Category Archives: Ingredients

‘All Manner of Fluxes:’ Plants and the Natalist Conquest of British Colonial America

Virginian Rock Polypody Fern. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Virginian Rock Polypody Fern. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

By Fiona O’Brien

The flows and fluxes of bodily fluids that determined an early modern woman’s embodied existence would need to be, if not controlled, understood by her. If we focus on the fluidity of the early modern reproductive body, we can begin to better understand the materia medica used to treat it; once we do so, we can begin to compare worldviews more aptly, and examine, for example, the continuities and breaks between the reproductive pharmacopeias used by Indigenous Americans and English colonists. If we accept population expansion and settlement to be a key aspect of the building of the early paternalistic American state, these materia medica used for regulating the female body become pertinent to histories of colonization, law, and politics. How was the natalist conquest of early Northeast America fueled by this piecemeal process of filling a pharmacopeia full of the familiar, and stuffing the unfamiliar into known molds? How do we investigate this process as historians, when both parties of women concerned, Indigenous and English, left few records behind?

European Polypody Fern. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
European Polypody Fern. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.


English colonists uniformly observed that Indigenous women gave birth in total isolation, did not feel pain while doing so, and recovered almost immediately: in 1634, William Wood tells English readers that for Indigenous women in New England, “a bigge bellie hinders no business, nor a childebirthe takes much time.” [1] Clearly, there was a lack of interest in recording the birthing practices of Indigenous women. But maybe we begin to get answers if we flow between sources, thus crafting an amorphous middle-ground. Early modern recipes encourage us to engage with sources collectively; those sources themselves cannot be understood in isolation, but require that the historian temporarily inhabit the phenomenal, the experiential, the habitual body.

According to Western medicine, peak health was believed to be reached when humoral balance was suited to the condition, climate, and individual. It was therefore believed that when early modern Europeans left their homelands, they risked moral, customary, and physiological degeneration; a hot climatic change would cool the man’s body and heat the woman’s.[2] The overheated female body could overmenstruate, expel fetuses, and fail to purify blood into seed or breastmilk.[3] This risked the colonial project: women were required to establish a successful colony, but their reproductivity was in danger within this humoral cosmology.

In order for a medication to be successful, it must purge: the healing patient should be vomiting, bleeding, urinating, sweating, or crying. This meant the body’s proper flow was restored, needless stoppages and loose fluids ushered back into their rightful places.[4] The humoral chilly moistness of the female body rendered the woman passive and kind, but also meant that her body was dangerously subject to disease due to its porosity and permeability.[5] Much of the female body’s organization and survival was linked to her heat, blood flow, womb, and seed, and thus to her menstrual capabilities.

But how did the English understand new ingredients that may have been visually identical to their own cures contained within their recipe books back in the metropole? ‘Flow’ provides a useful starting point. As Laurence Totelin puts it, “a woman’s life is marked by fluxes, healthy or otherwise,”[6] so historians must broadly consider the use of abortifacients or emmenagogues– agents which increase blood circulation to the pelvic area and stimulate menstruation[7]–without being clouded by our modern understanding of abortion.

Perhaps ‘flow’ was on the minds of colonists when they spotted the ubiquitous and familiar fern crawling up New England stumps and rocks. Maidenhair and polypody ferns were repeated throughout their recipe books’ entries, specifically when related to flow and heat: in 1719, Mary Kettilby recommended a mixture of herbs sweetened with “Syrup of Maiden-hair” as “a cooling drink in a Fever or Pleurisie.” Midwife Jane Sharp recommended that the polypody ferns be “bruised and boyl[ed]” then drunk, as a remedy “Against the Piles or Hemorrhoids” in postpartum women, and in 1674, Susanna Packe recommended “six ounces Polipedy” to “cleans the body of sharp humor or Mullinchollly.”

