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Spoonful of Sugar · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Fairies occupy a strange
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  Speaker 2: place in our culture. Few people can really say where
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  Speaker 2: they come from or why we like them. We just
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  Speaker 2: all accept the idea of cute little people with wings.
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  Speaker 2: They're very popular in paintings and garden sculptures. One painter
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  Speaker 2: in particular, made a career out of depicting fairies, although
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  Speaker 2: his work gives us little insights into the human fascination
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  Speaker 2: with them. In fact, his career only deepens the mystery
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  Speaker 2: surrounding fairies, as he was inspired to paint them while
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  Speaker 2: he was locked up in an asylum. Born in Chatham,
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  Speaker 2: England in eighteen seventeen, Richard Dad was always seen as
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  Speaker 2: a little bit frail and sensitive, but his parents thought
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  Speaker 2: that was just the price he paid for being an
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  Speaker 2: artistic prodigy. He started painting at the age of thirteen
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  Speaker 2: and enroyaled in the Royal Academy of Arts at the
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  Speaker 2: age of twenty. Many of his contemporaries were content to
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  Speaker 2: paint the mundane, rolling green hills of England, but Richard
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  Speaker 2: yearned to experience more of the world. He wanted greater
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  Speaker 2: inspiration for his work. He eventually became acquainted with Sir
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  Speaker 2: Thomas Phillips, a local politician famous for being wounded while
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  Speaker 2: putting down an uprising of the working class. Now that
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  Speaker 2: might not sound like such a good thing to us today,
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  Speaker 2: but to a member of the upper class like Richard,
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  Speaker 2: that was quite impressive. And Richard learned that Sir Thomas
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  Speaker 2: was about to embark on a year's long tour of
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  Speaker 2: the Mediterranean and beyond. Thomas wanted a painter to accompany
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  Speaker 2: him and depict his travels, so Richard quickly volunteered himself
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  Speaker 2: and it was an epic adventure, taking them all over
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  Speaker 2: the Middle East and northern Africa. Richard became obsessed with
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  Speaker 2: painting scenes from their travels, whether that was a caravan
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  Speaker 2: of camels, Sir Thomas smoking a hookah, or a busy bazaar.
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  Speaker 2: By the time they reached Egypt, Richard would sit out
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  Speaker 2: for hours in the boiling sun, chronicling every detail with
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  Speaker 2: his brushstrokes. But this obsession soon became concerning for Sir Thomas.
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  Speaker 2: He noticed that Richard was getting severely sun burnt from
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  Speaker 2: his long painting sessions, and he was risking heatstroke. When
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  Speaker 2: Sir Thomas tried to pull him away for his own
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  Speaker 2: good Richard would lash out, violently, threatening to kill his patron.
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  Speaker 2: This was so alarming that Sir Thomas had to send
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  Speaker 2: a letter all the way back to England letting Richard's
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  Speaker 2: father know that he had lost his mind. His father
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  Speaker 2: requested that Richard be sent home, and somehow Sir Thomas
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  Speaker 2: managed to get Richard onto a boat back to England,
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  Speaker 2: and Richard, of course was furious. He believed that he
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  Speaker 2: had a special connection with Egypt and that his father
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  Speaker 2: was an evil man for taking him away from it.
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  Speaker 2: It was, to say the least, not a rational belief.
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  Speaker 2: As Richard fumed over what was happening to him, the
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  Speaker 2: idea entered his head that he was actually a servant
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  Speaker 2: of the Egyptian god Osiris, and he belonged in Egypt
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  Speaker 2: where he could paint for his supernatural master. By the
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  Speaker 2: time he was home in England, Richard was plotting his return.
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  Speaker 2: His father brought him to the countryside, hoping that it
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  Speaker 2: would be good for his mental health. But Richard couldn't
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  Speaker 2: overcome this strange mental illness that had so changed him.
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  Speaker 2: One day, while painting in the park with his father,
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  Speaker 2: he lashed out, stabbing his father to death. He quickly
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  Speaker 2: boarded a boat to France, trying to make his way
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  Speaker 2: back to Egypt at all costs, but he was so
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  Speaker 2: out of his mind that he was easily found and
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  Speaker 2: arrested by the English authorities.
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  Speaker 1: The courts took some pity on him, seeing that he
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  Speaker 1: was obviously unwell, so they sentenced him to be confined
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  Speaker 1: to a mental institution for the rest of his life.
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  Speaker 1: And while the could obviously be terrible places in Victorian England,
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  Speaker 1: Richard's status as a member of the upper class seemed
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  Speaker 1: to win him superior treatment. He was given his own
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  Speaker 1: artist's studio inside the asylum and began to produce incredibly
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  Speaker 1: detailed paintings, many of them featuring fairies. Now, truth be told,
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  Speaker 1: it was hard to get Richard to explain exactly why
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  Speaker 1: he liked fairies so much, but his word different than
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  Speaker 1: the usual depictions people had seen. They were pretty naked
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  Speaker 1: creatures dancing in nature, but he used odd, dark colors
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  Speaker 1: and often framed them with disturbing touches, like the wings
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  Speaker 1: of a bat or the web of a spider. Today,
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  Speaker 1: some of Richard's fairy paintings are seen as masterpieces. When
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  Speaker 1: visitors to museums in England see his work on the wall,
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  Speaker 1: they can scarcely imagine how a curious life led him
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  Speaker 1: to produce such beautiful work. Learning to cook something new
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  Speaker 1: is a daunting task when the difference between a tea
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  Speaker 1: spoon and a tablespoon can mean a delicious meal or
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  Speaker 1: an inedible mess. Juvenile cooks owe everything to recipes, but
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  Speaker 1: for a long time, standard English recipes didn't include exact measurements.
