The Ghastly Kitchen

Abstract

The metaphor of “the ghastly kitchen” of life science research, the places that, said the nineteenth-century physiologist Claude Bernard, stirred “the fetid and throbbing ground of life,” is well known. In the seventeenth century, the kitchen, and particularly the scullery, was the site of the slaughter, butchery, and dismemberment by carving of a variety of animals. The tools and techniques employed in these activities overlapped considerably with those of animal and human dissection. Dissection often took place in residences and the kitchen was the most likely place for this activity. This challenges historians’ identification of the kitchen as an exclusively female realm. The preparation of food and medicines occurred in tandem with experimental natural philosophy, sharing tools as well as the sensory apparatus of cooking, including tasting and smelling.