In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food Read Online Free PDF Page A

Visser. In his poem “Isabella,” the poet Keats underlines this attitude by writing that the dead lover’s rotting head gave the plant a particularly pleasant fragrance.
    Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,

So that it smelt more balmy than its peers

Of basil-tufts in Florence: for it drew (nourishment) . . .

From the fast moldering head there shut from view
     
    This connection between basil and insanity led the Europeans to rename
tulsi
as
basilicum
, a reference to the mythical scorpion, the basilisk, which they claimed grew in the brain of those who had smelled the plant. Hence the curious Italian custom of “going mad” and screaming obscenities when plucking its leaves. They may have been on to something about the plant’s unsettling effect. The oil lamp that Hindus light next to their basil plants represents not only Vrinda’s undying love, but also her body writhing in the flames of her husband’s pyre—a love sacrifice that started the tradition, called
sati
, of burning widows alive with their dead husbands. It’s still practiced today in parts of India, not always voluntarily. Part of the tradition calls for the widow to die with a sprig of basil clasped in her hand.
    Tulsi Ki Chai
    Basil is considered too sacred to be used much in Indian cooking. There is, however, a fragrant tea called
tulsi ki
chai
which is thought to ward off colds. The following recipe was given to me by Bhoopendr Singh, of the small town of Orchha in Madhya Pradesh.
    To make:
    Bring about two cups of fresh water to a rolling boil. Add a half cup of whole basil leaves. Lower heat and let brew for about four minutes. Add two teabags, or the equivalent in loose tea, and approximately 6 teaspoons of sugar. Bring to a quick boil and remove from heat. Crush one or two basil leaves and add to each cup. Pour tea over leaves and serve. This is usually served black, but if you want milk, you should add it with the tea and sugar. Please note that tea in India is usually lightly spiced with cloves, pepper, and nutmeg, so you could use one of the chai tea leaf blends now available in lieu of regular tea. Makes two cups.
    The Ecstasy of Being Eaten
    The first story about Adam and Eve consists of dinner followed by sex, and writers have been fixated on the combination ever since. Some studies claim that dinner precedes 98 percent of all literary seductions. If true, you’d expect the Chinese novel
Dream of the Red Chamber
, with its 971 dinner scenes, to be an outright orgy. You’d be disappointed (it’s a rather stiff read), but that’s because writers tend to sublimate. Nineteenth-century Russian author Nikolai Gogol wrote obsessively about food, but most agree he was really thinking about sex, which he never, ever, wrote about or, apparently, experienced. His story “The Fair at Sorochintsky” transforms a tryst between an unfaithful wife and a priest into a feast of lewdly shaped delights. “Here is my offering to you, Afansy Ivanovic,” cries the woman, bouncing into the priest’s chamber. “Here are curd donuts, wheaten dumplings and cakes!” The priest wolfs down the treats while eyeing her suggestively open blouse. “Though indeed, Kharonya Riniforovna,” he leers, “my heart thirsts for a gift from you much sweeter than any buns or donuts!” In another story, a couple expresses their shared love by feeding each other night and day. There’s smoked sturgeon and kasha and fruit jelly and stewed pears and sausage and pancakes and blinis and sour cream and mushrooms and sage tea and watermelon and, of course, fish head pie. They rack up eleven huge meals every day, and the husband’s last words to his dying wife are, “Won’t you like a little something to eat, Pulcheria Ivanovna?” After his wife’s death, her favorite dishes make him cry.
    Gogol obviously had food issues—he eventually starved himself to death—but his muddling of sex with eating is quite understandable because they’re so damn similar.