Before Making Predictions, Nostradamus Wrote A Cookbook

If you were to purchase a cookbook by Gordon Ramsay or Thomas Keller, for example, you’d find recipes and, possibly, some context for those recipes (perhaps the chef lovingly explains how he learned it from the cook at a hole-in-the-wall fish & chips place in London). But, if you were to purchase Nostradamus’ “Traité des fardements et confitures,” you’d get a lot more. It’s right there in the title: translated from the French, it means “Treatise on makeup and jams.”

There’s quite a bit of context that needs to be understood here. First of all, it wasn’t uncommon for “cookbooks” up until around the 18th century to be about more than just recipes and cuisine, and some included concoctions intended as medicine, notes Atlas Obscura. Nostradamus, in addition to writing prophecy, was also an apothecary (a profession somewhere between medicine and sorcery) so it would make sense that he’d include some alchemical writings in his tome. The seer also included some makeup tips, because why not, as well as some advice for avoiding the plague.

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