The entire experience of eating a fancy meal these days is no longer just about
the food itself. For decades, chefs like Heston Blumenthal have been creating entire
culinary experiences to delight all of your senses at once, pairing sounds, smells,
and textures along with the already delicious flavors of their food. But while
this trend has taken off again more recently, this is by no means a
modern practice. In fact, as far back as the early sixteen hundreds,
an innovative chef by the name of Robert May was creating similar sensory dining experiences
all around Elizabethan, England. Today we'll discover just who this man was and
how he went about revolutionizing banquets into what would come to be called his spectacle
feasts. These are the bizarre but true stories from history and in some way
involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of
food. I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of my supporters
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reason why I keep doing what I'm doing. Now back to the episode.
Robert May was born in a small village in one of England's more southerly counties,
namely Buckinghamshire. Now we already know the line of work that Robert May
would end up in, and maybe it's no surprise that he would rise as
high as he did, considering that he had the same head start in life
like another well known prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And what I mean by
this is, if you subscribe to the ten thousand hours theory of practicing something
enough until it leads to mastery, well, then maybe it's no coincidence that
Mozart was writing symphonies at a young age. You see, he just happened
to be the son of Leopold Mozart, who was at the time not just
an un acclaimed violinist, but also one of Europe's foremost music teachers and composers.
So when most other three year olds were outside digging in the door or
climbing trees, Mozart was already being instructed in piano playing and music theory.
Now, please don't think I'm in any way diminishing the fact that Mozart was
clearly a genius, but he also had a far superior advantage with a literal
live in teacher. And I mentioned the story as it closely mirrors the situation
of Robert May, who was himself born into a home whereby his father worked
full time as a private chef to an array of English nobility. It was
then, perhaps no surprise that he spent so much of his childhood in and
around his father's kitchen, learning initially just by watching and then eventually assisting his
father in the very specific preparation of food that wealthy people enjoyed eating. This
was no traditional pub lunch fair with plates piled high and drenched in gravy,
but rather delicately prepared venison, quails, and rabbit. Alongside the precision creation
of beautifully crafted desserts and enormous towering jelly creations, they would produce their own
fruit compots, sauces, dressings, and intricately layered salads. Before long,
it was evident that the young Robert had an inherent talent for the craft of
cooking, and so because of this, one of the noble families for which
his father worked paid for him to attend a culinary school in Paris. When
he arrived in the French capital, he was still merely a teenager and couldn't
speak a word of French. But for the next five years he diligently studied
and experimented as much as he could with all manner of European cuisines and cooking
techniques. This was obviously long before the advent of Google Translate, and so
in order to better broaden his education, he would need to read and study
cookery books from all across the continent, and not content to read secondhand accounts
of these books, he poured himself into his language studies, mastering not only
French but also Italian and Spanish. In order to fully comprehend the nuances of
these continental cuisines straight from the source, he would spend hours page through foreign
language recipe manuscripts or printed cookbooks wherever he could get his hands on them,
and through his diligence he continuously honed his skills as well as his palate.
Now when the five years abroad concluded, he returned home to England and in
sixteen o nine celebrated his twenty first birthday. And this was a pivotal moment
in his life, as from this point onwards he dedicated himself to becoming the
very best chef he could be, and his career truly took off in earnest
He was soon hired to work in the kitchens of some local nobility, presumably
through a mix of his own reputation as well as his father's connections. He
would spend a few years working for a family before moving on somewhere else when
a better opportunity presented itself. From earls and countesses to knights, lords and
ladies, he slowly but surely perfected the art of banquets, feasts and fine
dining before his career came to an end. He would spend the next fifty
years working across thirteen different kitchens that spanned the country, from London to Yorkshire
and multiple places in between. As his talents grew, he began experimenting with
creating his own so called spectacle feasts. This followed a long history in England
of fantastical dining experiences that sought to enthrall and captivate guests beyond merely delicious cuisine.
He wanted to take his guests and patrons back to these nostalgic times,
recreating in his own way a form of dinner theater last seen in medieval times,
where vast banquet halls were filled with singers, dancers, acrobats and the
like, all performing for the assembled guests, while towering platters arranged in intricate
designs were paraded around the room before being set upon the tables. Later in
life, somewhere around sixteen sixty, he would produce a cookbook written predominantly for
other chefs to reference. It was called The Accomplished Cook and that's accomplished spelt
with a tea on end rather than an eed. In this book he would
write about his earlier culinary adventures, and it was in this book that he
shed more light upon his thinking, planning, and methodologies for just how he
would recreate these forgotten, opulent feasts. He wrote of how he wanted nothing
more than to ensure the admiration of the beholders, and that by the end
of each feasts the guests would leave with much delight and contentment. He would
begin experimenting with the concept by focusing on special holiday meals or festive occasions,
preparing elaborate edible centerpieces that he would call triumphs and trophies of cookery. And
we are talking about just intricately arranged meals in pleasing shapes and angles. No
Robert May would create miniature castles and warships completely out of pastry and then deck
them out with flags and streamers to enhance the visual appeal. His larger castles
would even feature full on battlements, portcullisses, gates, and even work king
drawbridges. On Board the ships, he would have miniature cannons poking out of
the portholes and would pack them with real gunpowder. He would then announce to
all assembled that he and his kitchen staff would now perform for them a mock
battle between the fleet of warships and the somewhat imposing castle. The gunpowder in
the cannons would be lit and the pastries would explode in a cloud of smoke.
