Category Archives: Early Modern

Recipe Sharing Across the Channel: French Recipe for Plum Pudding

By Lauren Owens

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.

 

  1. 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. ↩︎
  2. 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 ↩︎
  3. “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#  ↩︎
  4. 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. ↩︎
  5. Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady. ↩︎

The Barclay Project

By Marissa Nicosia, with Christina Riehman-Murphy and Clara Drummond


Christian Barclay Jaffray (1680-1758) began gathering recipes for cookery, medicine, and dyeing cloth in 1697 when she was seventeen in a book that she titled “A Receipt Book, or, The Fruits of a Young Woman’s Spare Hours” (Manuscript, Scotland, 1697-1723).

This small, fine volume arrived at Penn State Libraries’ Eberly Family Special Collections as part of the “Robert Barclay of Ury family papers and maps” collection. Robert Barclay, Christian’s father, was a prominent Scottish Quaker leader and author of Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678). The Ury family papers include Robert Barclay’s correspondence with William Penn and maps of his proprietary holdings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well as Christian’s receipt book. Although the collection was acquired primarily for the historical and geographical papers connecting the Barclays to William Penn and Pennsylvania history, the daughter’s recipe book is a true gem.

Read the transcription!

Penn State undergraduate students have transcribed the entire manuscript and published it through the library’s digital exhibition platform. Special Collections as well as the Preservation, Digitization, and Conservation team prioritized Christian’s receipt book for digitization and this foundational work facilitated a multi-year transcription project. During the 2021-2022 academic year, Penn State Abington students enrolled in the undergraduate research project “What’s in a Recipe?” undertook a complete first-pass transcription of the manuscript under the supervision of Heather Froehlich, Marissa Nicosia, and Christina Riehman-Murphy. In 2022-2023 Jonah Carver (PSU class of 2023) held a Bednar Internship and worked to edit and prepare the transcription for publication online by comparing the initial transcription created by Abington students with the digital images of the manuscript online and the original manuscript in the Special Collections library.

Bake Barclay!

With a little strategic updating to modify the original seventeenth-century instructions, Christian’s recipes are a delight in the kitchen. Since 2022, we have featured baking recipes from this manuscript in our annual, global, friendly competition between Penn State Libraries and Monash University Libraries: The Great Rare Books Bake Off. We especially recommend her delectable “Sugar Biskets.” Marissa has also updated a few more of Christian’s recipes as part of her ongoing Cooking in the Archives project.

Dye Wool in Sad Purple!

During the summer and fall of 2023, Jonah, Marissa, and Christina joined collaborators at the Center for Virtual Material Studies to recreate a few of Christian’s recipes for dyeing wool in gorgeous colors like the warm mauve “Maiden’s Blush.” While there are not yet published, modernized versions of Christian’s dye recipes, experienced practitioners can try their hands at her recipe for “Sad Purple” (aka dark or deep purple) using the published transcription. The dyed wool that we collectively prepared was displayed alongside the manuscript (and many other fascinating materials) in the Special Collections exhibit Sad Purple and Mauve: A History of Dye-Making (September 2023-January 2024).


For more on these projects see:

Cooking in the Archiveswww.rarecooking.com

Instagram: @rare_cooking

Threads: @rare_cooking

Twitter/X: @rare_cooking & @Nicosia_Marissa

Bluesky: @nicosiamarissa.bsky.social

Facebook: CookingintheArchives

Olfactory Notes: Integrating Embodied Research in Art History

By Madison Clyburn

In early modern Italy, perfumes were powerful substances whose therapeutic properties could generate pleasure and preserve or remedy one’s health if worn on or consumed by the body. In this post, I feature a typical Italian perfume recipe, “To make perfume for clothes,” from the Italian engraver and author Eustachio Celebrino’s (c. 1490-after 1535) printed vernacular pamphlet, Opera nova piacevole laqvale insegna di far varie compositioni odorifere per far bella ciaschuna donna…intitulata Venusta (Venice, 1550) intended for female consumers. Celebrino’s formulaic recipe books, typical of the genre, are printed records of socially important topics, like women’s health and adornment.

I made this recipe in Dr. Chriscinda Henry’s graduate seminar, Materiality and the Senses in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Art, at McGill University in the Winter of 2023. Celebrino’s recipe allowed us to work through experimental research methodologies in our final week dedicated to Embodied Knowing and Experimental Methods, which I co-led with fellow seminar member Mahdis Mohajeri. Making this perfume recipe raised questions about what it means for art historians living in one sensorium and studying others, like early modern Italy, where smelling amber rosary beads during prayer might bring one closer to God, chewing myrrh pastilles could prevent plague or wearing musk might help conceive a healthy child.

