Melissa Reynolds is a PhD Candidate in History at Rutgers University. Her dissertation compares "practical" knowledge in fifteenth-century manuscripts to sixteenth-century printed books to understand how changes to the presentation, circulation, and reception of mundane but useful information shaped early modern English culture. She is one of the RP's social media editors and is a current 2018-19 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow.
There is something about my mother’s hands. At once so mundane, at once so magical – they infuse life to the oft-quoted, almost quotidian, Hindi idiom haathon mein jaadoo hai (there is magic in your hands). I have often marvelled at the multiplicities of hands in general, and my mother’s in particular. Her hands, naturally, embody the essence of life to me. They contain the world, and open it up too – by appealing to the innate, the familial, the sensuous, her hands are no less than a recipe that nurtures life.
Hands, I believe, are perhaps the most versatile parts of the human body. Crafted for tactility, and capable of creating, the catalogue of hands’ works run aplenty. Hands assume a life of their own. A mental recollection of a person would necessarily entail a recollection of their hands or by extension, a creation by their hands. Consequently, a sudden surge of memories announces itself, brimming forth with the sensual affectations of the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory. It is almost as if the senses are enmeshed with the hands, a kind of memory randomly accessed.
My mother’s hands intrigue me. They are an archive, an extensive chronicler of time, a document of experiences – always nourishing, always nurturing. In their negotiations with the everyday, a rhythmic grammar of sameness emerges – those hands at work – mending, cooking, healing. This visual essay rings up the vocabulary of one such particular memory – the sameness that emerged when I saw her prepare my favourite dish, ghuiyyan ke patte ke pakode (fritters made from the leaves of colocasia), and when she mended and dyed a dupatta for me, and how these images spoke to the sensuous realm, thereby making me aware of the unity of the body and the mind.
सामग्री//Ingredients:
spices
thread
leaves of colocasia
fabric
thread
flowers
scissors
विधि//Steps:
1. गंध// Smell
Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava
Gather the ingredients together. Pay attention to how each ingredient evokes the senses. The smell of the marigolds, the smell of the spices, the smell of the leaves of colocasia, the gradient of the veins of the leaves, the texture of the dupatta, the edge of the scissors, of the needle.
2. स्पर्श//Touch
Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava
Hands at work. The ingredients are infused with life as the fingers gently spread the petals on the dupatta, the masala paste on the leaves. The ingredients are now works in-progress.
3. ध्वनि//Sound
Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava
The congruency begins to emerge as the hands perform similar actions in crafting together the dupatta, the fritters. The flowers rustle in the dupatta rolling over, the masala paste is enveloped in the rolling leaves.
4. दृष्टि//Sight
Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava
Threading together as an act of putting together. The hands tread carefully, negotiating between the fragile cloth and the sharp needle, the supple leaf against the abrasive thread.
5. स्वाद//Taste
Image credit: Anoushka Srivastava
A severance, a cut – in the cloth, in the rolled-up leaf. The carved-out parts are now dyed, and fried respectively – the final act of feeding the aesthetics.
When I moved away from home in 2015, epiphanic realizations about things that I had taken for granted hit me. I realized the importance of the most mundane things – from stitching to cooking. In an attempt to learn these skills, I pivoted to my mother’s hands – the hope was to be able to recreate a part of her haathon ka jaadoo, to be able to bask in the familial impressions of the senses that are closely tied to my mother’s hands. The mere sight of her hands – in person, or in memory conjure up images of deep familiarity and warmth. I am instantly struck by the fertile machinations of my mother’s hands, and how a sheer recollection of the same is capable of dishing out images of my favourite recipe by her, thoroughly refreshing my senses.
My mother’s hands are the artificer of memories – constantly weaving the present for a reflection of the past, for a window into the future.
Sonakshi Srivastava is a senior writing tutor at Ashoka University, the translations editor at The Usawa Literary Review, and an educational arm assistant at Asymptote. As opposed to eating, she loves writing and talking about food.
