If life gives you plague, make lemonade

When the bubonic plague hit Britain in 1348, it killed well over a third of the human population, but spared cattle. This meant a surplus of milk, and the only way to prevent it from being wasted was to make cheese.

Ned Palmer notes in 'A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles' that the records for the manor of Farnham show they “made the usual amount of cheese – one hundred and forty-two cheeses across the summer and twenty-six in winter. Cheesemakers are tough”. Keeping rats, which carried the fleas that spread plague, away from the cheeses might have helped.

Most of this cheese would have been consumed at home, but now, with fewer people to feed, it went to market. There it had to compete against the products of many other cheesemakers. Palmer details how this post-plague cheese glut led to different types of cheese, to stand out in the market, and the growth of a wider cheese trade.


Without knowledge of germs, people’s response to plague often focussed on what they ate. Because plague came from abroad, often by ship, many people stopped eating fish or imported spices [some initial responses with Covid-19, of avoiding Chinese restaurants, show how these attitudes persist].

Medical science then theorised, as Ayurveda does, that illnesses upset a body’s balance of elements. Plague seemed to increase heat and moistness, so should be treated with cold and dry things. “By far the ultimate cold and dry ingredient was vinegar,” write Jeni Mitchell and Stephane Henaut in 'A Bite Sized History of France'.

Vinegar is a mild disinfectant, so this might actually have been useful [it is not recommended against Covid-19 though]. People then started infusing herbs they hoped would increase its medicinal properties. A story grew of how four thieves were found plundering homes of plague victims. When threatened with execution, they confessed their secret: To avoid getting plague themselves, they rubbed their bodies with this vinegar.

Even today people make ‘Four Thieves Vinegar’ by infusing “everything from garlic and camphor to rosemary, lavender, and sage”, write Mitchell and Henaut. Many health benefits are claimed for it, but it can also be used in marinades for meats.

Plague would sweep the world again many times, and during one outbreak in France in the 17th century, Paris was largely spared the impact. In his book 'Food Fights and Culture Wars', Tom Nealon speculates that this was linked to a Parisian craze for lemonade.

Citrus fruits had been rare in northern climates, but by the mid-17th century, were being grown and imported in bulk to cities that could afford them, like Paris. A 1651 cookbook has a recipe for lemonade and its popularity would have left lemon peels, which contain limonene, a proven flea killer.

Nealon points out that plague kills victims so fast that fleas must keep moving, so when rats encountered peels, “limonene disrupted the spread of fleas from rats to people”. Making lemonade certainly sounds like a good way to survive a pandemic.