This was both a visual delight as well as an odorous one, as
May believed that, as he called it, the stink of the gunpowder would
both delight and disgust the old factory senses of all assembled at another one of
his spectacle feasts, he rarely wanted to take it up a level, including
the guests themselves in the action. Before the feast began, he had his
kitchen staff poke tiny holes into egg shells and have them blow out all of
the contents until they were empty. They would then carefully clean out any remaining
residue with fresh water, and then fill the now hollow eggshells with rosewin before
sealing the tiny holes closed. Each guest was presented with their own rose water
filled eggshell, and at the beginning of the feast instructed to break it however
they saw fit. Some guests playfully tossed them at one another, broke them
on the tables, or simply hurled them at the walls. At this point,
still unaware that anything other than the expected egg yolks would emerge. As
the shells either cracked or exploded upon impact, the room was suddenly filled with
the perfume of rose water, setting the scene for a fantastic feast to come.
He became rather widely sought after, and even began to achieve a level
of celebrity among the upper classes. Poems were even written about his feasts.
Who can in pace direct of finest flour, a complete fort, a castle
or tower, to candy to preserve, to soft to pickle, to make
rare sauces, both to please and tickle. As he refined these banquets,
he he would inevitably strive to up the antea each time, until he eventually
struck upon a centerpiece so all inspiring that it would become his signature dish.
And for his masterpiece he crafted a truly spectacular creation. As guests filed into
the dining room, the table would have already been laid and set, and
instead of having the dishes arrive with fanfare once they were all seated, May's
masterpiece was already waiting for them, sprawled out across the main table. There,
in all its glory, lay a life sized deer, almost made out
of pastry, of course, but it had been made to look as if
this deer had been felled by a hunter, as it lay on its side
with a number of arrows protruding outwards. As the guests approached the table,
one of them grabbed an arrow and, with a flourish yanked it free from
the pastry animal's side. All of a sudden, a dark red liquid gushed
out of the opening, surprising, in hot, horrifying all in attendance in
equal measure, until one brave soul dared to taste it and loudly announced that
it was nothing more than red wine, which now flowed freely as more and
more arrows were plucked out of the deer's side. Needless to say, the
evening was off to a flying start. In May's never ending quest to delight
his patrons and their guests, he would experiment with ever more shocking and humorous
tricks. In a few instances, he and his staff would blind bake a
few pie crusts and pie top crusts separately. Then, just before dinner was
ready to be served and the pie crusts had cooled sufficiently, they would place
handfuls of live frogs into the bottom of the pie, and then carefully cover
it with the top crusts, giving the appearance of a regular pie when it
was placed upon the table. As soon as they retreated back to the kitchens,
the pies would inevitably start jiggling a little, catching the attention of the
assembled guests, before all at once, the top crust would explode outwards as
dozens of frogs burst forth seeking freedom. Sometimes he would even combine this trick
with even more pies, this time filled with live birds, who would irrupt
out of the pie pans, flapping their collective wings so vigorously that they would
end up extinguishing the candles on the table, throwing the entire room into darkness.
But as May reached his twilight years, he believed that both God and
his own conscience would not allow him to go to his grave without recording all
that he had learnt during his illustrious career, and as his seventy first birthday
neared, he published his aforementioned book, The Accomplished Cook, which was part
cook book, part autobiography, part text book. It was filled with detailed
instructions on how to cook almost anything, you could imagine at the time,
and if it was ever in any doubt as to his meticulous nature when learning
and implementing new techniques. This book even included twenty one different ways to cook
an armlet. He had a portrait of himself done for inside the cover,
a practice usually only reserved for royalty or nobleman, and in doing so he
had become quite possibly the world's first celebrity chef. His book was an instant
hit he would continue to sell well long after his death. In fact,
they even had to reprint new copies five times over the next twenty five years.
And Robert May spent his life dreaming up new ways to entertain and thrill
his guests. He was a pioneer, a scholar, a wonderful chef of
course, and at the end of his life even an author. His book
is still available to day in both physical and digital copies, So if you
have a dinner party planned in the near future, why not grab a copy
and let yourself be inspired to host what would certainly be the most memorable dinner
of your guest's lifetime. Create that life size pastry deer, or re enact
a famous sea battle with miniature pastry boats. But I may be recommend though,
just leave the live frogs and birds to the professionals. This show is
made entirely by me, Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music having been
made by the Enigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to
support the show, the simplest way to do that is over on our Patreon
account. There's just one option, so for just two bucks a month,
you'll help me keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get your
name forever etched onto our supporter's Wall of Fame over on our website, and
then maybe listen out for your name in an upcoming episode. So until next
time, bon apetite, n Y