 What is a recipe? How has the definition changed over the years, and how does it connect medicine, diet, makeup, and women's magazines? Welcome to the Endless Knot, where today we're exploring the etymology and history of the recipe as part of the recipe project's virtual conversation. Originally, a recipe was a medical prescription. The word recipe is the imperative or command form of the Latin verb recupera, meaning take, and that's how it was first used in English 2 in the 14th century, as a verb, not a noun. The instruction at the beginning of a prescription, sort of like take two aspirins and call me in the morning, and we still sort of have this usage if only in the form of the abbreviation rx, which was originally an r with a slash through it to indicate it was an abbreviation, which still appears at the start of medical prescriptions. It was only in the 16th century that the word recipe went from being the instruction at the start of a prescription to being a noun that meant the prescription itself, and it was only in the 17th century that the word began to be used to refer not only to medical instructions, but culinary ones, an appropriate transferral if we think of instructions like take two eggs and so forth. Interestingly, that Latin verb recupera also gave English through French the word receipt, but instead of the imperative, this word is formed from the past participle, meaning taken. Early on, it too could be used to refer to a medical or culinary recipe, first recorded in the culinary sense in reference to a recipe for hippocross, a kind of sweetened wine, in 1595, so predating the word recipe in this sense. Today, of course, the financial sense of receipt dominates, and the culinary sense has died out. So a receipt used to be a recipe, a recipe used to be a prescription, and yes, a prescription used to be something else as well. Before the word prescription gained its medical sense in the 16th century, it used to have a legal sense, referring to the right to something through long use, and before that, the Latin word prescriptio meant literally something written before, from pry, before, and scribera, to right, so referring to a preface or introduction. But in fact, as we'll see, the overlap between medical and culinary recipes is tied to historical attitudes to the role of food and medicine. Let's start with ideas of disease in the ancient world, when it really was literally dis-ease or discomfort, as Europe and the Western world didn't have the germ theory of disease, which only became the standard way of thinking in the 19th century. The word disease, by the way, is not an ancient one, but a medieval one, coming into English from Old French, but appropriate here since the medieval conception of disease was inherited directly from the ancient world. The first element is a negative prefix, and the second element es, meaning ease or comfort, and also opportunity or elbow room, is of unknown origin, possibly from Latin ansa, handle, used figuratively in the sense opportunity or occasion, and maybe also elbow, because Latin ansatus, furnished with handles, was used to mean having the arms of Kimbo. For the Greeks and Romans, maintaining health and avoiding disease was all about maintaining proper balance, a concept not unique to Europe, but found in different forms in many traditional medicines around the world. This came under the heading of diet, which for the Greeks had a rather broader meaning than our English derivative. Greek dieta meant way of living or mode of life, including not only what one ate, but also many other factors about one's life and environment. The word dieta, in turn, comes ultimately from a root meaning to take or handle from a proto-Indo-European root that means to give or a lot. Note the parallel to the etymology of recipe, and this root also gives us the word etiology, which in medical circles today means the cause of disease, in other words what gives you a disease. But for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and later on the medieval physicians, what gives you a disease was an imbalance in the body, and what cured disease was what you take into the body, loosely speaking your diet, hence those recipes, I suppose. The give and take of pre-modern medicine, you could say. Returning to this ancient notion of balance, it can be traced at least as far back as the famous Greek physician Hippocrates and his followers, and came to be called humorism. No, not what's funny, though we do get the modern word humor from that, but the bodily humors, or four fluids in the body that were thought to regulate everything. The Greek word for humor in this medical sense was humos, meaning literally juice, and coming from a root that means to pour, which also gives us words such as gush, gut, funnel, and fondue, along with a host of other words. The four humors were held to be blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. These were in turn associated with different seasons, elements, organs, qualities, and temperaments. This is where we get the terms sanguine, from the Latin for blood, choleric, from the Greek for bile, melancholic, literally black bile, and phlegmatic, from a root meaning to burn. If you were thought to have an imbalance in these humors in your body, you would suffer from one of these temperaments. However, this could be treated with a particular food that was thought to share the qualities of the opposing humor. Warm and moist for blood, warm and dry for yellow bile, cold and dry for black bile, cold and moist for phlegm. Thus, by eating the right thing, you could put your system back into alignment. But of course, you had to take into account the time of year, the cooking method, the geography, the climate, and so forth, as these factors would also influence the cure. Remember, diet isn't just food, but a way of living. And the Hippocratic Dietary Regime would include more than just food, but also sleep, exercise, bathing, and even advice about sex. All these things could influence those essential humoral qualities and thus your health. The Hippocratic Oath is of course named after Hippocrates. Also named after Hippocrates is that sweetened and spiced wine Hippocrast that we mentioned earlier, because Hippocrates supposedly invented a kind of cloth filter bag called the Hippocratic Sleeve used to strain off the spices from the wine. Originally, it was used for filtering water, but as we've seen, the line between the medical and the culinary is blurry, demonstrated well by the fact that the first culinary use of the word receipt was in a recipe for this drink. And humor, by the way, is the later Latin term used by Roman physicians, such as the influential Galen, who in turn transmitted the theory of the humors onto the medieval world. And that's where that notorious medieval practice of leaching came from. Too much