All posts by Melissa Reynolds

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.

Theriac: an Imperial Recipe

By Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore

Over two millennia, the theriac recipe was the most debated in Galenic pharmacy throughout Europe and the Middle East. From the seventeenth century onward, missionaries, soldiers, and merchants carried it around the world. New versions of theriac were created in China, and across the Russian, Portuguese and Dutch empires, often incorporating local ingredients. The two excerpts below, from Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore’s  The State Drug: Theriac, Pharmacy, And Politics in Early Modern Italy (Harvard University Press, 2025), detail how theriac was made and argue that it was an imperial recipe from the very beginning.

Repeated by hundreds of authors over the centuries, the origin story of theriac and mithridate told by De theriaca ad Pisonem explicitly outlined the relationship between the state and the two remedies. The state was both the creator and the recipient of such outstanding drugs: a king (Mithradates) created the antidote; a general (Pompey) secured powerful medicines; and an imperial physician (Andromachus) modified the king’s antidote for his emperor (Nero). Furthermore, De theriaca ad Pisonem associated the remedy with other emperors, not just Nero: “We know that the divine Marcus Aurelius . . . used the drug greedily and as if it were a food.”[1] Emperors used, commissioned, and cherished theriac.

Theriac’s imperial birth derived from its very materiality. Rare ingredients from across the known world entered its composition. Only a colossal empire at the peak of its power could plausibly expect to produce such a compound. A proper theriac demanded Cyperus longus from Africa, Costus odoratusfrom India, and licorice juice from Cappadocia, Turkey, to name just three ingredients. Such an antidote was the outcome of a productive, highly organized society with a vast and well-developed commercial network, the ability to set up complex supply chains, and wealthy patients willing to pay for expensive medicines.

Colloquially, preparing theriac was the epitome of complex tasks. In a letter to his dear friend Farinelli (Carlo Broschi, 1705–1782), the famous castrato singer, the poet Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) ironically lamented how in Vienna it was easier to have the best cooks make a pot of theriac than a homey dish of macaroni with zucchini.[2] In the early modern period, making theriac was a significant undertaking, not limited to apothecaries. In 1687 the Bolognese Collegio Medico informed the Senate that “this year, since making theriac and other noble compositions requires it, the College will be occupied with great diligence throughout spring and summer.”[3]

Ceramic pharmacy jars. Wellcome Collection.  (CC BY 4.0)

Making theriac demanded time and refined artisanal skills. Recent scholars have described the making of theriac as nothing less than “an artistic endeavor,” recognizing the skills it demanded.[4] Early modern apothecaries approached production with reverence: it represented both the pinnacle of their various preparations and the culmination of their careers. As the editor of the Roman Antidotario declared, “After having discussed it, I was able to observe the composition of this antidote [theriac] many times. Yet, I only dared to attempt such composition at the age of forty-five, and not before.”[5]Making theriac was a challenging process for many reasons: the sheer number of ingredients and their cost; the difficulties in sourcing several components; the uncertainty of identifying which plants to use; the uncommon skills and knowledge required to carry out the long and intricate compounding procedure; and the need for money, preparation, and a wide network of social connections.

As we have seen, the successful production of “true theriac” was an apothecary’s key to becoming regarded as a “learned apothecary.” Recipes such as that of theriac needed interpretation by skilled artisans. Learned apothecaries became aware of and vocal about their artisanal competence, stressing the “universal rules of the apothecary art” over Galen’s instructions, as Georg Melich described: “Practice [l’esperimento] has found a better way . . . than what the Ancients wrote, and good apothecaries rely more on the general rules of the art and on experience than on the authority of Galen, although he is a great authority.”[6]Melich’s sense of pride and  independence in his work, knowledge, and experience was shared by many learned apothecaries.[7] Most Theriaca magna recipes used in Italy in the early modern period listed sixty-three ingredients, not sixty-four as is often stated.[8] More precisely, the recipe comprised sixty-one ingredients plus wine and honey, which served as the medium for blending. The ingredients were divided into six classes, and each had a usually fixed number of components: one, four, eight, seventeen, twenty-four, and seven. […] 