Plum pudding is a classic dish in English cuisine. Indeed, the boiled sweet is one of those cultural markers associated with England, and yet it features ingredients that are not native to England: currants, raisins, nutmeg, and ginger. These ingredients make tangible (and edible)the reach of the British Empire.1 By the eighteenth century, boiling was a cooking trend that had largely died out in continental Europe, yet printed French texts from the nineteenth century show that plum pudding had made its way to France.2 How did knowledge of this dish spread to Europe? I found this document while doing archival research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Arsenal location in Paris.3 This recipe for plum pudding was in a folder of random culinary recipes. I was looking for medical recipes and remedies, but this folder caught my eye with its contents: recipes for cheese, strawberry syrups, almond cake, and how to conserve vegetables. Finding this folder was a treat while working in the archive. It provided another area of recipe production that I was not actively looking for.
“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#
This recipe shows that knowledge about popular cultural dishes was shared across the pond much earlier than the published texts indicate. This recipe was titled, “recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” and follows popular English recipes for the dish.4 However, this record is distinct in two ways. It features two sets of handwriting, showing that someone added to this recipe and altered the ingredients to their tastes. Second, this new author added two spoonfuls of brandy and two spoonfuls of powdered sugar to the recipe while the English recipe uses the natural sweetness of the dried fruit for the sugar content. This source is significant for showing the process of recipe alteration and adaptation.
I decided to make the pudding at home. My sources often lack specific voices and explanations behind the recipe. This opportunity allowed me to think like the people I study.
“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#
I began by cutting a pound of softened butter; the recipe called for suet, lard, tallow, or butter. Butter was the cost-effective choice. I folded the currents and raisins into the butter with my hands so they would fuse. Next, I grated a loaf of white bread into fine pieces and then folded that into the butter. The butter, dried fruits, and bread mixed gave off a strong smell of apple cider vinegar. I added nutmeg, ginger, and a dash of salt.
Image taken by the author.
I separated eight egg yolks from their whites and saved four whites to add to a pint of milk. After adding the liquids, I created powdered sugar in a mortar and pestle and added two spoonsful to the mix with the liqueur; this added richness and sweetness to the batter. The recipe called for the batter to be thick enough for a wooden spoon to stand on its own.
Image taken by the author.
The next step was prepping my cheesecloth for boiling. I soaked the cloth in hot water and added the filling.5 Now, it was time to boil: though it was not large (about the size of a grapefruit), this pudding took five hours. To keep the pudding submerged, I had to keep adding water as it was cooking on the highest heat of my stove. By the end, the water resembled that of a beef tea. Got Bovril?
Image taken by the author.
Finally, the taste: what does an eighteenth-century plum pudding taste like? Well…it tastes like wet bread and raisins. The smell resembled that of eggy bread, which makes sense considering the main ingredients were a loaf of bread, eight yolks, and milk. It was not bad, but it lacked significant flavor, and my pudding did not conform fully during the boiling process. My expectations were low in terms of taste, but the experience was certainly rewarding. This experiment has helped me find creative methods for conducting my dissertation research when I find myself lacking creativity and struggling to find the words to write about my recipes. This research has helped me with how I think about recipe production. The lack of diagrams or sketches to follow made me focus on the directions. I found myself having to work and think more slowly than I usually do in the kitchen. I relied more on my sense of smell and touch with this recipe. The lack of images with this recipe was freeing for this attempt—I was not worried about looks. I wanted the demonstration to work. I would argue that in modern-day recipes, there are almost too many images; this can inhibit the adaptable nature of cooking and recipe development. The images provided with a recipe signify that the experiment has worked; these ingredients cooked at this temperature will make this product–great—but too many images could lead to feelings of failure if the final product does not match the source. I have learned from this experiment (quite literally) that the proof is in the pudding, to understand the individuals who made these recipes we must be willing to try it their way, but we must also be willing to modify and change the recipes for our liking. I would have added dates, cinnamon, and more sugar to this pudding for a stronger flavor and sweetness.
