56 - Robert May's "Spectacle Feasts"

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 flavours 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 1600’s 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 revolutionising banquets into what would come to be called his "Spectacle Feasts".

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Sources for this episode's research:

• https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-aaron-mahnkes-cabinet-of-c-29519194/episode/chefs-table-172173292/
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-fantastical-feasts-of-englands-first-celebrity-chef
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_May_(cook)

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The entire experience of eating a fancymeal 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 yoursenses at once, pairing sounds, smells,
and textures along with the already deliciousflavors of their food. But while

(00:20):
this trend has taken off again morerecently, this is by no means a
modern practice. In fact, asfar back as the early sixteen hundreds,
an innovative chef by the name ofRobert May was creating similar sensory dining experiences
all around Elizabethan, England. Todaywe'll discover just who this man was and
how he went about revolutionizing banquets intowhat would come to be called his spectacle

(00:45):
feasts. These are the bizarre buttrue 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 ahuge thank you to all of my supporters

(01:15):
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It costs just two dollars a month, and when you sign up, you'll
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(01:37):
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is absolutely pressure free. More thananything, I just love that you listen
to the show and you get someenjoyment out of it, and that's the
reason why I keep doing what I'mdoing. Now back to the episode.

(02:14):
Robert May was born in a smallvillage in one of England's more southerly counties,
namely Buckinghamshire. Now we already knowthe line of work that Robert May
would end up in, and maybeit's no surprise that he would rise as
high as he did, considering thathe had the same head start in life
like another well known prodigy, WolfgangAmadeus Mozart. And what I mean by

(02:35):
this is, if you subscribe tothe 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 youngage. You see, he just happened
to be the son of Leopold Mozart, who was at the time not just
an un acclaimed violinist, but alsoone of Europe's foremost music teachers and composers.

(02:55):
So when most other three year oldswere outside digging in the door or
climbing trees, Mozart was already beinginstructed in piano playing and music theory.
Now, please don't think I'm inany way diminishing the fact that Mozart was
clearly a genius, but he alsohad a far superior advantage with a literal
live in teacher. And I mentionedthe story as it closely mirrors the situation

(03:19):
of Robert May, who was himselfborn into a home whereby his father worked
full time as a private chef toan array of English nobility. It was
then, perhaps no surprise that hespent so much of his childhood in and
around his father's kitchen, learning initiallyjust by watching and then eventually assisting his
father in the very specific preparation offood that wealthy people enjoyed eating. This

(03:43):
was no traditional pub lunch fair withplates piled high and drenched in gravy,
but rather delicately prepared venison, quails, and rabbit. Alongside the precision creation
of beautifully crafted desserts and enormous toweringjelly creations, they would produce their own
fruit compots, sauces, dressings,and intricately layered salads. Before long,

(04:04):
it was evident that the young Roberthad 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 toattend 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. Butfor the next five years he diligently studied

(04:26):
and experimented as much as he couldwith all manner of European cuisines and cooking
techniques. This was obviously long beforethe 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 himselfinto his language studies, mastering not only

(04:48):
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 whereverhe could get his hands on them,
and through his diligence he continuously honedhis skills as well as his palate.

(05:10):
Now when the five years abroad concluded, he returned home to England and in
sixteen o nine celebrated his twenty firstbirthday. And this was a pivotal moment
in his life, as from thispoint 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 inthe kitchens of some local nobility, presumably

(05:33):
through a mix of his own reputationas well as his father's connections. He
would spend a few years working fora family before moving on somewhere else when
a better opportunity presented itself. Fromearls and countesses to knights, lords and
ladies, he slowly but surely perfectedthe art of banquets, feasts and fine
dining before his career came to anend. He would spend the next fifty

(05:57):
years working across thirteen different kitchens thatspanned the country, from London to Yorkshire
and multiple places in between. Ashis 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 toenthrall and captivate guests beyond merely delicious cuisine.

(06:21):
He wanted to take his guests andpatrons back to these nostalgic times,
recreating in his own way a formof dinner theater last seen in medieval times,
where vast banquet halls were filled withsingers, dancers, acrobats and the
like, all performing for the assembledguests, while towering platters arranged in intricate

(06:42):
designs were paraded around the room beforebeing set upon the tables. Later in
life, somewhere around sixteen sixty,he would produce a cookbook written predominantly for
other chefs to reference. It wascalled The Accomplished Cook and that's accomplished spelt
with a tea on end rather thanan eed. In this book he would
write about his earlier culinary adventures,and it was in this book that he

(07:05):
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 ofthe beholders, and that by the end
of each feasts the guests would leavewith much delight and contentment. He would

