Grand salad

ELEANOR BARNETT prepares a colourful dish, inspired by Tudor and Stuart recipes, that's designed to impress eyes as well as stomachs

- 

Now synonymous with healthy eating, salad could be a dangerous dish in Tudor England - or so it was believed. According to the humoural theory that dominated early modern medicine, based on the work of the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, each body and each food was made up of different proportions of the four humours: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Each had corresponding properties - hot and wet; hot and dry; cold and dry; cold and wet, respectively - and, in order to stay healthy, the goal was to maintain the balance of these humours and properties in your body.