Boiling the pudding. Image taken by the author.
These sources are evidence that popular recipes passed back and forth between countries earlier than the printed texts show. This French recipe shows how these individuals altered the English plum pudding to their tastes after experimenting with the original source. By continuing to use recipes to unpack the development of cultural cuisines and national dishes, we can understand how people made sense of their class status and cooking knowledge and developed their tastes during the eighteenth century with the influx of new ingredients, foods, and tastes.
The finished pudding. Image taken by the author.
Lauren Owens is a PhD candidate at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Lauren is working on her dissertation on recipe and remedy production and cultures of health and wellness in eighteenth-century France. Follow @lowenshistory on X for sporadic tweets and the occasional meme.
Kaori O’Connor. “The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globalization, Recipes, and the Commodities of Empire,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1, (2009): 127-55. ↩︎
The French recipes are featured in Antoine Beauvillier’s L’art du cuisiner published in 1814, and Émile Littrés dictionnaire de la langue française (Littré) Tome 3, in 1843, respectively. These texts do not elaborate much on the recipes for plum pudding, in fact, in L’art du cuisiner, the dish is listed under the salad category, as “plombpoutinge, sauce au vin de Malaga.” A.B, Beauvilliers, A. B, Katherine Golden Bitting Collection on Gastronomy, and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection. L’art Du Cuisinier. A Paris: Chez Pilet, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1814. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07023590/ Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (Littré) Tome 3, Hachette, Paris, 1873. Dictionnaire D’autrefois Public Access Collection. https://artflsrv04.uchicago.edu/philologic4.7/publicdicos/navigate/16/18643?byte=25827192. 2024 ↩︎
“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2# ↩︎
Hannah Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady (Hannah Glasse). 1747. Book. London: Prospect Books, 1983. The Wellcome Collection. 2024. ↩︎
Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady.↩︎
«BUONDELMONTI, Cristoforo, Liber Insularum Archipelagi [1420]» in Τόπος και Εικόνα, χαρακτικά ξένων περιηγητών για την Ελλάδα, από σπάνια βιβλία της Γενναδείου Βιβλιοθήκης, Μουσείου Μπενάκη, Ιδιωτικών Συλλογών [Space and image, engravings by foreign travellers to Greece from rare books of the Gennadius Library, the Benaki Museum and private collections], vol. I, Athens, Olkos, (Aikaterini Laskardis Foundation, 1978). http://eng.travelogues.gr/item.php?view=51701.
The island of Chios, located in the North Aegean region, is Greece’s fifth largest island, and the only place in the world that the mastic evergreen shrub, or Pistacia lentiscus, successfully produces its tears: crystalized resin that results from punctures in the bark. The island’s environmental history paints a rich tapestry that showcases Chios as mastic-centric—its tourism focusing on ecological wonders and local foodstuffs. Chios, for centuries, was a cornerstone of Ottoman, Genoese, and Chian mercantile exchange in the greater Mediterranean. The vestiges of occupation can be seen strongly even today: Christopher Columbus’s home in the medieval village of Pyrgi, minarets decorating the skyline, and images of Islamic floral motifs scattered among passersby of the bustling city center of Chios Town. From antiquity—through the Middle Ages and Renaissance (the peak of Genoese presence on the island)—and beyond, mastic (or mastiha) was a coveted commodity: gems monopolized by the sultans of the Ottoman hegemony, as well as an ingredient in folk dishes and medicines. Its properties and a pine-like taste offer today’s Instagram ‘food as medicine’ algorithm ‘back to nature’ and “antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-ulcer, anti-diabetic, cardioprotective and anti-cancer” benefits.1 From bygone uses (Hypocrites suggesting mastiha for gastrointestinal inflammation) to spotlight features on British Bake Off, it is then no surprise there exist countless articles and blog posts with cheeky titles, like “Something Herbal to Chew on” and “Can This Ancient Greek Medicine Cure Humanity?” Powerful merchant families from Genoa occupied the island beginning in the early fourteenth century, culminating in Ottoman dominion from 1566 to 1912.2 While Chios existed as a lucrative point of interest for its trading ports between East and West, mastiha was valued as highly as gold.
