Sir Hugh Plat : The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early-modern London

The scientific and proto-scientific community of Elizabethan and Jacobean London has lately attracted much scholarly attention.

Sir Hugh Plat (1552-1608) is remembered today for his two books, The Jewell House of Art and Nature (1594) and Delightes for Ladies (1602), but he was more than a mere occasional author, cookery writer or agricultural improver. The son of a London brewer and a lawyer by training, he spent much of his life exploring the mysteries of the world around him, his interests spanning alchemy, agriculture, gardening, cookery, cosmetics, distilling, food preservation, medicine, arms and armaments, military transport and raising rabbits in suburban surroundings. He was an inventor and adapter, a man of science in all but name. He takes his place in the community of innovators of early modern London, precursors of the age of science and reason that was about to flower.

While much quoted, Plat''s life and works have been little studied for what they can tell us about his own career and his scientific and technological preoccupations. Malcolm Thick describes a man whose ideas came to be valued in the later 17th century; he explores his pioneering work on agricultural fertilizers and the recycling of the by-products of London''s nascent industries; and he discusses the interface between speculative alchemy and practical invention and innovation. Sir Hugh Plat was the man who brought pasta and macaroni to the notice of the English. For that, and for much else, he should be celebrated.