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  Speaker 1: Many cookbooks assumed that you already knew what you were
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  Speaker 1: doing in the kitchen, and had instructions like add some
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  Speaker 1: flour or cook until done. Now. If you were an
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  Speaker 1: old hand, perhaps this was fine, but if this was
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  Speaker 1: your first time in the kitchen, it was a recipe
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  Speaker 1: for disaster. All of that changed, though, in eighteen forty five,
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  Speaker 1: when a former poet and schoolmistress tried her hand at
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  Speaker 1: writing cookbooks. Born in Sussex in seventeen ninety nine. Eliza
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  Speaker 1: Acton didn't get her start in the culinary world, but
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  Speaker 1: she grew up adjacent to it. Her father ran a brewery,
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  Speaker 1: and it's likely that young Eliza saw the beer making
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  Speaker 1: first hand, combining exact amounts of water, hops and malt
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  Speaker 1: to get the right flavor. She didn't know it then,
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  Speaker 1: but it seems this early experience with precision and preparation
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  Speaker 1: set her on her path. As Eliza grew older, she
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  Speaker 1: tried her hand at a few different industries. She opened boarding
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  Speaker 1: schools for girls in eighteen seventeen and eighteen nineteen, lived
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  Speaker 1: in France for a while, and published a poorly received
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  Speaker 1: book of poetry. When she attempted to publish a second volume,
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  Speaker 1: her publisher gave her another suggestion, why not try writing
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  Speaker 1: a cookbook instead. It was, needless to say, an unusual
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  Speaker 1: career pivot, but Eliza embraced the challenge. She spent the
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  Speaker 1: next few years carefully testing recipes, refining techniques, and most importantly,
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  Speaker 1: writing a book that would make cooking accessible. The result
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  Speaker 1: was called Modern Cookery for Private Families, published in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: forty five, and the book was an instant success. Geared
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  Speaker 1: toward the middle class. It highlighted classic English recipes and
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  Speaker 1: popular adaptations of Indian dishes that also introduced some new
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  Speaker 1: exotic meals. They marked the first recipe for cooking Brussels sprouts,
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  Speaker 1: the first time a plum pudding had been called a
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  Speaker 1: Christmas pudding in print, and the first English recipe for spaghetti.
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  Speaker 1: As the pasta was unfamiliar to her, Eliza wrote it
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  Speaker 1: as sparghetti. Her most popular contribution, though, wasn't one dish,
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  Speaker 1: but the way she wrote the recipes. Each page featured
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  Speaker 1: a play by play of how to cook the dish,
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  Speaker 1: followed by the total cooking time and a list of
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  Speaker 1: exact ingredients. Instead of being instructed to simply add salt,
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  Speaker 1: readers knew that they should include one teaspoon, Rather than
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  Speaker 1: being told to cook until golden. Readers knew that they
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  Speaker 1: should cook their dish for twenty five minutes. And I
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  Speaker 1: get it. That might not sound dramatic to you, but
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  Speaker 1: at the time it was groundbreaking, and it set the
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  Speaker 1: format for nearly every recipe and cookbook ever since. Eliza
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  Speaker 1: continued to publish cookbooks, thirteen revised editions of modern cookery
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  Speaker 1: between eighteen forty five and eighteen fifty three. She also
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  Speaker 1: wrote a scholarly study on the history of English breadmaking
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty seven, but despite the book's success, Eliza
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  Speaker 1: never received long lasting fame. Other cookbook writers took her clear,
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  Speaker 1: direct style of recipes without giving her credit. Many even
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  Speaker 1: published entire recipes stolen write from her books and published
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  Speaker 1: them under their own names. And around the same time
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  Speaker 1: that Eliza was teaching the middle class how to bake,
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  Speaker 1: broil and brine, another name was rising in the cooking world.
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  Speaker 1: Isabella Beaton first published Missus Beaton's Book of Household Management
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one, and it was an instant success.
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  Speaker 1: She became the Martha Stewart of her age. Her recipes
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  Speaker 1: and hosting tips became synonymous with Victorian English culture. Her
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  Speaker 1: book went through several editions even after Isabella died in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, and in fact is still in print today.
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  Speaker 1: But Missus Beeton was one of the many who took
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  Speaker 1: her recipes word for word from Eliza Acton's book. Eliza
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  Speaker 1: was ill for much of her adult life and passed
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  Speaker 1: away in eighteen fifty nine at the age of sixty.
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  Speaker 1: After her death, her work sank into relative obscurity, but
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  Speaker 1: some chefs and cookbook scholars still consider her one of
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  Speaker 1: the most influential cookery writers in the English language. Today,
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  Speaker 1: every professionally published cookbook follows the standard that Eliza set
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  Speaker 1: nearly two centuries ago, with precise measurements, ingredient lists, and
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  Speaker 1: detailed instructions. Eliza Acton's legacy lives on in every carefully
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  Speaker 1: measured teaspoon and every meticulously written recipe. So the next
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  Speaker 1: time you follow a recipe with confidence knowing exactly how
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  Speaker 1: much flour or sugar to use, take a moment to
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  Speaker 1: appreciate the woman who made it all possible. Without Eliza Acton,
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  Speaker 1: cooking at home might still be a recipe for disaster.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious,