/apricots.html and  http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-corrupting-effects-of-food.html).  In Paradise Lost (published 1667), John Milton retells in a long epic poem the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, a narrative with food at its heart.  As originally narrated in chapter 3 of the Biblical book of Genesis the serpent, the most cunning of all God's creation, tempts Eve to eat from the one tree in the Garden of Eden that God has forbidden her and Adam from eating from, namely the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Eve subsequently persuades Adam to eat; cursed by God, Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden and sin is brought into the world. 

In his twelve book epic treatment of this short Biblical myth, Milton indulges the reader with long descriptions of the naturally-occurring fruits in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s pre-lapsarian meals and then the actual consumption of the forbidden fruit.  In Book V the archangel Raphael visits Adam and Eve, and Eve – like a model 17^th century housewife – prepares a meal. 

She gathers, tribute large, and on the board

Heaps with unsparing hand; for drink the grape

She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths

From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed

She tempers dulcet creams.  (ll. 343-47)

There is an emphasis on abundance – food grows plentifully in the Garden of Eden, and earlier in Book IV Adam and Eve are described as eating nectarines which the “complaint boughs / yielded them” (ll. 332-333); the food is freely offered up to them.  The only food referred to is fruit, and no actual cooking is involved (there is no reference to heat being applied to the fruit).  Instead, Eve crushes grapes to make unfermented (non-alcoholic) juice, makes mead from berries and from seeds or nuts produces some type of sweet cream.   

 Raphael dines with Adam and Eve from a painting by William Blake