Jacques-Émile Blanche - Le Chérubin de Mozart (ca. 1904)

Sweatbox 2: Electric Boogaloo?

not a salt or a pepper, but a secret third thing

TL;DR - The third thing was Sugar. Not mustard, not paprika, not dried herbs, not something lost in the mists of time.

It was sugar, and there's historical proof.

*****

ETA: I'd put about 70% of this post together before @dduane said "Have you seen this?"

"This" was from @jesters-armed, in first with my notions about The Fifth Element Third Condiment, and even a mention that the posts were "...a bit long(ish)".

Ahem.

Yes they were, with no change here. You have been warned. :->

Well, okay, there's one change. The pix in this post are new and, combined with the illustrations in older posts, go even further towards confirming that what I once called a theory, I now regard as Fact.

*****

Here are a couple of 19th-century table caddies, proper name "cruet sets". Take a look at the labels. They answer the "what was it?" question asked by that TikTok in a single word.

Sugar.

Not just in English, Spanish too.

Azucar.

Even without labels to tell them apart and even when the containers were of matched size and shape, sugar-casters always had larger holes than pepper-shakers.

Sometimes not much larger, as here...

...but usually, like those below and above, more than big enough to ensure no confusion between sugar and pepper.

A container of similar shape with no holes, as in the set above, held mustard.

Mustard was never a shaker seasoning; it didn't work that way. Its spiciness doesn't activate until the dry "mustard flour" was mixed with water, vinegar, beer or wine and left to stand for several minutes.

This produced a runny-to-stiff paste which was at first transferred from pot to plate on the point of a knife, but soon got its own dedicated spoon.

There's a slot in this mustard-pot's side for a spoon, and the set pictured above may also have such a slot, unfortunately facing away from the camera.

A matched spoon became part of any mustard-pot set...

...and was such a uniform size that "mustard-spoon" was a recipe measurement along with dessert-spoon, tea-spoon, salt-spoon and even cayenne-spoon. (I've posted about cayenne as a table condiment elsewhere).

*****

Where's the salt-shaker in those sets?

When sets like those were in common use, salt-shakers weren't.

*****

So how did people use salt if it wasn't in a shaker?

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance salt was put out in ornate dishes called a Salt which were often spectacular works of art.

This was placed at the top end of the table where important people sat; those seated further down were "below the salt".

Later, and still nowadays in formal settings, salt went into smaller dishes - salt-cellars - which like mustard had their own spoons. These were set on the table between two or four guests.

They took salt with the spoon, and instead of sprinkling it all over, they made a little heap of salt on the side of their plate and added pinches as required with finger and thumb.

*****

The same side-of-plate thing is done with mustard.

English mustard is extremely pungent *, far more so than the Grey Poupon which TikTok Guy slurps so casually off his finger. A little can go a long way, too much can be overpowering, and slathering it over an entire plateful of food can make that food inedible.

(* I'm aware Chinese and Russian mustards are even hotter; they're not relevant here.)

I once had the educational (okay, also entertaining) experience of watching a friend from the USA putting Colman's English on their hot-dog as if it was French's Yellow, then taking a bite. Even then they were lucky, because mustard is hottest when made fresh and the shop-bought from a jar was much weaker than it might have been.

"Made mustard" of the kind which went onto Regency, Victorian and Edwardian tables packs quite a punch, and dishes of that period was far from bland; it took two world wars and their associated rationing to give British food its rep for being dull.

Here's an example of how mustard is used.

Even though it's from a jar and feeble by comparison with fresh-made, it's likely that most of this will remain untouched when the meal is over.

Jeremiah Colman, founder of Britain's best-known mustard company, was only half-joking when he claimed that the firm's excellent sales record, and his own fortune, came from not from mustard eaten but from what was left on plates.

Whether on the plate or on the food, mustard for table use never came out of a shaker.

*****

The TikTok cites Bill Bryson, an American writer who, though living in the UK and presumably familiar with local grocery shops, failed to connect the proper name of the shaker ("caster" - TikTok Guy uses the name himself) with a grade of sugar sold by Irish / UK shops right now.

Here are the three standard grades - coarse, medium and fine. Note what the middle grade is called.

""Caster" has become a single-word description for "fine-grain quick-melting fast-mixing general-purpose cooking-and-baking sugar" but is a literal description both of how it was used ("cast" as a verb) and the container ("caster") it was in.