Three components of theriac—trocisci hedicroi, scyllitici, and viperini—were preparations that themselves involved several ingredients, so the actual number of ingredients totaled seventy-one (not counting repeats). However, the number of substances needed for the entire theriac manufacture was higher, because single components required other ingredients for production. For example, to make chalcitidis, apothecaries needed vitriol; to cook squill for trocisci scyllitici, they needed wheat flour; yet vitriol and wheat flour were not listed as ingredients of theriac.[9]

The ingredients of each class were added to the compound in fixed proportions: 48, 24, 12, 6, 4, and 2 drachms. Pharmacopoeias used the same scale for weights, but systems of weight differed greatly. Aldrovandi acknowledged the difficulties imposed by this variation: “As for the measures, we grope around and go blind in our understanding of Ancients’ medicinal doses.”[10] Apothecaries often compounded more than one batch at a time, multiplying each quantity to maintain the right pro-portions. Some pharmacopoeias, such as De Sgobbis’s Universale theatro farmaceutico, provided specific instructions for producing theriac in bulk.[11]

The ingredients were as diverse as they were numerous. […]

This enormous variety required apothecaries to have good planning, timing, and organization—indeed, it sometimes took over a year to assemble the ingredients in their entirety. Because theriac had to ferment, it was good practice to make it early, before the summer, in May or June, so the fermentation could benefit from the season’s natural heat.[12] This meant many herbs and roots had to be harvested a year before, during the previous summer, and then stored.[13] But then there was the risk of supplies becoming rotten, dusty, or moldy—especially trocisci viperini, which was notoriously susceptible to mold. For this reason, many apothecaries preferred to make theriac at a later date, in August. In 1577 the Collegio Medico in Florence decreed theriac-making season to run from June 1 and August 31.[14] Apothecaries wishing to make theriac had to navigate recipes rife with contradictions, follow steps that were often ambiguous or down-right obscure, then justify their decisions.

Excerpted from THE STATE DRUG: THERIAC, PHARMACY, AND POLITICS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY by Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore, published by Harvard University Press.  Copyright © 2025 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


[1] Robert Leigh, On Theriac to Piso, Attributed to Galen: A Critical Edition with Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 89.

[2] Pietro Metastasio, Lettere (Nice: Soc. Tipografica, 1787), vol. 5, 203.

[3] Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Assunteria di Studio 87, March 17, 1687.

[4] Nils-Otto Ahnfelt, Hjalmar Fors, and Karin Wendin, “Making and Taking Theriac: An Experimental and Sensory Approach to the History of Medicine,” British Journal for the History of Science Themes 7 (2022): 39–62, 43; Martin Kluge, “Das Theriak-Experiment,” in Materialwissen: Experimentelle Geschichte im Pharmaziemuseum, edited by Barbara Orland and Byron Cole Dowse (Zurich: Intercom, 2022).

[5] Collegio dei medici di Roma, Antidotario romano latino e volgare (Rome: Ruffinelli, 1624), 37.

[6] Georg Melich, Auertimenti nelle compositioni de’ medicamenti per vso della spetiaria (Venice: Giovanni e Andrea Zenaro, 1575), 42–43.

[7] On artisanal awareness, see Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

[8] See also Edoardo Rosa, “La panacea dell’antichità approda all’Archiginnasio,” in L’Archiginnasio: Il Palazzo, l’Università, la BibliotecaGiovanni Roversi ed. (Bologna: Credito Romagnolo, 1987), vol. 1, 334.

[9] Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Badia di Mileto 268, 33r; vitriol was part of an apothecary’s list of missing ingredients for making theriac.

[10] Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Ald. Ms. 21, IV, 127v.

[11] Antonio De Sgobbis, Nuovo et universale theatro farmaceutico (Venice: Stamperia Iuliana, 1667), folding sheet at 424–425.

[12] Bartolomeo Maranta, Della theriaca et del mithridato libri due (Venice: Marcantonio Olmo, 1572), 50–52.

[13] Adriano Riccardi, Istruttione intorno al comporre la Theriaca d’Andromaco (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1606), 4.

[14] Sharon T. Strocchia, Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 260 n62.