This 1783 romantic painting commemorates a Genoese family and its connection to the island of Chios, as well as the virtues associated by Christianity. The use of the foreign is expressed here as the ‘exotic’ through the presence of trade in the Aegean (see Figure 5, below: the female personification of the island of Chios is dressed in flowing fabrics, complete with a turban-like headdress). Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, The Glorification of the Giustiniani Family, 1783, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437814.
The famous ruling Giustiniani family, in addition to taxes, paid Sultan Mehmet II a hefty portion of mastiha after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. From a ground-up approach—cultivation of the plant and processing of the resin done by Chians—mastiha was made widely available, making Chios extraordinarily prized. The mastichochoria,or twenty-four buttressed hamlet villages, in southern Chios categorized life by the growth and production of mastiha. George Sidiropoulos writes, the design of the enclosed, fortress-like labyrinth of the Mesta village was a direct impact of the importance of mastiha, in which the “Byzantine Empire exploited this product as a monopoly,” the Genoese Maonacompany exploited farm workers for mastic production, and lastly, the Ottomans, in turn, introduced infrastructural organization, awarding some benefits for those living and working here, like protection from pirates and mercenaries.3
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s description: “This oil sketch is a precious record of a ceiling in Genoa’s ducal palace that was destroyed in the 1860s. Tiepolo’s composition can be compared with his father’s ceiling design for Würzburg, which Domenico helped to execute (see the oil sketch for that painting nearby). The younger Tiepolo depicted a Giustiniani family patriarch, Jacopo, at the top of a staircase, kneeling before a personification of the Ligurian Republic. At left is a female personification of the Aegean island of Chios, which the Giustiniani family ruled for two centuries. At right, figures in exotic dress allude to the family’s commercial enterprises in Asia Minor.”
While it is true we know that mastiha was utilized by the ancients as remedy for upset stomachs and fresh breath, day-to-day cultural exchange resulted in traditional recipes and uses via word-of-mouth. Because of this, scholars have turned to not only official imperial records but local folk and village narratives to help adjust and add to the historical record, quite literally a ground-up approach. Folk costumes and modes of dress juxtaposed with architecture and village ethos in the artwork of award-winning photographer George Tatakis epitomizes, through visual art, mastic’s food science as well as the island’s ecological footprint, connecting cultural past, present, and future. Tatakis, capturing the mystic qualities of the island and its mastiha, writes, “legend has it that the mastic was a gift from Saint Isidore, who sought refuge near Mesta in 250 AD after being chased and injured by the Romans. Exhausted and unable to continue, he found solace under a mastic tree where it is said that the tree wept tears of the fragrant resin.”Tatakis captures the costume of Nenita, among other villages, including elaborate embroidery, linens, and headscarf, accompanied by rustic tools of the mastic warehouse, like the pans used to sort and clean the tears. While the horrors, complications, and interactions of a history of occupation is fraught in the island’s past, the opulence of lore abounds, as mastic remains a keystone ingredient of the identity recipe of Chios.
Tedi A. Pascarella, MA History, is a world historian based in New Jersey. Her academic focuses include the early modern Mediterranean, environmental, textile histories, and their intersections. She has taught as an instructor at Monmouth University. A bibliography of her publications can be found at tediapascarella.com.