*****

TikTok Guy mentions the "expense and effort" of using sugar.

Expense:

From the Middle Ages up to the early 1600s sugar was indeed expensive and only for the rich.

Good Queen Bess's teeth were in an appalling state because of her sugar consumption, and less-wealthy people sometimes blackened their (healthy) teeth, to suggest they too could afford enough sugar to cause rich-people tooth decay.

However, increased use of slave labour on sugar plantations meant the end product became more and more affordable, and by the mid-1700s sugar was no longer "a luxurious delicacy". It became a household staple, enough that in 1833 politician William Cobbett ranted about how overindulgence in sugary tea had sapped the vitality of the English working class.

His remedy was home-brewed beer, and lots of it (!)

Effort:

TikTok Guy uses the word as if it's something out of the ordinary, and seems unaware of how much physical labour - from preparing and cooking food to fetching water to washing dishes to tending the fire or range - went on every single day in a pre-modern-gadgets kitchen.

For instance, before electrical ease or hand-cranked convenience, whipping cream to thickness or beating egg-whites stiff enough for meringues meant thrashing away with a bundle of twigs "until it be enough", however long that took.

By comparison, breaking down a sugar-loaf was quick and easy, especially since there was a tool for the purpose called "sugar nips".

There's a set in one of the TikTok photos, though TikTok Guy didn't comment on them. He may not have known what they were.

Once nipped off, sugar chunks were reduced to the required texture with a pestle-and-mortar, exactly as was done with every other crushable ingredient in that period kitchen.

This and everything else wasn't effort in the way TikTok Guy thinks; it was just - especially if a mortar was involved - The Daily Grind.

*****

Conclusion:

I've posted about sugar casters before, and the first time (six years ago) was amusingly cautious:

Since then, backed with increasing amounts of hard visual proof as shown here and elsewhere, I've gone from caution to Certainty.

The "mystery" third container in table cruets was for SUGAR, with enough historical evidence in the form of specifically labelled and shaped containers to confirm it beyond doubt.

*****

And they all sprinkled happily ever after.

The End.

oh your pronouns are he/they?

well that’s mathematically incorrect becuase you can still simplify the fraction since both sides have “he”

making your pronouns technically 1/ty

>:)

Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755 - 1842): The Artist’s Brother (1773) (via Saint Louis Art Museum)

Titanic: Project 401 allows you explore a jaw-droppingly authentic recreation of the RMS Titanic, from first class all the way down to the engine rooms.

Read More & Play The Alpha, Free (Windows)

Ok, so I live in one of the more liberal areas of the country. Our governor is a lesbian and I literally did not even know until after she got elected, because it was that much of a nonissue.

Lately, I'm seeing more and more local institutions doing things for Pride. Institutions that don't necessarily have to, or do so awkwardly, but they're trying to be good allies. And, even here, I see people foaming at the mouth. This thing is ruined. Unprofessional. Political. Sexual. Boycotting, disgusted, bye.

And a part of me is like, "Why would a random store, a museum, a restaurant, do this?" Part of my mind has been so corrupted by the idea of rainbow capitalism that the thought of someone just...trying to be an imperfect ally is a cash grab.

It's not. Every bit counts, and especially as we see pushback, and see some of those corporations beginning to rethink their rainbow capitalism, the places that continue to speak up are so, so important.

I'm reminded of a rant by Illustrious Old White Man Historian Gordon Wood a few years back where he lamented how fragmented modern history is. Why do we need ANOTHER book about women, about enslaved people, about the poor? Why are we focusing on these people instead of George Mount Rushmore Washington?

And it was an interesting framing, because he insinuated that these micro histories were bad not because they existed, but because they didn't give the whole story, which in Gordon's mind was a story in which they were the side characters instead of the mains. To that end a biography of G Wash that features the bare shadow of Billy Lee in the far distance is a complete history, all that needs to be said, because one of those figures is a God Amongst Men and the other does not deserve to be fully fleshed out as a full, autonomous human being with a family and a profession and a beating heart. And a biography of William Lee, war aid, professional valet, and person closest to the first president of the United States, with the shadow of George in the background, would consequently be Bad History, because no one is saying that this man didn't exist, but his story isn't the whole story. It's backwards; he should be a footnote, and if he's not, that's bias.

