The Fascinating History of Selling Food and Selling Sex

When we need an emoji that’s supposed to represent something sexual, why is it that we almost always turn to some kind of food? Peaches, eggplants, and bananas are among the many food symbols frequently used in suggestive ways in our modern world. As it turns out, however, there’s a rich connection between food and sex that has a very, very long history. Today, we’re going to discuss a book that dives into this subject, Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex by Rachel Hope Cleves. 

Across ten fascinating chapters, Cleaves demonstrates how “the emergence of the restaurant in late eighteenth-century France, and its popularity as a site for prostitution and adultery, prompted middle-class moralists in Britain and the United States during the nineteenth century to fixate on the dangerous link between French food – then the standard for good food – and immoral sex” (p. 4). In simpler terms, this book traces the historical connection between delicious food, eroticism, and sensuality. 

In today’s blog, we’ll discuss some of the most fascinating insights we learned from reading this book.

The Origin of the “Restaurant” 

In the first chapter of Lustful Appetites, Cleaves takes readers through the origin of the word “restaurant” and what the first restaurants in France were like in the eighteenth century. As it turns out, “restaurant” is a French word that was not first used to describe a place, but rather a thing. Specifically, “restaurant” referred to a specific kind of meat bullion that wealthy gentlemen would consume in order to improve their health. As Cleaves describes, “the restaurant was an elixir intended to reinvigorate the drooping male” (p. 12). Taken literally, it seems as though restaurants (in the form of a hot meat broth) may have been a sort of libido booster for rich French men. 

Over time, restaurants (the place) became known to be the establishments that served restaurants (the food). In other words, the original restaurants (as we understand them today) sold delicate broth intended to reinvigorate men’s sex lives and make them more virile. Cleaves discusses how there were two important developments in the restaurant that further established the connection between food and sex. First, restaurants began to serve a number of delicate aphrodisiacs in addition to meat bullion, such as oysters and crawfish. Second, restaurants established cabinets particuliers, which were private rooms where men could bring mistresses and sex workers. In this way, restaurants served as a place where “male pleasure-seekers could satisfy both their alimentary and sexual appetites in a single visit” (p. 14).

In a fascinating way, early restaurants in France may be thought of as a kind of brothel where sexual pleasure supplemented the food being served. As sex workers found employment in private rooms as waitresses, restaurants became more entrenched as spaces for men’s pleasure.

Bringing the Restaurant to the United States 

Of course, restaurants (the place) have evolved and morphed considerably over time in order to become the family-friendly places we know them as today. Cleaves traces the transition of restaurants from France to Great Britain to the United States, the history of which is closely connected to Puritanism and the rejection of food culture as one that is pleasurable. Of course, there are still a number of places in the US today where we can see how the French influence of food and sex are still interconnected, such as New Orleans and San Francisco. 

Notably, a major shift in the restaurant seems to have coincided with feminist movements and the creation of the “women’s restaurant,” which deviated from the French model of the restaurant as an erotic space. Here, Cleaves describes how the closing of private rooms in restaurants led waitressing to become dominated by women, which was a notable transition because men primarily served as waiters while women worked the back rooms. This shift led to the rise of “pretty waiter girls,” which may have actually had the opposite effect on hampering sexual desire than intended. Instead, women waitresses were oftentimes sexualized, which likely “[reinforced] the association between good food and wicked sex” (p. 88). 

Modern-Day Good Food and Wicked Sex

Today, the connection between good food and wicked sex remains, but it has moved to a new place—inside the home. Cookbooks and cooking shows have created new avenues for commercialized, sexy food.

To learn the complete history of food and sex, you’re going to have to read more from Cleaves herself by checking out Lustful Appetites. We also recommend listening to our podcast episodes with her to find out more. In Episode 371 and Episode 372, Rachel sits down with Dr. Lehmiller to talk in-depth about Lustful Appetites and the fascinating history of food and sex.

If you have a sex question of your own, record a voicemail at speakpipe.com/sexandpsychology to have it answered on the blog or the podcast. 

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