 

A Cure for Cardiacle: Making and Tasting a Medieval Remedy for Heart Ache

By Caleb Prus

Grief often feels as physical as it does emotional—like a weight on the chest, a flutter of the heart, or a tightening in the throat. The distinction between these physical and emotional symptoms is largely a product of modern medicine; in the premodern world, those boundaries were far blurrier. In The Canterbury Tales (c.1390), Chaucer’s Physician tells a story so tragic that the Host cries out, “I almost have caught a cardiacle”—a heart pain brought on by pity and sorrow—and begs for a drink of ale before he collapses from grief. But what exactly was a “cardiacle,” and how might a medieval ale have helped? As both a medical student and a scholar of medieval medicine, I set out to answer these questions, by recreating a centuries-old recipe—and tasting for myself how people in the Middle Ages tried to ease heartache.  

The Death of Fébus (d. 1391). Chronicles of Froissart, London, BL, Harley 4379 (c.1470-1475), f. 126. Public Domain.

The cardiacle feared by Chaucer’s Host was a broad diagnosis for heart-related distress. It referred to chest pain, palpitations, and fainting spells—what we might now call angina, arrhythmia, syncope, or even a heart attack. But for medieval people, living centuries before the discovery of circulation, the heart wasn’t a pump. It was the seat of feeling, emotion, and spirit. A sudden wave of grief, or an excess of melancholy (black bile) could literally make the heart sick. This is why the Host panics after the Physician’s Tale: he fears that sorrow itself might give him a cardiacle. And while this diagnosis is rooted in humoral theory, this link between emotion and cardiac dysfunction is supported by modern medicine. Today, we recognize conditions like Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, commonly known as “broken heart syndrome,” in which acute emotional stress can lead to temporary heart failure.

Given its literary and medical prominence, I was intrigued when I came across a remedy for cardiacle in a Middle English medical manuscript. The recipe was simple, direct, and surprisingly easy to recreate:

For the cardiacle

Take gallynggale, gyngeuer and licoris, with fynel; seth and make to poudre, and drynke with stale ale.

The remedy is, essentially, a spiced ale—something Chaucer would have readily recognized. In The Miller’s Tale, he writes that the barber-surgeon Absolon woos his beloved with “spiced ale,” and in the Tale of Sir Thopas, Chaucer lists licorice, zedoary, cloves, and nutmeg as flavorings “to putte in ale / wheither it be moyste or stale.” This recipe for cardiacle is a variation on this familiar tradition, blending licorice, ginger, galangal, and fennel into a warming, aromatic drink.

Ingredients used to recreate the remedy for cardiacle.

The ingredients were surprisingly easy to source. The instruction to “seeth” the herbs likely referred not to boiling but to drying and dehydrating them, preparing them to be ground into powder with a mortar and pestle. At my local spice shop, I found dried fennel seeds, ginger pieces, and licorice root, all ready for grinding. For the galangal, which I bought fresh-frozen from an Asian grocery store, I dehydrated slices at 250°F for several hours until they were brittle enough to crush. 

Finding the right ale proved more challenging. Medieval ale was quite different from today’s beer: unhopped, malty, and slightly sweet, often brewed with a mix of herbs or bittering agents in a style now referred to as gruit. It was also regularly consumed while it was still fermenting or allowed to settle into “stale” ale, as the recipe directs. Without the means to brew my own gruit, I settled on Samual Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, a low-hop British ale with a mellow maltiness and smooth body—about as close to a medieval ale as I could get off the shelf.

On brew day, I laid out my ingredients and began grinding them by hand with a mortar and pestle. Following the proportions implied by the recipe, I used equal parts of each herb, about half a teaspoon per ingredient, mixed into one cup of gently warmed ale. The resulting drink smelled strongly of fennel and licorice. Its taste was intense: sweet, earthy, and medicinal, with a lingering licorice bitterness on the tongue. Hoping to make the potion more palatable, I reduced the quantities to just a pinch of each spice for the second batch. Even then, the licorice dominated, its sweetness overwhelming the other flavors. The drink was also course and gritty. Since the recipe offered no instruction to strain it, I left the powder in the cup, which resulted in heavy sediment that clung to the teeth. 

Warmed ale after the addition of ground spices.

In the end, the potion was challenging to drink—a sensory shock to a modern palate more accustomed to hoppy beers than to bitter, spiced tonics. Its flavor was unmistakably medicinal and sweet, dominated by the taste of fennel and licorice. Yet I suspect the experience would have been quite different for a medieval drinker. The unhopped, malty base of a traditional ale would likely have complemented the sharper notes of the spices. And while modern drinkers tend to associate black licorice with cough syrup or candy, that connotation may not have existed in the medieval period. To medieval tastes, this kind of spiced ale may have been not only palatable but genuinely comforting.  