But for me, as a historian, I know that the reason these microhistories exist, and are so important, is that they didn't exist before. Before someone can be truly, purposefully, tactfully inserted into the historical narrative, you need to know who they are. Not just as a name, not just as an archetype. You have to get to the point where there are so many books flooding the market about women and children and immigrants that it's no longer controversial to be talking about them, where learning about them instead of someone else is normal.

THEN you can feel good about rewriting the more general narrative. THEN you can actually have the information you need in order to put things into their proper context, to rethink the most important figure in each story, to assess what the full milieu of the time is.

And that's where we're at with Pride. We are still very much living in a time where queer people are shadow characters in the background. They are people that many will admit exist, but for god's sake, don't make them important, don't make them real, don't make them normal. And until we can shove rainbows down everyone's throats to the point where being queer is no longer seen as a thing that is Other, until we convince people that we're not going away, we will never be able to fully assimilate queerness into society.

We can't just be normal about Pride, because normal isn't loud enough to not get drowned out.

Recently watched a YT video on this issue. Absolutely horrific, but glad to see there are people trying to stop it and get those involved convicted.

WARNING: article contains descriptions of very graphic and disturbing abuse towards monkeys.

No better place to stay warm

Submit your cute pet here | Source: https://bit.ly/3P1s1Yg

So it turns out that ChatGPT not only uses a ton shit of energy, but also a ton shit of water. This is according to a new study by a group of researchers from the University of Colorado Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington, Futurism reports.

Which sounds INSANE but also makes sense when you think of it. You know what happens to, for example, your computer when it’s doing a LOT of work and processing. You gotta cool those machines.

And what’s worrying about this is that water shortages are already an issue almost everywhere, and over this summer, and the next summers, will become more and more of a problem with the rising temperatures all over the world. So it’s important to have this in mind and share the info. Big part of how we ended up where we are with the climate crisis is that for a long time politicians KNEW about the science, but the large public didn’t have all the facts. We didn’t have access to it. KNOWING about things and sharing that info can be a real game-changer. Because then we know up to what point we, as individuals, can have effective actions in our daily lives and what we need to be asking our legislators for.

And with all the issues AI can pose, I think this is such an important argument to add to the conversation.

I often think issues like this are a result of “The Cloud,” and by that I mean the propagation of this notion that data and the internet exist out in the ether somewhere and not like...on someone else’s hard drives which are housed in hundreds and thousands of huge warehouses which require climate control.

Most humans already have a LOT of magical thinking about computers, and I really wish we spent more time teaching not just basic computing skills (how to navigate an interface), but basic INFRASTRUCTURE knowledge. When you think of it as chatting with Jeff Bezos’s huge garage full of nerd hardware, it’s easier to make the logical leap to say “hey i wonder what kind of resources it takes to keep all these hard drives from overheating...?”

We need to systematically think of internet usage, data centers and computer processing as things that emit CO2, use water and are dependent on dirty mineral mining for chips and batteries. Higher resolution streaming? More cloud storage? More AI? That all means more CO2 emission, more water consumption and more mining. This kind of ‘progress’ means the world burns faster.

In the coming years we might see a rising awareness of this at the individual level (”don’t leave your music streaming when you leave the house” etc) and while that’s not entirely useless, it’s important to remember that the problem is systematic. Tech companies are deliberately obscuring the pollution of their products from us, driving our ecosystems towards mass extinction for a profit in the same way other industries are.

last one from this shoot for now, there're some stuff in progress but we'll see how things go time-wise :D

Hot take ig but kids in high school shouldn't have to work either. They should be spending their evenings doing homework and extra-curriculars and fucking around.

There definitely shouldn't be entire industries reliant on their low-wage labor. Why are there many kids being scheduled for a 6 hour shift after a 7 hour school day when they've got learning and their future and their childhood to worry about?

Any industry built on poverty wage child labor should perish, and that's most fast food and grocery and retail so I guess the economy's tanked 🤷. Should've thought about that before deciding to make the essential work into jobs for children and the underclass.

This is what regressive policies look like

and most red states are capitulating to the capitalists by lower age for children to work at dangerous jobs.  right @7thgenscot  

Not to mention these jobs are super labor intensive and in some cases dangerous.

Standing for hours on end? Carrying heavy boxes? Fryers? Working over hot stoves? Running around carrying trays full of a dozen dishes?