The Haudenosaunee use(d) lamb’s quarters to prevent milk flow when the child is stillborn,[8] and black snakeroot to promote it when the child is healthy.[9] Kettilby recommended “Virginia snake-weed” for use “in any malignant distemper,”[10] and in 1798 Benjamin Barton called it “a valuable medicine…sometimes called Squaw-root…from its having been used as a medicine by our Indians.”[11] “Squaw-root” points to its omnipresence in Indigenous midwifery pharmacopeia for its promotion of slow labor.[12]  Jane Staveley’s 1693 recipe book recommended “A very strengthening Medicine,” including “1 Oz. of Snake root put into a Bottle of Port Wine,” while a century later and an ocean apart, Martha Ballard recalled the inclusion of Virginia snakeroot in a water used to deliver a woman of a dead child.[13]

We can turn back to the fern here, too: maidenhair is recommended by the Haudenosaunee for excessive menstruation and abortal pains. Biologist Lenore May notes that maidenhair fronds were distilled into syrups to mitigate “female disorders” by Indigenous Americans.[14] The American Adiantum pedatum variety of maidenhair was interpreted by colonists as interchangeable with the English variety, Adiantum capillus-veneris. “Maiden Hair, or Cappellus veneris verus” was recommended by John Josselyn in 1672  “For all manner of Fluxes.” In 1653, Nicholas Culpeper remarked that fern can “purge the belly” and “cause abortion.”[15] Sharp, on cures for womb ulcers that have degenerated into fistulas, recommended a “vulnerary decoction”–used to aid in the healing of wounds– of, among other ingredients, the “roots of male fern.”

Purgation and reinstatement of proper flow are central, so the removal of a deceased fetus was also relevant. Postpartum hemorrhage, or “bloody flux” after delivery, was certainly a death sentence, to say nothing of resulting childbed fevers and infections. The Seneca practiced some form of herbal family limitation for centuries preconquest,[16] but the conflation of abortifacients used for non-abortive reproductive health purposes has led to confusion: overall, both Indigenous and English women placed emphasis on bodily flow. This emphasis in Indigenous communities is compounded by their use of sweat lodges and herb-smoking,[17] mirrored in European reproductive healthcare back to the medieval period.[18]

When we privilege “flow” as a search term, we begin to understand more about the history of colonization, and health writ large. Flow is inherent in the medium of the recipe book, too: as Wendy Wall argues, recipes represent a transitional space, the movement from “raw to cooked…nature to art, from shapeless materia to cultural product.”[19] The epistemology of the recipe book is then one predicated on flow, just as was the success of an early modern reproductive remedy.
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Fiona O’Brien is a second year PhD student in history at Fordham University, where she is a Loyola Distinguished Fellow and works as a writing tutor to undergraduate students. She recently completed a funded Scholarly Programs Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, during which she presented work on early modern abortion. She presented papers focused on early modern reproductive history at several conferences over the course of her first year of the PhD, including one which analyzed the medical character of late medieval fertility and birth rituals and compared them to early modern remedy. She completed her BA and MA at the University of Toronto. During this latter degree, she was supervised by Dr. Nicholas Terpstra in the completion of her thesis, entitled “Our Groans to God: The Synching of Sensory and Emotional Experience During the Early Modern Birth Process,” and worked as a graduate promotions fellow at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies.

Works Cited
Primary Sources

Barton, Benjamin Smith. Collections for an Essay towards a Materia Medica of the United States. Philadelphia, 1798. The National Library of Medicine. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/2542050R

Culpeper, Nicholas. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal: Over 400 Herbs and their Uses. Edited by Diana Vowles. Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2009.

Herrick, James W., and Dean R. Snow. Iroquois Medical Botany. 1st ed. The Iroquois and Their Neighbors. Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Kettilby, Mary. A collection of above three hundred recipes in cookery, physick and surgery: for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses. The second edition. London: Printed for Mary Kettilby, 1719. National Library of Medicine. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov

Packe, Susanna. Cookbook of Susanna Packe [manuscript].1 674. Folger Shakespeare Library, V.a.215. https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Recipe_books_at_the_Folger_Shakespeare_Library

Plant Atlas 2020. Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Biological Records Center, UK. https://plantatlas2020.org/atlas/.