Vasiliki Pachi, et al. “Traditional Uses, Phtochemistry and Pharmacology of Chios Mastic Gum (Pistacia Lentiscus Var Chia, Anacardiaceae): A Review” in Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2020. ↩︎
A product of the mastic tree, pitch, distilled from turpentine, also had uses as caulking for the seams in ships and the waterproofing of slate roofing and tiles. And as Kenneth M. Setton stipulates, “Asiatic drugs and spices were transshipped from Chios to the chief ports of western Europe. Loss of the island was not to improve the economy of the home government, and was to destroy the last remnants of Genoese prestige in the East. Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 1976), 324. ↩︎
George Sidiropoulos, “The Development Status and Prospects of a Medieval Settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean in Journal of the Knowledge Economy (2016): 631-643. ↩︎
Gilbert Stuart, Abigail Adams (c. 1810-1815), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
In the summer of 1784, Abigail Adams sailed for London to join her husband as the wife of the first Ambassador of the United States to Britain. In her diary, she confessed, “With the best accommodations [the voyage] will be dreadfull, to a Lady of any delicacy.” She bemoaned the ship’s drab lodgings and noted that her silver porringer was the only cup or bowl in sight. She also complained in a letter that the ship’s Black cook had “no more knowledge of cookery than a savage; nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes, but hickeltapickelta [higgledy piggledy].” She criticized his supposed missteps on course order, grumbling, “on they come with a leg of pork all Brisly, a Quarter of an hour after a pudding, or perhaps a pair of roast fowls first of all, and then will follow one by one a peice of Beaf and when dinner is nearly compleated a plate of potatoes.”
Paul Revere, Porringer (c. 1760). Image Credit: The Met, New York.
Adams’s frustrations reveal the fledgling nation’s distinctions in race and class and indicate the significance of mealtime rituals to elite and aspiring Americans. Her anecdote makes clear that dinner was not the place for experimental expositions or risk-taking jaunts but a choreographed performance, with every detail scrutinized. For Americans like Adams, sophistication materialized through the precise ordering of ingredients and synchronized flow of dishes.
In the nascent shine of independence, print culture celebrating American distinctness flourished. Americans juxtaposed their supposed virtue with the corruption and follies of Europe, but their claims of superiority belied deep insecurities. Because much of Europe, particularly England, regarded the fledgling nation as a provincial backwater, white Americans searched for ways to establish themselves as cultural equals in the eyes of their former kinsmen. Their desire for validation manifested in part through the emulation of English standards of etiquette that appeared in early American cookbooks.
Front piece and Title Page to Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London: Printed by L. Wangford, c. 1777). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The Art of Cookery constantly lambasted so-called French extravagance while including French recipes in her Cookbook. Note, for example, Chapter III: “How expensive a French Cook’s Sauce is.”
Colonists in British North America had long consumed English cookbooks, devouring rhetoric extolling the virtues of honest English fare when compared to French lavishness. Their popularity on both sides of the Atlantic tells of long-simmering obsessions with self-image and station within shifting social hierarchies. Manners, clothing, household furnishings, and table settings became markers of rank during the early modern period, and markets emerged for printed works to help readers traverse the fluctuating landscape. Cookbooks arose to aid housewives and housekeepers in their quest to project posh.
Social climbers throughout the British Empire believed that the correct execution of politeness distinguished the well-bred from the low-born, materializing in countless small ways, especially at the dinner table. Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper(1769) enjoyed enormous success with its print life spanning nearly five decades, including an edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper printed in Philadelphia in 1818. Raffald promised “Economy with Neatness and Elegance.” Her index provided “Directions for a Grand Table” and sketched out course arrangements to “make a pretty appearance” and “be entertaining to the Company.” She also noted what serving dishes to use and when, such as “Sweetmeats and Fruits dished up in China Dishes, or Fruit Baskets,” and added tips for garnishing. By heeding Raffald’s advice, the upwardly mobile strived to gain entry into privileged spheres.
Roberts’s index included extensive directions for meal service, see pages 42 to 64. Index to Robert Roberts, The House Servants Directory (1827), (Boston: Munroe and Frances, 1827), MSU Libraries. Image Credit: MSU Libraries, East Lansing.