-fae

i think it’s p awesome that the first compasses invented in china were not magnetic, but in fact mechanical - the cart with the little wooden man pointing south was built in a way that no matter which way the cart turned, the little man would always point south

this is a model of what it looked like

how does this work? it’s so cool and confusing

the gears are aligned in a way to always turn the little man in the opposite direction as the cart at the same rate of rotation. so if the man points at you, and you turn the cart clockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned counterclockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you. if you turn the cart counterclockwise 90 degrees, the man will be turned clockwise 90 degrees, and still be facing you

as for how they got the cart to point south to begin with, that goes into fengshui and cardinal direction geomancy. but long story short, the workshops that built these carts would have their front doors facing south to begin with (using the sun and the stars to figure out which way is south), so all they would have to do is build the cart facing that direction, and the little man will always point south

thank you!

[ID: A small cubed box with two wheels forming a cart, with gears visible beneath the box’s clear cover. Atop the gears there is a wooden figure of a person pointing. The cart sits on a shelf /End ID]

'But thy eternal summer shall not fade.'

This Crowley is very much inspired by Shakespeare's 'fair youth'. 🖤

@little-bloodied-angel

Absolutely losing my mind here. Like it's not just the INCREDIBLE art, it's every single detail incorporated into Crowley's presentation driving me insane with both History Nerd Hyperfixation and The Genders.

The ruff was worn by both men and women. (See Aziraphale in ep3). This one's larger, as if it were meant for a dress perhaps, but it's deliberately hard to tell what upper garment that is. A doublet or a bodice? The pearl chains are feminine; the buckle and strip across the chest are not, to my knowledge, or at the very least not commonly. The adornments on the sleeves are anyone's guess; the flattened chests of the era only contribute to further questions. The hair is long, but the style could only be feminine in a private context at odds with the formal clothing. Men wore their hair down; women didn't, as a rule (again see ep3, but this time Crowley). That bonnet/cap (? Trying to find the proper English word) is also pretty ambiguous, but funnily enough it reminds me of descriptions made of Rosalind's cap in her male outfit (from As You Like It). Which, in Shakespeare's time, would have been a young man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man. How's that for gender fuckery? The kind that Crowley has a penchant for?

Specifically, it reminds me of the description Dorian Gray makes of Sybil Vane wearing that outfit, the "dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel" (only, obviously, in Crowley's color, and with what appears to be an Angel's feather instead, supremely interesting that; we don't know if the jewel is there or not, as it would have been at the back), which was a heavy nod to queerness since he specifies "she had never seemed to [him] more exquisite" than crossdressing as a boy, and that she reminded him of a male Tanagra figurine in Basil's possession. That style of pearl earring was all the rage during the Elizabethan era, both for men and for women, but it was much more common for men to only wear one. That seems to be what's happening here, but due to the way that Crowley's hair is arranged we can not know whether it's one or two being worn. That makeup is not regular makeup, at least not around the eyes: the lily white skin and rouged cheeks and lips may well be worn by an affluent woman, but not those heavy dark shadows and shapes on and around the lids. It's theatrical makeup. Women weren't allowed onstage, but there's also plenty of theory about individuals we would today categorize as some flavor of transfem taking to the profession and the female roles. The "fair youth" the artist references is established to have been a man, but who that young man was is anyone's guess, a subject of contention, and of plenty of theories, one of the most popular being that it was one of the actors in Shakespeare's own company, whose age and physical description as per the sonnets would have made him suited for the female roles. And let's not forget the centuries-long erasure and insistence that Shakespeare could only be talking about a woman.

In short: the portrait manages to capture an almost perfect androgyny and plaster a giant question mark over Crowley's current gender while simultaneously visually referencing the mystery and misdirection applied to the inspiration for said portrait, this "fair youth" of the sonnets that, in the Good Omens universe, could very well have been Crowley themself, and create a visual impression that is nothing short of masterful both in those regards and in its sheer beauty, and my little queer history nerd Crowley-loving nonbinary heart couldn't possibly be more thrilled.

Wow, thanks so much for writing such a long analysis!!! It's so spot on. Indeed this portrait is all about gender fluidity and a mix of men's and women's styles of the era (Crowley seems to like dressing themself this way in the TV Series). I also thought about the fair youth in the GO universe could very well be Crowley themself! Whee!

I'll just add a few portraits I used as references for Crowley's style here. The sitters' dates are pretty close together but I wasn't being too strict...

19th century walking stick, topped with a cat wearing goggles