PLANTS Database. Natural Resources Conservation Service. U.S. Department of Agriculture, https://plants.usda.gov/

Sharp, Jane. The midwives book, or, The whole art of midwifry discovered.: Directing childbearing women how to behave themselves in their conception, breeding, bearing, and nursing of children in six books. London: Printed for Simon Miller, at the Star at the West End of St. Pauls, 1671. Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership and digital collection Early English Books Online 2. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A93039.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.

Wood, William. New England’s Prospect. London, 1634. In O’Brien, Jean M. “‘Divorced’ from the Land: Resistance and Survival of Indian Women in Eighteenth-Century New England”  In Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing. Eds. Kugel, Rebecca and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, eds., University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Secondary Sources

Chaplin, Joyce E. Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500 – 1676. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Cooper, Alix. Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Kugel, Rebecca and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, eds. Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing. University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Kumar, Dinesh, Ajay Kumar, and Om Prakash. “Potential Antifertility Agents from Plants: A Comprehensive Review.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 140, no. 1 (2012): 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2011.12.039.

May, Lenore Wile. “The Economic Uses and Associated Folklore of Ferns and Fern Allies.” Botanical Review 44, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec., 1978), pp. 491-528. Springer, New York Botanical Garden Press.

Mendelson, Sara Heller, and Patricia Crawford. Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720. Clarendon Press, 1998.

Rublack, Ulinka, and Pamela Selwyn. “Fluxes: The Early Modern Body and the Emotions.” History Workshop Journal, no. 53 (2002): 1–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4289771.

Shoemaker, Nancy.  “The Rise or Fall of Iroquois Women.”  In Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing. Eds. Kugel, Rebecca and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, eds., University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Tannenbaum, Rebecca J. Health and Wellness in Colonial America. Health and Wellness in Daily Life. Greenwood, 2012.

Totelin, Laurence M.V. “A Woman in Flux: Fluidity in Hippocratic Gynaecology.”  Holism in Ancient Medicine and Its Reception, ed. Thumiger, Chiara. Studies in Ancient Medicine: 53. Brill, 2021.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, and Martha Ballard. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. 1st Vintage Books ed. Vintage Books, 1991.

Volo, James and Dorothy. Family Life in Native America. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007.

Wall, Wendy. Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Weisser, Olivia. Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England. Yale University Press, 2015.

[1] William Wood, New England’s Prospect (London, 1634), in Jean M. O’Brien, “‘Divorced’ from the Land: Resistance and Survival of Indian Women in Eighteenth-Century New England,” Rebecca Kugel and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, eds., Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing, (University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 353. Colonizing men made similar observations toward Black women in the Caribbean; for more information, see Jennifer L. Morgan, “‘Some could suckle over their shoulder’: male travelers, female bodies, and the gendering of racial ideology, 1500-1770,” The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 167-192.

[2] Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),  44.

[3] Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500 – 1676, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 133-134.

[4] Ulinka Rublack and Pamela Selwyn, “Fluxes: The Early Modern Body and the Emotions,” History Workshop Journal, no. 53 (2002), 1-2.

[5] Sara Heller Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 20.

[6] Laurence M.V. Totelin, “A Woman in Flux: Fluidity in Hippocratic Gynaecology,” Holism in Ancient Medicine and Its Reception, ed. Chiara Thumiger, Studies in Ancient Medicine: 53. Brill (2021) 220.

[7] Dinesh Kumar, Ajay Kumar, and Om Prakash, “Potential Antifertility Agents from Plants: A Comprehensive Review,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 140, no. 1 (2012): 1–32.

