Tales from the Archives: DISTILLING THE ESSENCE OF HEAVEN: HOW ALCOHOL COULD DEFEAT THE ANTICHRIST

In September 2016, The Recipes Project celebrated its fourth birthday. We now have over 500 posts in our archives and over 120 pages for readers to sift through. That’s a lot of material! (And thank you so much to our contributors for sharing such a wealth of knowledge on recipes.) But with so much material on the … Continue reading Tales from the Archives: DISTILLING THE ESSENCE OF HEAVEN: HOW ALCOHOL COULD DEFEAT THE ANTICHRIST

Distilling the Essence of Heaven: How Alcohol Could Defeat the Antichrist

by Tillmann Taape In my last post, I introduced Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Small book of distillation and considered how it presented medical knowledge. Here, I explore how Brunschwig’s reading of alchemical ideas shaped his concept of distilled remedies. Like anyone living in medieval or early modern times, Brunschwig knew that the world was strictly divided into … Continue reading Distilling the Essence of Heaven: How Alcohol Could Defeat the Antichrist

Outside Issues: Tea Gardens in Early Modern London

By James Brown The HERA-funded research project Intoxicating Spaces (2019–22), on which I was fortunate enough to work and which explored material environments for the production, trafficking, and consumption of new intoxicants in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, and Stockholm 1600–1850, coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. An avid user of bars, cafes, and … Continue reading Outside Issues: Tea Gardens in Early Modern London

Roubo and Watin: The Sweet Scent of Early Modern Varnishes

By Érika Wicky If the decorative arts of the eighteenth century shine so brightly, it is thanks to the innovation and mastering of techniques such as gilding and varnishing.[i] While the latter may have given surfaces the shiny appearance that was particularly desirable at the time, both were above all essential to protect wood, especially … Continue reading Roubo and Watin: The Sweet Scent of Early Modern Varnishes