blood making you sanguine? No problem, use leeches. That word leech, by the way, was also, appropriately enough, an old English word for doctor. Originally two separate and unrelated words, they seem to have fallen together or at least influenced each other. Where either comes from is a matter of some debate, though the physician word leech may be related to a root that means to collect, and has derivatives related to speaking and reading. Well, doctors do tell you what to do, but their prescriptions are notoriously hard to read. As for the word humor, it comes from a root that means wet. Ironic, etymologically speaking then, that we talk about dry humor. It comes to have the modern sense because the humors were thought to control your temperament, and this then transferred to the sense of temperament or mood, and from there to inclination or whim, and that's where we get that funny sense of humor from. But getting back to the diet. In order for foods to have the right effect on the humors, they had to be grown or produced in the right environment, so ecology was also an important consideration. And as we indicated earlier, they had to be eaten at the right time of year. Ancient and medieval physicians also put stock in astrological and cosmological influences on health. It's interesting to note that the word cosmological is from Greek cosmos, meaning not only universe and order, but also decoration and ornament, and giving us not only the English word cosmos, but also cosmetic. Trust me, this isn't a merely ornamental digression, we'll come back to it soon. So food and diet more broadly was the most important element of ancient medicine, but there were two other branches as well that were available to the ancient physician, though both were thought to be more extreme methods. First was pharmacology, which was often just a more concentrated form of food. Certain herbs and spices were used as medicines, and culinary ingredients often started out as medicinal. These medicines were thought to have the same sorts of effects in the bodily humors. The words pharmacy and pharmacology come from the Greek pharmacon, meaning drug, medicine, or even poison. So obviously you had to be careful with pharmacological interventions. We don't know for sure where this Greek word comes from, but it might be connected to a root meaning to cut, from the notion of medical plants being cut. But speaking of cutting, the third and most extreme branch of ancient medical practice was surgery, which would only be used in dire circumstances as the chances of survival in a time before sterilization and antibiotics were low. The words surgery and surgeon come from Greek through Latin and French, literally meaning handwork. During the Middle Ages, surgery became divorced from the work of the physicians who were concerned with all that stuff about the humors and astrology, and instead was performed by, believe it or not, barbers. Well, they did have a lot of practice cutting things. For the most part, surgery in the hands of these barber surgeons involved the treatment of wounded soldiers, think amputations and so forth. That red striped barbers pole you might be familiar with represents the blood involved in the barber's surgical pursuits. It wasn't until the 19th century that surgery became firmly part of the realm of the medical professional. Now, these historical overlaps between food, medicine, cosmetics, and even hair cutting may at first glance seem strange to our modern sensibilities, but when you think about it, they never really went away. In the modern drugstore or pharmacy, we find not only medicines, but also food and cosmetics and hair products and various ornaments. And if we think of the word apothecary, the forerunner of the modern pharmacy, there's the interesting historical accident that from its Greek root apothecée, meaning storehouse, literally put away, we also get, through French, the word boutique, where we buy fashionable clothing. And what's more, before they split in 1617, the London guilds representing the apothecaries and the grocers were one and the same. And of course, the prime reading material you'll find in the modern pharmacy is the women's magazine, a famous example of which Cosmo, or Cosmopolitan, takes us back to that Cosmos root, meaning order and beauty, and covers topics such as fashion and makeup, health, diet, lifestyle, exercise, sex, recipes, and maybe even horoscopes. The overlap in those ancient ideas of diet as a way of living is still encapsulated in the women's mags of today. And the pharmacy and the women's magazine also demonstrate the gendered overlap of associations with the home and the body. Think home remedies, health, cosmetics, fashion, food, and recipes, all things that women are socially conditioned to consider their responsibility. And these associations are already evident in the very earliest women's magazines, such as the 17th century ladies' mercury, which gave relationship advice, the 18th century ladies' magazine, which covered such topics as fashion and medical advice, and the 19th century English women's domestic magazine, which covered topics such as fashion and homemaking, all alongside fiction, poetry, society gossip, sheet music, and other occupations considered appropriate for genteel ladies. This last one, by the way, was published by Samuel Orchard Beaton, husband of Isabella Beaton, of Mrs. Beaton's book of household management fame, who also wrote for her husband's publication in addition to being one of the first to establish the standard format of the modern recipe book. It's not hard to see the foundations of the modern women's mags in these early magazines. And now that they've become a repository for instructions of all types, recipes, diet plans, makeup tips, fashion rules, medical information, relationship advice, guides to good sex, etc., women's magazines are essentially selling a recipe for self-improvement and holding out the same illusory promise of balance as those ancient and medieval doctors if their readers can only follow their instructions perfectly. So perhaps then we have returned to that first definition of a recipe, whether it's for a chocolate cake or a better life. Trust me, I know more than you, take what I feed you, and all will be well. For much more discussion of recipes, and for examples of historical and modern cooking, medicine, cosmetics, and other types of instructions, follow the link in the description to the recipe project's virtual conversation, or search the hashtag recipes conf. Thanks for watching! If you've enjoyed these etymological explorations and cultural connections, please subscribe to this channel or share it. And check out our Patreon, where you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter. And I'm at evensera. And you can read more of our thoughts on my blog at alliterative.net.