[Sca-cooks] An ingredient listing
Johnna Holloway
johnnae at mac.com
Sun May 22 15:03:04 PDT 2011
This paragraph is discussed in Food in Shakespeare: early modern
dietaries and the plays
by Joan Fitzpatrick. Just pulled my copy off the shelf.
Chapter 2 "Celtic Acquaintance and Alterity" examines Henry V and
MacBeth.
The mummy ingredient, she writes, "refers to the remains of a embalmed
corpse."
"As Melvin Ealres pointed out "Mummy Mumia was included in the London
Pharmacopoeia of 1618."
The ingredient would restore withered limbs, help with ulcers, cure
consumption, and help with blood problems. Apparently there were
recipes for creating one's own (artificial) mummy made from the newly
dead.
The ingredient list also calls for "Liver of blaspheming Jew" and
"Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips."
Johnnae
On May 22, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Alexandria Doyle wrote:
> I've been researching the witches potions ingredients from MacBeth.
> One site here<http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-three-witches-spell-in-macbeth-double-double-toil-and-trouble/
> >
> claims that witches mummy was "a medicinal substance". At least one
> other site suggests that they are refering to actual mummified human
> remains. I wanted to see if anyone here knows if this is correct, or
> if this is a reference to a plant substance?
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