Keep it Clean

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DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, ­fragrant herbs such as tansy, wormwood, lavender, and rosemary were spread on the floors to perfume the air of European cottages and castles, and sweet-smelling calamus reeds were strewn on church floors for holy-day ceremonies. Those strewing herbs may have kept medieval homes smelling fresher, but frequently they merely concealed unsanitary conditions, which promoted the increase of vermin, including rats, in the house.

Rats, and their fleas, were the cause of the bacterial disease known as the Black Death or plague, which devastated Europe about 1350. Although it killed about a quarter of the population, the link between disease and filth was not understood until five centuries later, when Louis Pasteur discovered that microbes cause disease. In the case of the Black Death, rats’ fleas carrying the bacterium Yersinia pestis transmitted the disease to humans by biting them.

Pasteur’s germ theory set the stage for the original Mrs. Clean: Mrs. Isabella Beeton of London, who set out in 1861 to remedy the “discomfort and suffering” in households that practiced “untidy ways.” In Beeton’s Book of Household Management, she provided formulas for cleansers, polishes, and medicines along with recipes and menus. Nearly every cookbook published through the mid-twentieth century followed Beeton’s ­example to some extent by including home-cleaning formulations and recommendations together with their recipes.