“To Make Perfume for Clothes”

The first step toward integrating embodied research in our art history seminar was to choose a recipe with accessible ingredients that was relatively quick to make. Celebrino’s perfumed sachet was just right since it simply asks one to take “fresh rose leaves & dry them in the shade & then take two carats [or vials] of musk, and make it into a powder, & two coins of fine cloves, and mix together, & then put it [all] in one or two little bags in the clothes.” 

Graduate student, Em Grisdale’s sachet keeps sweaters moth-free and smelling fresh one year later!

Before our seminar, I assembled a recipe kit with instructions and ingredients for each participant. I found cloves and dried roses from a local herbalist shop, while I substituted musk root for musk, whose extraction from the musk deer’s preputial gland is primarily illegal today. 

Next, I transcribed and translated the recipe, placing that information in a PowerPoint. This left more time in class to examine primary texts like Pliny’s The Natural History and Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Commentaries (1565) to understand the varied classical and early modern uses of musk, roses, and cloves. At the same time, selections from Sven Dupré et al. Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment (2020) and Pamela Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022) grounded our entrance into an aromatic art history, offering insight into how hands-on historical recipe experiments can help make students more resourceful researchers and inform early modern health, hygiene, and beauty practices.

The final step consisted of interpreting the recipe through practice. Students opened their kits and began to crush, mix, and add the ingredients to a draw-string bag.

Some participants followed the recipe, and others adapted it; some used their hands, while others used a hammer or mortar and pestle to crush the musk root.

The recipe’s flexible ending tells one to put the sachet “in the clothes,” possibly in a chest, carried in a pocket, worn under a skirt or attached to a belt. Making the recipe together allowed us to pose questions, such as what types and materials of bags might be preferred, how much musk equals a carat or vial, and share reactions like musk stinks! 

Em Grisdale shows us how to wear Celebrino’s recipe on a belt loop.

Implications for Sensory Research in Art History

Embodied research welcomes questions about the sensuous relationships between the ephemeral body and its material culture. Things like perfumed sachets for clothes hinted at but not seen in visual media reveal how olfactory experiences in the early modern period are everywhere and nowhere. For example, middle- and upper-class women often had the luxury of owning multiple sets of clothes. When not worn, women stored their clothes in chests with sachets made from pure ingredients like musk or, for aspiring citizens, a counterfeit version made of spices and toasted breadcrumbs to preserve the fabrics’ quality and cleanliness. One can imagine only the finest ingredients perfuming Lambert Sustris’ Reclining Venus (c. 1548) in this wholesome atmosphere comprised of a downy mattress sprinkled with fragrant pink and white roses, sumptuous fabrics, and a woman playing a folding harpsichord, whose charming sounds vibrate through the clean air wafting through an open colonnade window.

Attributed to Lambert Sustris (c. 1515-20 -1584), Reclining Venusc. 1548, oil on canvas, 116 x 186 cm, Venice or Padua, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-3479. Image credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

But of course, we cannot see the physical sachet made from Celebrino’s recipe that may lie nestled inside the elegant cassone (chest) in the background of Sustris’ painting. We cannot sniff notes of rose, musk, and clove possibly escaping the fibres of the pastel pink dress that a woman holds above the chest. Only by reconstructing these sachets can we begin to sense smell’s critical role in preserving hygienic bodies and homes as well as in observing or challenging socially constructed gender and class hierarchies in early modern Italy.

Detail of Sustris’ Reclining Venus showing a young woman leaning over an open-lidded cassone. Image credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Embracing what we cannot see or smell through embodied research allows us to imagine how Celebrino’s recipe and Sustris’ painting document once fragrant interiors. An art historical approach to making recipes aims to recenter early modern sensuous practices and experiences in artworks so that teaching and academic scholarship can help us bridge two sensoria—that of our current moment and overlooked pasts.


Madison Clyburn is an Art History PhD candidate at McGill University. Her thesis focuses on the material culture of women’s wellness in late medieval and early modern Italy. Her research combines art and gender history, the history of medicine, material culture, and sensory studies to determine how perfumes were used to observe, challenge, and invert socially constructed gender and class hierarchies in the early modern period.

Early Modern Research with Britain’s Favourite Organic Producer

By Grace Palmer

In the spring of 2023, I undertook a deep dive into early modern British (and some European) recipes for a project with Hexhamshire Organics, an organic farm near Newcastle in the North East of England, focused on creating short sentences on the historic uses of herbs, fruit and vegetables, designed to pique their customers’ interests by examining how their favourite produce was consumed in the past. Within this project, I focused on using domestically-produced receipt books – which were often collaborative family books carefully curated by multiple generations to create unique recipe collections – and horticultural texts, produced as instruction manuals for gardeners, providing information on the multitude of plants that were cultivated by early modern Britons. Admittedly these sources were produced by and for the upper- and middle-classes, however they are a fascinating route to understanding how food was enjoyed in the past, and do provide some insights into the culinary habits of ordinary Britons.