As The Canterbury Tales continues, the pilgrims stop at an alehouse, allowing the Host to finally get the draught of ale he so desperately craves. The Physician and his potions are nowhere to be found in this scene—but perhaps that’s the point. The physical and emotional dimensions of cardiacle were deeply intertwined, and so too was its cure: a warming drink, shared among fellow travelers, to soothe the heart in both body and spirit. In the end, Chaucer’s Host wasn’t simply asking for ale; he was reaching for spice, for solace, and for the ritual comfort of drinking in good company.


Caleb Prus is a 4th-year MD candidate at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He holds a MSt in English (650-1550) from the University of Oxford and a BA in English Literature and Chemistry from the University of Rochester. His Master’s dissertation studied the use of Middle English bloodletting texts by John Tyryngham, a fifteenth-century Londoner. He has presented his research at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, the Kalamazoo International Congress on Medieval Studies, the American Association for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting, and the Corner Society for the History of Medicine.

 

Chocolate, Poems, and Virtual Kitchens: Reconstructing the Early Modern Experience

By Sara de Blas Hernández

Since starting my Ph.D. journey at UC Davis, I have collaborated with Prof. Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores to enhance medieval and early modern Spanish literature classes using multisensory pedagogical approaches. The goal is to help students connect with the literary production of the time, one that often feels culturally distant, through tangible activities and familiar settings. For example, we organised a workshop where students nixtamalized corn to make their own tortillas after reading excerpts from the Popol Vuh and Chronicles of the Indies, we explored Fray Luis de León’s “Oda a la vida retirada” (Ode to a Quiet Life) in the Arboretum, and performed skits in the style of Calderón de la Barca’s small dramatic piece Mojiganga de los guisados.

The Reconstruction Project

In Fall 2024, Prof. Gutiérrez-Flores taught Survey of Spanish Literature to 1700, a course that explores the multicultural formation of Spanish culture through early literary texts. In this course, I wanted to explore the contrast between a traditional classroom model (reading, lecture, discussion, worksheet) with a hands-on experiential approach. This time, that meant asking students to turn their kitchens into classroom spaces.

In the first of two linked lessons, students read and analyzed Décima y coplas al chocolate  by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. This playful poem compares the seductive power of women with that of chocolate, which the lyrical voice describes as a “dulce brebaje” or sweet potion (Hurtado de Mendoza, line 54),  and which is described as being intoxicating and overwhelming. This poem opened the door to explore chocolate’s journey from a suspect substance—viewed by early European colonizers as mysterious and dangerously invigorating—to a fashionable obsession, particularly among elite Spanish women, some of whom refused to stop drinking it even during mass, despite threats of receiving excommunication!

For the second lesson, we moved to the kitchen. We decided to have students cook from home, either solo or in small teams. I selected Juan de la Mata’s “Vizcochos de chocolate – Otra manera” from his 1747 Arte de repostería. At the beginning of the session, students were provided with the recipe —they had already been informed of the tools and ingredients they would need— and divided into Zoom breakout rooms to modernize the recipe by restructuring steps and estimating quantities and times needed. We all reconvened to discuss the surprises and challenges, and to evaluate potential solutions.

Then, we rolled up our sleeves and started baking. I hosted the session like a DIY cooking show: “Baking Early Modern with Sara.” I remember that we were collectively stumped by one detail: the recipe called for twice as much sugar as flour. When students asked why, I wasn’t sure. The mystery lingered until the next day, when I brought the cake to a screening of Like Water for Chocolate. There, a former student of mine majoring in Food Science offered a possible explanation: sugar was likely used as a preservative, especially in the absence of refrigeration. It was a lightbulb moment—and a great reminder of how learning often continues beyond the classroom.

Resulting chocolate cake. Image Credit: The Author

Once the cake was in the oven and with just a couple of minutes of class remaining,  I invited students to share their initial thoughts. To build community, I created a Canvas forum where students could share photos of their cakes and reflections on the experience. 

