All posts by Amanda Herbert

Giving Welsh Pupils a Flavour of Antiquity

By Evelien Bracke

Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.

I organise a lot of events and classes on topics related to the ancient world for school pupils. But when two of my colleagues asked for my help in organising a one-day Technologies of Daily Life in Ancient Greece event for 140 pupils (90 primary and 50 secondary) at Swansea University, even I hesitated momentarily. Tracey Rihll (Swansea University), one of my colleagues who specialises in day-to-day technologies used by the Greeks, and Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University) who works on ancient medicine, wanted to organise an academic conference on technologies in ancient Greece, but were determined to reach a wider audience. And who better than children? We had a very enthusiastic response from six local schools (all from largely deprived areas with high unemployment and low education levels) and decided to give pupils a real flavour of antiquity.

Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.

In the morning, we focused on basic activities with primary school pupils who were coming especially from the Afan Valley to the north of Swansea: pupils learned how to make rope with nettles, create magical curse tablets, do basic astronomy, grind wood, concoct a chamomile potion, and make bread. For the secondary school pupils who came for the afternoon from two schools in Swansea and Carmarthenshire, we exchanged the grinding workshop for something even trickier: inscribing gems, which only the bravest attempted. The other workshops were delivered at a more in-depth level, but the topics remained the same.

Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.

The day was abuzz with excitement, in spite of the chaos of two buses arriving late. The workshops were delivered in three different rooms, and pupils could choose two workshops out of those on offer. They were spoilt for choice and many told us in the feedback that they would have liked to have done more. Laurence led a workshop on making a chamomile potion. Pupils used a pestle and mortar (for most, this was the first time they had ever used this kind of equipment) to grind chamomile and other herbs and spices. The recipe even included a hint of myrrh and frankincense! The pupils wondered at the exotic spices and loved getting their hands dirty.

Students used tools like a mortar and pestle. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Students used tools like a mortar and pestle. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.

Hands were also dirtied in the bread-baking workshop, led by the National Roman Legion Museum at Caerleon. Here pupils learned about ancient baking techniques, ground grain on an ancient stone, and used a kiln to bake the bread.

Bread Workshop. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Bread Workshop. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Bread Workshop. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.
Bread Workshop. Technologies of Daily Life: Schools Day. Image courtesy of Evelien Bracke.

It was an intense day but we had immense fun. Teachers reported that the pupils were now really excited to find out more about the Greeks. In the anonymous feedback, all the pupils said they found the workshops both enjoyable and informative. While some didn’t think the bread was tasty, they thoroughly enjoyed making and baking it. As one pupil said: ‘it’s given me a better understanding and respect for ancient Greek stuff’. And that’s all we wanted to do.

Dr Evelien Bracke is Lecturer and Employability and Schools Liaison Officer in the Department of History and Classics at Swansea University. You can find out more about the Department’s schools’ work at www.ltlresources.weebly.com and www.swwclassicalassociation.weebly.com. A Spotify narrative of the Swansea University and Hellenic Society schools’ day can be found here: https://storify.com/nimuevelien/technologies-of-daily-life-in-ancient-greece-559aef57b572c28d0ebdcaa6.

Cooking (Over an Open Fire) In Class

 By Ken Albala

Hearth Cooking.  Photo courtesy of Ken Albala.
Hearth Cooking. Photo courtesy of Ken Albala.

I often use recipes in various classes as primary documents, to examine social issues and gender roles, to explore the meaning of various ingredients and techniques and their movement around the globe, and to discuss anything the text might yield as a record of the past. Cooking with these recipes is a little more complicated. Apart from the lack of kitchens, my food history class is usually about 60 students, and feeding them is just impractical. But I still really want students to get a sense of what historic food tasted like, especially when cooked on an open fire using period implements. In graduate classes I have had students cook in groups at home and we connect via video conferencing so everyone at least gets to discuss the historic recipes as they cook them. It’s much more satisfying to bring a smaller class to my home so we can not only get our hands dirty before the hearth, but get a physical sense of what cooking was like in the past, and of course taste the food to get a direct idea of people’s taste preferences.

For one gathering of history majors a few years ago I chose to cook from the 16th century Livre fort excellent de cuysine, a cookbook I had recently translated with Tim Tomasik, but neither of us had tested most of the recipes. So there was not only an element of uncertainty, but even I could only guess how the recipes would taste in the end.

I had some students chop pork by hand and stuff intestines to make cervelat sausages. Some used the wood-fired oven to bake, others cooked a rabbit with bacon at the hearth in a clay pipkin. I think the biggest hit was an opulent pie made with sole, rich with spices, dripping with butter and verjuice. There was also a “hochepot” stew made with chicken, dried fruit and a lot of sugar. A dish of frumenty, which is whole wheat berries and “crespes” (which are like funnel cakes) rounded out the menu. The only rule was to stick as closely as possible to the original early modern recipes, which thankfully didn’t include many measurements, so there was a good deal of leeway.