Pages exploring ‘mountayne Radish’ and ‘Carrottes’ in Rembert Dodoens (trans. Henry Lyte Esquyer), A Niewe Herball, or Historie of Plantes, (published in England- 1578), pp 600-601


Perhaps especially because our audience for this project was consumers interested in organic, locally-sourced produce, I was struck by the similarities some recipes held to many present-day dishes loved by modern Britons. For example, many recipes including carrots described the vegetable being enjoyed grated and baked with a variety of spices, reminiscent of a modern carrot cake. Similarly, by the 18th century, recipes instructing how tomatoes (a ‘New World’ discovery for many early modern Europeans) could be made into ketchup were more commonplace. It was fascinating to see how some of my favourite and regularly consumed dishes had such long-reaching origins. While early modern recipe books often contained the spectacular, documenting exceptional meals that were not eaten on an everyday basis, I was struck by the variety of herbs, fruits and vegetables that were clearly dietary staples. Explorations into the New World expanded the origins of commonly eaten produce: potatoes, the Jerusalem artichoke (named the “potato of Canada”), and peppers (initially viewed with some suspicion, but were quickly cultivated by poor farmers as a cheap alternative of expensive, imported black pepper) were often included in recipe collections, alongside spices from across South and Eastern Asia. Contemporary cooks displayed a clear interest in the presentation and taste of their dishes. A variety of herbs and spices were used – including dill, savory, chillies and sorrel – to add depth of flavour. Recipes describe the various innovative ways produce was used as a garnish, instructing the reader to pickle red cabbage to enhance its purple-red hue, or to finely chop brussels sprouts, to make dishes more visually appealing. I found that my research challenged pre-existing conceptions I myself had about potentially “backwards” culinary habits from the early modern era as the recipes instead showcased the diverse and rich culinary traditions from the period.

Early modern people assigned a fascinating array of medical uses to almost all plants. While some seem to make logical sense to the modern reader, many seem incredulous. (Giant) mustard leaves were often placed like a plaster on a patient’s head to help prevent vertigo. Spring onions were made into an ointment to cure dandruff, and lettuce was eaten after supper to prevent drunkenness, imagined to stop alcohol vapours (widely believed to cause drunkenness) reaching the brain. One early modern writer even used globe artichokes as a deodorant, believing the vegetable helped reduce the smell of his armpits. The huge variety of medical uses assigned to various herbs, fruits and vegetables is a testament to the ingenuous inventions of contemporaries, showcasing how they innovatively used all aspects of different produce to understand the world around them. Many medicinal recipes for common ailments and diseases were passed between generations, adapted and improved through experimentation over time. Much of the way early modern people understood their diet was influenced by humoral theory, often dictating the imagined medicinal cures behind plants and even the combination of ingredients set out in recipes. For example, sorrel was often paired with meats or eggs for its perceived cooling properties, imagined to aid digestion. Similarly, “hot and dry” horseradish was commonly eaten with fish, believed to counteract the negative associations of the “cold and wet” nature of fish. The humoral properties of produce meant some recipes came with warnings for future readers: cooks were advised against serving raw onions, imagined to induce headaches and dull the senses, and readers were warned about the overconsumption of spinach, believed to cause nausea. While sometimes comedic to the modern reader, early modern cooks used commonly consumed produce in innovative ways to understand the world around them, a testament to their ingenuity and invention.

Overall, this was a fascinating project, which taught me a huge amount about early modern recipes, diets, and consumption habits more broadly. While this project focused on highlighting the spectacular and sometimes comedic aspects of early modern food habits, I was struck by the many similarities to modern recipes and gained a deeper understanding of the rich history behind British cuisine. I hope this project will help inform Hexhamshire Organics’ customers on the fascinating interplay between early modern and present-day uses of their favourite produce, and perhaps even provide historic inspiration for unconventional and thrifty ways to make the most of locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Grace Palmer is currently studying for her MA in history at Durham University, having recently completed her undergraduate studies there. She is writing her dissertation on poisoning as a method for resistance by enslaved men and women and white fear of poisoning conspiracies in plantation era America. Outside of academia, Grace is a keen foodie and enjoys experimenting with new vegetarian recipes. She is also an avid sports fan and shares a season ticket to her local football club with her brother.