Screenshot of the students during the virtual workshop. Image Credit: The Author

Student’s Perceptions

To better assess the impact of the lesson, I asked students to complete a short survey. While some noted logistical challenges —like commuting home to use a kitchen—, most found the activity fun and unique. Others reported appreciating learning culinary skills and engaging with recipes in Spanish firsthand.  Several students noted how the physicality of “making” deepened their connection to the material: “I liked it and I think that it helped me think about these recipes in a more real way” and “It was very fun, especially because I could do something physical while still reflecting on the Spanish ways of the past.” One student shared being surprised at how much one could learn about a “mundane” activity such as cooking:  “I particularly enjoyed that, even though it is a cooking activity, there is a lot of history embedded in it, and we learned a lot.” 

Some reflected on the literary text itself: “While baking, I thought a lot about the verses of the poem, and I was able to imagine the lyrical voice when I was adding the cocoa powder to the mix.” Others offered powerful insights on food and colonialism: “It was a unique lesson like I had never experienced before. I realised that the foods that I have at home reflect a history of colonialism and peoples that I have inherited. Now I can see a more clear connection to the topics we covered in class than before. It is humbling… and delicious.” Finally,  several students highlighted the sense of community the lesson fostered. Whether cooking together in person or connecting via Zoom, they valued seeing their classmates in a new light and learning together in a shared, informal setting.

Implications of the Approach

Designing non-traditional lessons requires careful planning and flexibility, especially when logistical hurdles arise. But the results—deeper engagement, critical thinking, and stronger student bonds—make it worth the effort. This project reinforced what I have come to believe: hands-on, sensory-based learning, a form of “making”, can help students connect emotionally and intellectually with distant literary worlds. When students become “makers” through cooking, smelling, tasting, and collaborating, they not only grasp content more vividly, they also experience history and literature as something alive, embodied, and relevant to their lives. That is why these approaches deserve a place in the classroom, especially in academic settings where learning is still too often confined to the visual and textual materials alone.


Sara de Blas Hernández is a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Linguistics at UC Davis. Her research explores the intersection of language, food, and pedagogy. One strand of her dissertation focuses on how food and food-related practices can enrich second and foreign language learning. The other examines experiential approaches to teaching early modern Spanish literature, working closely with faculty in literary studies, to help students engage more deeply with historical texts and overcome linguistic barriers.


References

Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego. “Décima y coplas al chocolate”. Obras poéticas, edited by Rafael Benítez Claros, Gráficas Ultra, 1947.

Mata, Juan de la. Arte de repostería: en que se contiene todo género de hacer dulces secos, y en líquido … con una breve instrucción para conocer las frutas, y servirlas crudas, y diez mesas, con su explicación. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, 1747.

Reconstructing an Italian Perfume from the Nineteenth Century

By Charlotte Gaudry

When we talk about historical reconstruction, “making” can be understood as the act of bringing the past back to life, recreating what once existed. This fits closely with the goals of the reconstruction I have in mind for my thesis project. It is not just about restoring objects or practices, but about exploring new ways of understanding and “making” history itself. It’s a process that can engage all our senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. In this sense, reconstruction becomes a multisensory experience, one that opens up new possibilities through the intersection of experimental history and sensory studies. This approach feels particularly relevant for studying 19th-century Italian perfumery, a field that remains relatively under explored.

That’s why, as a PhD student in contemporary Italian history, I believe this research is not only necessary but also valuable in offering a new way of connecting with the past. Reconstruction, in this context, becomes a kind of immaterial materialisation, a way to make something intangible, like a smell, feel real again.

To give a bit of background: Italian perfumery in the 19th century evolved alongside industrialisation, which brought a wave of new knowledge and techniques. In the course of my research, I’ve found that information about perfumery is scattered across a variety of sources, from press articles and cosmetic manuals to texts on chemistry, pharmacy, floriculture, medicine, and hygiene. Yet, despite all this documentation, the one thing we lack is the scent itself. We’re left with only written descriptions and material traces to guide us. That’s what makes this work both incredibly challenging, deeply fascinating, but also very complex. 

Given the lack of material evidence for such ephemeral and intangible artefacts, we must seek clues through available sources. The most obvious sources are recipe manuals. These documents detail raw materials—whether natural, vegetable, animal, or synthetic—specifying their origins, processing methods, and the evolution of associated techniques, whether local or imported. They also describe mixing and boiling methods. The authors may integrate olfactory descriptions, providing a valuable sensory dimension that serves as an important reference in the reconstruction process. 