Henry Sargent, The Dinner Party (c. 1821), MFA Boston. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
After Independence, Americans sought approval by mastering preset codes of civility. While images rarely appeared in American cookbooks before the late-1830s, an emphasis remained on table settings as representations of prestige in and of society. Maria Rundell’s American Domestic Cookery (1823) (a revised version of an English cookbook for an American audience by the same author titled New System of Domestic Cookery(1807)) stated that an elegant table “gives respectability to her who presides.” Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-wife (1824) affirmed, “a dinner justly calculated for the company, and consisting for the greater part of small articles, correctly prepared, and neatly served up” creates a “pleasing appearance” for all in attendance. Robert Roberts’s The House Servants Directory (1827), one of the earliest books written by a Black American in the United States, had explicit instructions on “Regulations for the dinner table,” “Dinner on the table,” “The first course removed,” “Second course removed,” and “Placing on the desert.” And Eliza Leslie’s The House Book (1844) dedicated nearly fifty pages to “The Dining-Room:—Table Furniture, Waiting on Table, Carving, &c.” Henry Sargent’s The Dinner Party (1821) illustrates that sweet spot Americans craved—quiet luxury through tasteful display.
Frances Harriet Green’s The Housekeeper’s Book (1837) was one of the first American cookbooks to include multiple illustrations. Her images focused on presentation and performance, notably the skills required for carving and serving meats. With seats at either end of the table, hosts and hostesses were expected to perform the task in front of a crowd. When dishes like calf’s head were placed before them, all eyes met theirs in eager anticipation. The show could turn into a debacle if done without finesse. As Eliza Leslie’s The Cook’s Own Book, and Housekeeper’s Register (1840) remarked, “nothing can be more disagreeable to one of a sensitive disposition, than to behold a person, at the head of a well-furnished board, hacking the finest joints, and giving them the appearance of having been gnawed by dogs.” American cookbooks aimed to spare such humiliation by incorporating images with step-by-step instructions.
Green also provided readers with the “most approved” method for presenting roasted turkey through a tale of caution. Green recounted that she was once invited to a dinner where the unappetizing bird was “brought to the table with the head on as well as the feet.” She tsked, “such trussing is exceedingly ugly and altogether unworthy of a good cook.” Her disapproving tone indicates the implications of not following her suggestions—an accusation of lousy cooking and inept hosting that verged on buffoonery.
Green’s text followed precedents set by English cookbooks as authoritative sources that set culinary standards and assuaged nervous readers. Her comments also reveal how following precise procedures led to assumptions about status. While adhering to polite culture opened opportunities for self-elevation for some, it simultaneously barred others who did not conform to its exacting standards.
America’s newcomer status meant that many of its inhabitants wanted to prove their worth to themselves and the wider world. Cookbooks and other prescriptive English texts had set guidelines for taste long before the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord. During the early national period, Americans continued to purchase English cookbooks and began to author ones of their own based on the English model. While Abigail Adams might have wanted to adopt a stars-and-stripes attitude toward the early republic’s distinctness from England, the proof was in the pudding—the mother country’s parameters of decorum largely dictated America’s cultural norms of the time.
Jennifer Wells is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Texas A&M University specializing in British colonial North America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her research explores the social ambiguities of the urban South following the Revolution, a transformative period when questions of national identity and belonging swirled. Her dissertation studies the petition of Christopher McPherson, a free man of color who attempted to repeal an ordinance prohibiting Black Americans from owning or riding as passengers in carriages in Richmond, Virginia. Using the petition as a lens into the early national period, she investigates veteran affairs, the influence and limits of polite culture on class and race, educational reforms, apocalyptic prophets, and the history of early American psychiatric institutions. You can read a recent article she wrote about Christopher McPherson here.
Reference List:
Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure: In Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: University Press,2005.
Bickham, Troy. “Defining Good Food: Cookery Book Illustrations in Britain.” Journal forEighteenth Century Studies, 31 (2008): 473-489.
Bickham, Troy. Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London, Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2020.
Breen, T.H. “Baubles of Britian’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the EighteenthCentury,” Past and Present, 119 (1988) 73-104.
Lehmann, Gilly. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in EighteenthCentury Britain. Prospect Books: Totnes, 2003.
Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote.New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Yokota, Kariann. Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a PostcolonialNation. Oxford: Oxford University, 2011.