[8]James W. Herrick and Dean R. Snow, Iroquois Medical Botany, 1st ed, The Iroquois and Their Neighbors, Syracuse University Press, 1995, 142

[9]  James W. Herric, Iroquois Medical Botany, 1st ed, (Syracuse University Press, 1995), 119.

[10] Kettilby. A collection, 133-134

[11] Benjamin Smith Barton, Collections for an Essay towards a Materia Medica of the United States, (Philadelphia, 1798, The National Library of Medicine), 9.

[12] Rebecca J. Tannenbaum, Health and Wellness in Colonial America, Health and Wellness in Daily Life, (Greenwood, 2012),  60-61.

[13] Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Martha Ballard, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, 1st Vintage Books ed. Vintage Books, 1991, 407.

[14] Lenore Wile May, “The Economic Uses and Associated Folklore of Ferns and Fern Allies,” Botanical Review 44, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec., 1978), Springer, New York Botanical Garden Press, 508.

[15]  Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal: Over 400 Herbs and their Uses, edited by Diana Vowles, (Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2009), 158.

[16] Nancy Shoemaker, “The Rise or Fall of Iroquois Women,” in Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900, eds. Rebecca Kugel and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 318.

[17] James and Dorothy Volo, Family Life in Native America, (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), 95.

[18] Monica Helen Green, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine.

[19] Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016),  5.

Nun Chai: A Story from Trade Routes to Survival

Namkeen Chai at pastoralists meadow also called Dhok in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. Image courtesy of the author.
Namkeen Chai at pastoralists meadow also called Dhok in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. Image courtesy of the author.

By Garima Sudhan

The popular understanding of Kashmir is heavily anchored in its selective portrayal of cultural symbols, wherein its food and clothing practices are used as bait to increase tourism attraction. Kashmir’s tea culture is no stranger to this trend. Upon entering Kashmir, the spectacle of commodification is at play for consumable experiences of tourists, often washing away the histories behind these practices. Prominent commodities in this case would be the Kashmir tea and Kehwa. Kashmiri salt tea or nun chai is well renowned.  It is a hot, salty beverage with a pink colour that is quite different to sweet tea varieties prevalent throughout South Asia. Prepared with a thorough brewing of green tea leaves and a little bit of salt, it is known as nun chai or namkeen chai  in Kashmir. The tea leaves and preparation are different from Indian chai. At present, it is also made quickly with the addition of soda powder that accelerates its color and preparation. This method is widely used in households today as it is less time consuming

Traditionally brewed in a Samovar, nun chai holds cultural and political significance. The Samovar was introduced in Kashmir during the early modern period via trade contact with Persian and Central Asia. Samovars are a staple in a Russian tea culture that gradually made its way to Asia.  In Kashmir, tea is brewed in a copper vessel with intricate motifs, finished with a lustrous nickel coating (qalai), making it both a work of art and a household essential.

Preparation of Kashmiri tea has significant components: the method of brewing, the right aroma, and, most importantly colour. The way of presenting it also sets it apart from what is usually served in other parts of South Asia. There are various regional variants of Kashmiri tea as well.  In the Kashmir valley it is called nun chai or salt tea, but in the mountains of Kashmir, it is also known as namkeen chai, sabz chai. The pastoralists of Kashmir often prepare tea with a little bit of sugar and corn flour. This preparation is popular in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.  From Ladakh’s “Gur Gur chai” (butter tea) with yak butter, the pink tea has evolved into variants across the region. The preparation of this tea has evolved with time and has been contingent to the trade scenario, especially tea bricks and the salt trade. Sources like the Tarikh-i-Kashmir by Hasan Bin Ali Kashmiri from the early modern period (Mughal rule) give us an idea of the tea trade and its consumption patterns in Kashmir. The many ways of making and consuming salt tea  reflect its historical variation across the region, which was dictated by local ingredient availability and trade.