Recipe manuals have become some of my favourite sources. They give a real sense of the skills, techniques, and even the mindset of the time. They also reflect the impact of industrialisation, especially how chemistry and machinery started to change the way perfumes were made. What I find most fascinating about the 19th century is how it captures this turning point: traditional craftsmanship blending with new scientific and mechanical approaches.

These manuals don’t just list ingredients; they reveal which materials were in fashion, whether they came from Italy or were imported from abroad. Reading through different recipes helps me imagine the range of scented products people used—liquid perfumes, scented powders, pomades—and the role they played in daily life.

The illustrations are especially helpful. They make even the most complex machines or processes feel more understandable, almost like you’re being guided through them by someone who was there. They’re drawn with care, showing precise proportions and technical details that tell us a lot about how the machines worked. The accompanying text is often surprisingly clear too, explaining how each part functioned and how everything fit together. We missed some flowers or perfume bottles’ illustrations. Nevertheless, our large corpus overcomes that. 

Together, these manuals and illustrations give us a way to piece together, and potentially recreate, the technical world of 19th-century perfumery. For me, they’re like stepping stones that connect us directly with a forgotten craft. Nineteenth-century Italian perfumery thus emerges as an ideal laboratory for analysing the intricate dynamics of hybridisation between tradition and modernity. 

However, we may wonder if these documents are sufficient to understand how to recreate a specific recipe. Upon reading, we notice that some information is missing, primarily relating to tacit knowledge. 

This type of knowledge is often deeply rooted in personal experience, context, practice, and insights. Unlike explicit knowledge, which can be easily articulated and shared, tacit knowledge is intuitive and often subconscious. We must therefore use experimental history to address this issue. 

One of the major challenges I have run into while researching 19th-century Italian perfumery is language. Not just translating from Italian to French, but translating entire ways of thinking about ingredients, tools, and measurements that don’t always match up with our modern understanding. Some of the recipe manuals I am working with were written before Italy was even a unified country. So, naturally, there is no standardised system, especially when it comes to weights and measures. Some manuals use kilograms, but others rely on terms like oncia (ounce), dramma, or libbra (pound). Furthermore, the value of a libbra changed from one region to another. So the pound used in Tuscany was not the same as the one in Naples. That means a big part of my work has been setting up a kind of decoding system, figuring out what each unit meant in that specific place and time, so I can accurately interpret the recipes. But it also shows how important it is to approach these sources carefully. A tiny mistake in translation or conversion could completely change the formula, and with it, the scent of the reconstructed perfume. It is above all about translating an entire sensory culture. One that was shaped by chemistry, trade, and the slow but steady march of industrialisation. That makes every detail, from a single dramma to the function of a distillation machine, worth paying attention to.

To overcome these issues, we must use different sources and disciplines. The historian, relying on various sources like manuals, treatises, objects, preserved residues, etc. to reconstruct the recipe with the greatest possible precision. I’m not doing this alone. The real magic happens when I work alongside perfumers. They take all the information I gather and turn it into something tangible, real experiments in the lab, trying to recreate scents that haven’t been smelled in over a century. And then there’s the chemist, who steps in to help us make sense of how raw materials might have changed over time, or why certain reactions happen, or don’t. Even though we each speak our own “language” history, chemistry, and perfumery—we are all working toward the same goal: to bring a forgotten fragrance back to life. That collaboration is thus essential.

In the end, this kind of reconstruction isn’t just about copying the past. It is about bringing it to life in a way that people today can experience. That is what makes it so powerful. By recreating these forgotten scents, we’re not only sharing complex historical knowledge. We are making it real, tangible, and relatable.

It is a new way of doing history. One that doesn’t just rely on dates and documents, but on our senses, our curiosity, and a mix of disciplines working together. Whether it is through the nose of a perfume, the feel of an old recipe book, or the hum of a recreated 19th-century machine, we’re building bridges between then and now. And for me, that’s where the real interest of this work lies.


Charlotte Gaudry is currently a PhD candidate in History at the University of Grenoble Alpes, where she is conducting research under the auspices of the “Olfaction” Chair within the LAHRHA laboratory. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the history of Italian perfumery in the 19th century, exploring the intersection of olfactory heritage, industry, and cultural identity. Beyond her academic work, she has participated in various cultural and educational projects. These include internships at the Osmothèque – the International Perfume Conservatory in Versailles – where she remains an active volunteer.