In 2017, The Recipes Project celebrated its fifth birthday. We now have nearly 650 posts in our archives and over 160 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 site, … Continue reading Tales from the Archives: Love Magic in Eighteenth-Century Russia
Elena Smilianskaia Love magic has existed in human history from the very start, and it continues to exist today – the Recipes Project has already featured some fifteenth-century English love spells. It is not very difficult to find a person who guarantees a client ‘true’ love potions and very effective love spells in any city … Continue reading Love Magic in 18th century Russia: a Search for Passion in Russian History
A compact fifteenth-century paper book, MS Sloane 1315 (British Library, London), stands as a manuscript witness to many of the works of popular Middle English instruction. The book might be said to be a miscellany or multi-text manuscript that is home to vernacular works of the kind that were widely-read and much copied in the … Continue reading Magical Charms, Love Potions, and Surreal Tricks
By Agata Paluch Among Jewish recipe books, both in manuscript and in print, a prominent place take manuals produced by the members of the educated rabbinic elite. For instance, one of the most famous rabbinic authorities and kabbalists of the seventeenth century, Moses Zacuto (1610—1697, active in North Italy) was an avid compiler of all … Continue reading Making Sense of Recipes for Amulets and Natural Magic, Kabbalistic Style (Marginalia Included)
