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If you wish to 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 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 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 recipës 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.
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<nomobile>[[File:Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.jpg|thumb|Only once it became acceptable to dissect human corpses for anatomical research was it possible to discover that Galen wasn't always right.<br>{{small|By Rembrandt van Rijn (1632)}}]]</nomobile>
<mobileonly>[[File:Anagni 2.JPG|thumb|left|Yet another infographic illustrating the relations between elements and seasons (outer circles), and humours and stages of human life (inner circles enclosing a human figure). This one comes from the 13th century and can be found on the ceiling of a crypt in the cathedral of Anagni, Italy. On the wall below you can see Hippocrates (ca. 460 BCE – ca. 360 BCE) conferring with Galen (129 CE – ca. 216 CE).]]</mobileonly>
Like much of the achievements of the Greco-Roman civilisation, Galenic medicine will be largely forgotten after the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire, but will survive in its Byzantine part, whence it will be gleaned by the Arabs and from them, by the Persians. The man who will make the greatest contributions to further developing the theory will live in 11th-century Uzbekistan under the name Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdillah ibn al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sina (or '''Avicenna''' for short). In the following century, the medical knowledge preserved and expanded by the Muslims, will filter back into western Europe thanks to, among others, '''Constantine the African''', who will bring it from Tunisia to Salerno, Italy. It's in Salerno where Europe's first medical school will be located and where Greek medical texts will be translated from Arabic and Hebrew, the chief languages of medicine. This is how Galen, along with "his" humoral theory, will be rediscovered in Europe and popularised among aristocrats by such court physicians as '''Michele Savonarola''' (his better-known grandson, Girolamo, will study medicine too, but then he's going to quit his studies and get busy with religion and politics instead). Finally, in the 1470s, Bartolomeo Sacchi (better known as '''Platina''') will publish the first ever printed cookbook, ''De honesta voluptate et valetudine'' (''Of Honest Pleasure and Good Health''), which will introduce wider European populace to recipes recipës marrying the pleasure of eating and humoral medicine.
<mobileonly>[[File:Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.jpg|thumb|Only once it became acceptable to dissect human corpses for anatomical research was it possible to discover that Galen wasn't always right.<br>{{small|By Rembrandt van Rijn (1632)}}]]</mobileonly>
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In the 20th century one historian will notice one curious thing: all dishes cooked according to old recipes recipës that follow humoral dietary rules are tasty.
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