The undivided region of Kashmir has served as a crucial gateway to Central Asia, Yarkand, and Tibet, especially due to its geographical proximity to silk routes. Here, Kashmir refers to the political entity under Dogra rule, comprising Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan. The Mughal occupation of Kashmir in 1586 not only created favourable conditions for trade with Central Asia but also gave a push to Kashmir’s trade with other neighbouring regions. There were two famous trade routes to Central Asia. One was through Gilgit and Kashgar, and the other, from Skardu to Yarkand, crossing the Baltoro glacier. During the early modern period, Kashmiri products like saffron, shawls, and fruits were imported to the rest of the Mughal empire. Furthermore, the Pashmina wool and tea trade flourished. ​

Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.
Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.

Ladakh and Tibet maintained a close trade relationship through official missions, regulated by the Treaty of Tingmosgang, signed in 1684, under which Ladakh got the monopoly over shawl-wool in Tibet, and the Tibetans acquired the exclusive right to the brick-tea trade with Ladakh . These missions continued with some interruptions under Dogra rule until 1946 and came to a complete halt with the annexation of Tibet. The Lapchak, a triennial mission from Leh to Lhasa led by a senior monk and a Muslim merchant, carried presents and was viewed by Tibet as a tribute mission. In return, the annual Chapba (tea man) mission traveled from Lhasa to Leh, bringing Chinese brick tea for sale. The most vital commodity was Pashmina wool. Ladakh held a monopoly on this wool trade, constituting up to half of its trade, which it supplied to Kashmiri weavers. In the late 1840s, merchandise valued at about seven and a half lakh rupees was exchanged in Ladakh.​

Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.
Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.

Arjun Appadurai and Anne Allison argue that food is a political and cultural signifier, but they analyse it with different social scales. Appadurai, in his concept of gastro-politics, argues that food is socially condensed. For him, the politics of food are embedded in the routine practices that define social belonging. 

Cultural anthropologist Anne Allison examines the macro-level of state ideology and social structures. She argues that food preparation and aesthetics are mobilized as an ideological state apparatus to reinforce political agendas. Borrowing from these arguments, one can study the evolution and survival of Kashmiri tea across centuries of foreign rule. Under severe militarisation and violent historical ruptures, Kashmiri tea has been an important identity marker of Kashmiris in different parts of the world. Even under constraints like curfew, warlike situation, military crackdowns, Kashmiris seek nun chai as opposed to the more affordable Indian chai (known as Lipton chai). Kashmir has been a melting pot of cultures – under the Dogras and after its partition, Kashmir has witnessed a violent history of integration and control. Therefore, understanding Kashmiri food culture requires recognising its precarious political realities, wherein culinary traditions have contributed in  strengthening  solidarities and identity preservation. 

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Garima Sudan is a graduate student in the Department of History and Archaeology at Shiv Nadar University, New Delhi.  Their work is based on understanding social histories in post partitioned Kashmir, especially through concepts of space and belonging. They like to learn new languages and when not working, they spend time in the mountains of Kashmir. They aspire to bridge the gap between academic practice and community work.

References

​Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro‐politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist.

Allison, Anne. (1991). Lunchbox as Ideological State. Anthropological Quarterly.  

Huttenback, Robert A.(1961). Gulab Singh and the Creation of the Dogra State of Jammu,

Kashmir and Ladakh. Journal of Asian Studies.

Karim, Afsar. (1994). Kashmir: The Troubled Frontiers. New Delhi: Lancer Publishers.

Keay, John. (1977). When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas

Lamb, Alastair. (1960). The Road to Lhasa.London.

Lawrence, Walter.(1895). The Valley of Kashmir. London.

Noble, Christina. (1991). At Home in the Himalayas. London: Fontana

Rai, Mridu. (2004).  Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir. Permanent Black.

Rizvi, J. (1996). Ladakh: Crossroads of High Asia. Oxford University Press.

Rizvi, Janet. (1999). A Self-Reliant Economy: The Role of Trade in Pre- Independence Ladakh. Ladakh Studies

Rizvi, Janet. (1999). Trans-Himalayan Caravans, Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in

Ladakh. Oxford University Press.

