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Where do these humours come from? Food. All that we eat and digest travels to the liver, where it's converted into blood. From the liver, the blood is transported through veins to other organs – firstly, to supply them with nutrients, and secondly, to convert the blood into other humours. The brain is where the blood is made into phlegm; the two kinds of bile are produced closer to the liver: the regular yellow in the gallbladder and the black in the spleen. Other bodily fluids are produced in other organs still; for example, in the testicles, blood is converted into male seed (that is, semen), while in the ovaries, it is turned into female seed (which looks just like blood and is secreted out of a woman's body roughly once a month). As for the role that the heart and lungs play, the Galenic theory doesn't really hold much water, so we're just going to ignore it. It suffices to say that arteries, coming out of the heart, distribute blood enriched with '''pneuma''', a special airy substance which is reponsible responsible for all those vital processes that can't be explained in any other way.

The humour of which we happen to have too much determines our '''temperament''', which in turn influences what we look like, how we behave and what kind of illnesses we're likely to suffer from. A person of '''sanguine''' temperament, that is, with too much blood, has smooth, ruddy skin, an oval face, wavy hair and is generally well built. A '''choleric''', or someone with too much bile, has dry, yellowish skin, fair hair with a predisposition to baldness, sharp facial features and prominent veins. You can tell someone is a '''melancholic''', with overabundance of black bile, by their dark skin that is cold to the touch, a square face, small eyes, narrow lips, dark and sparse hair and a skinny body. Finally, a '''phlegmatic''' is characterized characterised by delicate, moist skin, a soft, round face, fair hair and a predisposition to obesity.<ref>{{Cyt

If you wish to neutralize neutralise the humoral properties of one or more of your ingredients, then a rather obvious method is to mix them with ingredients that have opposite complexions. For example, fat is rich in ''water'', so you can temper the ''dryness'' and ''hotness'' of red meat by larding. Sugar (''moist'' and ''warm'') is commonly added to most ''cold'' dishes, even if these aren't really desserts in the 21st-century sense. The natural ''moistness'' of fish is often counterbalanced by sprinkling it with vinegar or lime juice. This general neutralization neutralisation method is even more effective, if you can break down the ingredients into tiny bits and mix them all thoroughly. You can, for instance, mix ''cold'' vinegar with ''hot'' mustard seeds, but it's better to first grind the seeds down to a paste – which, incidentally, is how you make [[Ketchup_vs_Mustard#Mustard, “an Uncommon Condiment”|mustard]]. This is why mortars, pestles, graters and sieves are among the most important kitchen utensils of an Early Modern kitchen.

The vast majority of spices and herbs (especially dried) is ''hot'' and ''dry'', which makes them perfect for tempering the phlegmatic nature of some meats, like pork. Sprinkling, though, is not as effective as coating, hence the great popularity of thick, spicy sauces. Even better is to mix spices with aspic (which, in itself, is ''cold'' and ''dry'') and pour this mixture onto meat, creating a galantine, one of the favourite dishes of medieval Europe. It's also important to give the various ingredients enough time for their elements to neutralize neutralise each other. In some extreme cases, you may have to start the process of combining the ingredients while one of them is still alive. Hence recipes which instruct you to kill lampreys by drowning them in wine, bury live eels in salt or force-feed a well-fattened capon with vinegar.

[[File:Pęczek czosnku.jpg|thumb|left|upright|"Garlic is irritating and burning; it hurts, dries and bloats the stomach, it induces thirtsthirst, makes the head spin and clouds the eyes…"]]

Long story short, garlic grows in the dirt, it has a sharp flavour and stinks, so it's potentially harmful to people who are used to luxuries. Peasants, though, who are used to eating garlic, may devour it without fear. Among many stories meant to remind peasants of their place, there's a particularly interesting one written by Sabadino degli Arienti around the time when Columbus was sailing in search of India. It's about a valet who was nagging his lord to make him a knight. The tired nobleman eventually conceded, but not without teaching his valet a lesson: he gave him a coat of arms sporting a head of garlic under a golden sun in a blue field and, for the crest, a virgin pinching her nose shut. The blue background and the sun symbolize symbolise ''air'' and ''fire'', which in themselves are noble elements that are perfectly fit for noble heraldry, but in this context they testify to garlic's ''drying'' and ''heating'' properties (in the fourth, almost lethal, degree). The moral of the story is obvious: garlic will always stink and a peasant will always be a peasant.<ref>{{Cyt

There's only one problem here: garlic is tasty. And it's not just the peasants who find it so. Why then should the nobles abstain from eating something that makes food so flavourful? Thank God for a loophole: you can ennoble lowly foods like garlic by combining them with more exclusive ingredients. Degli Arienti himself admitted in the end that "garlic is always food for peasants, and this even when it is sometimes artificially civilized civilised by inserting it into roasted geese." And this is the difference between garlic and a peasant: one can hope for eventual social advancement, the other cannot.<ref>{{Cyt

If we were able to bend Galenic theory for the purpose of justifying social inequality, then perhaps we can also use it to justify geographic differences in what people eat? In the Middle Ages, people throughout Europe were trying to eat according to the same ancient nutritional doctrine which they read quite literally. But eventually those in the north realized realised that Hippocrates and Galen had lived in the Mediterranean basin. Why assume that what was good for them is also good for those living in other climate zones? Northerners, after all, have different temperaments than the southrons, so it's only natural that they should follow a different diet than the Greeks and Romans did. But how do you know what is good for the northerners? Well, it's simple: whatever food their organisms have got used over the centuries. In other words, if there's something a given nation really likes to eat and drink, then this is what is healthy for them. Perhaps wine was good for Galen, but the Dutch are more suited to drinking hoppy beer; ancient dietary experts may have preferred tender veal over beef, but beef and mustard work better to offset the cold climate of the English; and the Scots, living in harsher climes still, may even safely consume oatcakes, even if these would surely make everybody else sick. It's due to this great discovery that separate national cuisines could arise in Europe.