(07:27):
begin experimenting with the concept by focusingon special holiday meals or festive occasions,
preparing elaborate edible centerpieces that he wouldcall triumphs and trophies of cookery. And
we are talking about just intricately arrangedmeals in pleasing shapes and angles. No
Robert May would create miniature castles andwarships completely out of pastry and then deck

(07:49):
them out with flags and streamers toenhance 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 withreal gunpowder. He would then announce to
all assembled that he and his kitchenstaff would now perform for them a mock

(08:13):
battle between the fleet of warships andthe somewhat imposing castle. The gunpowder in
the cannons would be lit and thepastries would explode in a cloud of smoke.
This was both a visual delight aswell as an odorous one, as
May believed that, as he calledit, the stink of the gunpowder would
both delight and disgust the old factorysenses of all assembled at another one of

(08:37):
his spectacle feasts, he rarely wantedto 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 eggshells 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 thenfill the now hollow eggshells with rosewin before

(09:00):
sealing the tiny holes closed. Eachguest was presented with their own rose water
filled eggshell, and at the beginningof the feast instructed to break it however
they saw fit. Some guests playfullytossed them at one another, broke them
on the tables, or simply hurledthem at the walls. At this point,
still unaware that anything other than theexpected egg yolks would emerge. As

(09:22):
the shells either cracked or exploded uponimpact, the room was suddenly filled with
the perfume of rose water, settingthe 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.

(09:43):
Who can in pace direct of finestflour, a complete fort, a castle
or tower, to candy to preserve, to soft to pickle, to make
rare sauces, both to please andtickle. As he refined these banquets,
he he would inevitably strive to upthe antea each time, until he eventually
struck upon a centerpiece so all inspiringthat it would become his signature dish.

(10:09):
And for his masterpiece he crafted atruly spectacular creation. As guests filed into
the dining room, the table wouldhave already been laid and set, and
instead of having the dishes arrive withfanfare once they were all seated, May's
masterpiece was already waiting for them,sprawled out across the main table. There,

(10:31):
in all its glory, lay alife sized deer, almost made out
of pastry, of course, butit had been made to look as if
this deer had been felled by ahunter, 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

(10:52):
the pastry animal's side. All ofa sudden, a dark red liquid gushed
out of the opening, surprising,in hot, horrifying all in attendance in
equal measure, until one brave souldared 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 thedeer's side. Needless to say, the

(11:13):
evening was off to a flying start. In May's never ending quest to delight
his patrons and their guests, hewould 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 crustsseparately. Then, just before dinner was
ready to be served and the piecrusts had cooled sufficiently, they would place

(11:37):
handfuls of live frogs into the bottomof the pie, and then carefully cover
it with the top crusts, givingthe appearance of a regular pie when it
was placed upon the table. Assoon as they retreated back to the kitchens,
the pies would inevitably start jiggling alittle, catching the attention of the
assembled guests, before all at once, the top crust would explode outwards as

(11:58):
dozens of frogs burst forth seeking freedom. Sometimes he would even combine this trick
with even more pies, this timefilled with live birds, who would irrupt
out of the pie pans, flappingtheir collective wings so vigorously that they would
end up extinguishing the candles on thetable, throwing the entire room into darkness.

(12:20):
But as May reached his twilight years, he believed that both God and
his own conscience would not allow himto go to his grave without recording all
that he had learnt during his illustriouscareer, and as his seventy first birthday
neared, he published his aforementioned book, The Accomplished Cook, which was part
cook book, part autobiography, parttext book. It was filled with detailed

(12:43):
instructions on how to cook almost anything, you could imagine at the time,
and if it was ever in anydoubt as to his meticulous nature when learning
and implementing new techniques. This bookeven included twenty one different ways to cook
an armlet. He had a portraitof himself done for inside the cover,
a practice usually only reserved for royaltyor nobleman, and in doing so he

(13:07):
had become quite possibly the world's firstcelebrity chef. His book was an instant
hit he would continue to sell welllong after his death. In fact,
they even had to reprint new copiesfive times over the next twenty five years.
And Robert May spent his life dreamingup new ways to entertain and thrill

(13:28):
his guests. He was a pioneer, a scholar, a wonderful chef of
course, and at the end ofhis life even an author. His book
is still available to day in bothphysical and digital copies, So if you
have a dinner party planned in thenear future, why not grab a copy
and let yourself be inspired to hostwhat would certainly be the most memorable dinner

(13:50):
of your guest's lifetime. Create thatlife size pastry deer, or re enact
a famous sea battle with miniature pastryboats. But I may be recommend though,
just leave the live frogs and birdsto the professionals. This show is

(14:18):
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made by the Enigma that is themysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to
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(14:39):
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then maybe listen out for your namein an upcoming episode. So until next
time, bon apetite, n Y