Torrens, H.D. 1863). Travels in Ladakh, Tartary and Kashmir. London: Saunders Otley.

Vigne, G.T. 1842. Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo etc. London: Henry Colburn.

Van Beek, M, & Pirie, F. (2008). Modern Ladakh : anthropological perspectives on continuity and change.

 

Preparedness for the Unexpected: Expedient Recipes for Survival in Wartime China

By Chang Xu

If you were stocking up on disaster relief supplies, what kind of reference would you want by your side? Expedient Formulas for Military Marches (1852) reads like just such a survival guide. Compiled during and after the turmoil of the First Opium War (1839-1842) and the Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), this text wasn’t intended solely for military use, despite what its title suggests. In the preface, the compiler Luo Shiyao explained that the collection grew out of his personal encounters with everyday illnesses.[i] His project belonged to a longer literati tradition in which scholars compiled and published practical encyclopedias and daily-use compendia, creating their own textual museums of useful knowledge. Since disease during military campaigns could be especially debilitating, as Luo observed, remedies proven effective under such extreme conditions then held particular value for the wider public, meeting an urgent need for survival in wartime.[ii]

Black-and-white text fills a page of Expedient Formulas for Military Marches.
Fig. 1. Preface of Expedient Formulas for Military Marches. Digitized and online at Google Books, URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/行軍方便便方/hylWAAAAcAAJ?hl=en.

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The manual contains 679 recipes, organized into six sections (see Table 1). What began as a personal collection of useful prescriptions unexpectedly revealed the remarkable efficacy of “expedient recipes” (bianfang). These recipes arguably relied only on ingredients that were familiar and accessible to readers: beans, chestnuts, vegetables, tea, and other mundane materials. They didn’t require rare or costly components, nor did they depend on professional diagnoses or individualized modification. Yet, when followed as directed, they consistently produced immediate, reliable results. In effect, the manual empowered its users to be their own doctors, as Yi-Li Wu also noticed in the case of women’s medicine.

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Section # of recipes
Preparedness for the Unexpected 26
Preventive Defense 45
Treating Injuries 117
Curing Illnesses 309
Rescue and Relief 71
Miscellaneous Addenda 111
  Total: 679

Fittingly, most of the recipes focus on treating injuries and illnesses, reflecting the compilation’s original purpose. But it is the recipes for preparing food and drink for the unexpected that appear first—framing the two as the foundation of survival. To underscore this point, Luo drew on a grim catalog of historical episodes, including accounts of cannibalism during sieges and famine, to convey the urgency of such knowledge.[iii] In response, he assembled a diverse range of recipes from pharmacopeias, medical texts, and agriculture manuals, offering practical strategies for preserving food, reducing consumption, identifying substitutes, and finding safe drinking water.

The first group of recipes, all titled “Method for Avoiding Grain and Preventing Hunger During Military Marches,” offers strategies for reducing food intake while sustaining the body during prolonged periods of deprivation. One of them reads:

Astragalus root (huangqi), 3 qian (approximately 11.19g)

Red halloysite clay (chi shizhi), 3 qian

Dragon bone (fossilized bone), 3 qian

Siler root (fangfeng), 5 fen (approximately 1.9g)

Processed aconite root (wutou), 1 qian (approximately 3.73g)

Roast [the ingredients] until dry, then pound in a stone mortar one thousand times. Refine [the resulting powder] with honey to form bullet-sized pills. When traveling urgently with no time to prepare food, eat a full meal of rice beforehand, then take one pill to sustain a journey of 500 li (approximately 165 miles). Two pills will keep you going for 1,000 li.[iv]

For readers who found the ingredients in this recipe uncommon or difficult to obtain, the manual offers more accessible alternatives. One recipe, for instance, recommends steaming asplenium trichomanes (tiejiao fengwei cao; literally, iron-foot phoenix-tail grass) together with black beans. Eating five to seven of these infused beans is said to keep hunger at bay for an entire day.[v]