Clay Pipkin.  Photo courtesy of Ken Albala.
Clay Pipkin. Photo courtesy of Ken Albala.

Everything turned out to be not only good, but excellent, as I knew it would if we had stuck to the directions. More revealingly, dishes that the students fully expected to dislike were devoured. Flavors they thought would clash, like the sugar in the stew, turned out to be very appealing. The riot of spices reminded some of Indian food. Most importantly, rather than hearing a description of these flavor combinations, students got to experience them first-hand. It was much like hearing music played on period instruments or seeing a 500-year-old painting up close. History can and should be made palpable and cooking is one of the most thrilling ways it can be done, as long as you start with a lesson in fire safety!

Ken Albala teaches food history at the University of the Pacific in Stockton California and is Director of the Food Studies Masters Program in San Francisco.

Teaching Recipes: A September Series (Vol. II)

Students in a "Domestic Science" course, Wilberforce University, Wilberforce Ohio (1915).  Image courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. "Domestic Science class." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 12, 2015. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-f3af-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
College students in a “Domestic Science” course, Wilberforce University, Wilberforce Ohio (1915). Image courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “Domestic Science class.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 12, 2015. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-f3af-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

A year ago this month, we ran a special series at The Recipes Project, highlighting the ways that recipes could be used to teach students of all kinds – primary, secondary, graduate, and postgraduate – about the lives and experiences of people in the past. The series proved to be so popular that we were determined to do it again, and now we’re proud to present another slate of posts about recipes in the classroom. During the entire month of September, we’ll be featuring posts about all of the innovative and engaging work that our Recipes Project educators are doing in using recipes as pedagogical tools.

This year we’re highlighting culinary history. Bringing food and drink into the classroom is almost always popular with students (no matter how old they are!) but managing the mechanics as well as the messages of these lessons can be challenging. Our authors are going to share their insights about the most effective ways to teach about historic cookbooks, ingredients, foodways, and methods of cultivation and production. We’ll start the month with a post by food historian Ken Albala, who will talk about his experiences in teaching hearth- and open-fire cooking. If you’re not quite ready to kindle flame in your own classroom, we have plenty of other posts for you to try: Erika Rappaport will discuss education, empire, and her use of “Mrs. Beeton’s Mango Chetney”; and Ben Wurgraft will share his thoughts about the ways that recipes can convey information to students.  We’ll also learn about the ways to use recipes as teaching tools in very large classes – David Fouser writes about teaching recipes in the Western Civ survey – and also in smaller, more intimate groups – such as Jennifer Munroe’s use of recipes in an Attending to Early Modern Women seminar. We’re especially pleased to feature two posts by two authors who taught recipes to primary- and secondary-school students: Evelien Bracke (who will talk about her “Technologies of Daily Life” program in Wales) and Carla Cevasco (who is writing about an American high school “Teach-In”).

As many of us are busy preparing syllabi and lesson plans for the upcoming academic year, we hope that the series will be timely. Twice each week, you’ll be able to glean information about the best ways to bring recipes to your classrooms, lecture halls, seminar tables, and conference sites. And let us know what you think! We’re very eager to learn about your own work in teaching recipes.

Summer Recipes: A Recipes Project Round-up

 

Belgian Summer.  Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Belgian Summer. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Amanda E. Herbert

Here in the southeastern US, the summer weather is sweltering, and it seemed like the perfect time to dig into the Recipes Project Archives for some posts on how best to survive the hottest (northern hemisphere) months of the year.

I’ll start with Sally Osborn’s post about how to make your own ice house.  In the eighteenth century, fashionable women and men created these structures in order to provide their households with ice centerpieces and ice cream year-round.  If only I’d thought to start this project over the winter…

Many of our authors have written posts about swimming and bathing.  Colleen Kennedy explored scented baths in the Renaissance in two posts, “Dipping Your Toes,” and “A Sweet Bath.”  Katherine Allen wrote of floating in the pools at Bath in her post on eighteenth-century spas.

Gardening, another popular summer activity, has also been a central theme for many of our authors.  Daniel Trambaiolo discussed the cultivation of ginseng in his post on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century East Asian herbal tradition.  Jane Draycott talked about Cato’s ancient-world flower gardens in her recent “Flower Power” post.  In one of the Recipe Project’s earliest posts, from 2012, Helen King discussed the ways that red plants were used to cure the green sickness.  And if you find yourself slapping at summer insects in the garden, I can recommend Stefanie Gänger’s post on Medicine and Malaria in Late-Colonial Lima, which will help to put any modern mosquito troubles in perspective.

Best wishes to all of you for cool breezes, shady green spaces, and lots of ice cream.