An appetite for experiment: putting early Royal Society tastes back on the table

Abstract

In 1665, Thomas Sprat's efforts to defend the hospitality bestowed on Samuel Sorbière, when the French savant visited London, were published in his Letter containing some observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's voyage into England. This book, for which Sprat stopped work on his now more famous History of the Royal-Society, challenged Sorbière's account of how he had been ‘entertained’, insisting he ‘be grateful for a good potage’ and ‘sound up his meat’. Experiments were, it seems, not to be depicted growing from nothing. This article thus situates Sprat's Letter amid convictions that the table was an apparently indispensable piece of experimental furniture. From the lavish banquets over which experiments were discussed, to feasts that were themselves experiments, it explores a learning seemingly nourished in rich settings of appetite and gratification. The offence caused by Sorbière's failure to acknowledge this commensality is placed in a context where, for better or worse, the character of experiment was on the table.