Fig. 2. Asplenium trichomanes from Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé;s Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (1885). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Beyond simply reducing food intake, some recipes go further by offering ways to transform inedible materials into food. One recipe, quoted from the renowned pharmacopeia Ben cao gang mu (Systematic Materia Medica), describes how to render rock edible:

Gather white stones from mountain streams, and boil them in juice from scallions or with the root of sanguisorba officinalis (diyu). Once cooked, they become as soft as taro and can serve as a hunger remedy. This is called “stone soup” (shigeng).[vi]

Likely originating in Daoist texts, “stone stops” carried cultural weight in literati writings and poetry as part of the cuisines of transcendence. While Daoist sources emphasized absorbing the qi of stones produced through this cooking method, Luo’s inclusion of this recipe highlights its practical utility rather than its association with longevity-inducing nourishment found in other texts. [vii]

Food poisoning was another major concern addressed in the treatise. As Luo noted, there are cases where troops suffered from consuming poor food, resulting in swelling, shortness of breath, and death. In the “Rescue and Relief” section, therefore, he gathered guidance on identifying toxic plants and animals, as well as detecting contaminated water and spoiled fruits. He warned that if a dead animal’s mouth remains closed, its liver appears dark, or its flesh is marked with black spots, the meat should not be consumed.[viii] In this part of the collection, the focus shifts from treating the ill to equipping readers with the knowledge to avoid contaminated food in the first place.

Luo Shiyao’s effort to compile practical knowledge parallels the work of late Ming scholars who sought to collect and classify natural objects, as Benjamin Elman has discussed. Amid the twin crises of warfare and illness, Luo’s manual offered not only remedies but also a structure for navigating chaos, something tangible readers could hold onto. By using recipes, Luo drew on what Marta Hanson and Gianna Pomata have identified as the strengths of medical formulars in transmitting knowledge: their modularity and experiential basis made them easy to adapt and share.[ix] Yet such recipes typically required learned physicians to turn a generic formula into a specific prescription. Luo’s collection attempted to break from that model. His emphasis on expediency—on accessibility, broad applicability, and consistent outcomes—shifted the power of care from professional practices to ordinary individuals. It was a solitary act of hope, an effort to make order out of chaos, and to leave behind something enduring when so much had already been lost.

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[i] The author did not specify the types of illnesses he had experience in the preface. However, based on the section “Curing Illnesses,” the compilation addresses various conditions such as coughing, colds, diarrhea, headaches, toothaches, lower back pain, as well as ulcers and skin diseases.

[ii] Luo Shiyao羅世瑤, Xingjun fangbian bianfang 行军方便便方Expedient Formulas for Military Marches (1852), Preface, 1a.

[iii] Luo, Xingjun fangbian bianfang, Preface, 1b.

[iv] Luo, Xingjun fangbian bianfang, Vol. 1, 1b.

[v] Luo, Xingjun fangbian bianfang, Vol. 1, 1b.

[vi] Luo, Xingjun fangbian bianfang, Vol. 1, 3b.

[vii] Luo, Xingjun fangbian bianfang, Vol. 1, 3b.

[viii] One of the example could be found in Lin Hong 林洪 (1127-1279), “Bai shigeng” 白石羹 (White Stone Stop), in Shanjia qinggong 山家清供 Simple and pure cuisine of Master Mountain Dwelling, https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%B1%B1%E5%AE%B6%E6%B8%85%E4%BE%9B.

[ix] Hanson, Marta, and Gianna Pomata. “Medicinal Formulas and Experiential Knowledge in the Seventeenth-Century Epistemic Exchange between China and Europe.” Isis 108, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 20. https://doi.org/10.1086/691411.

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Chang Xu is an assistant professor in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University. Her research interests cover the global history of medicine, the history of military technologies, and the interconnections between human and non-human bodies. She is currently working on a monograph derived from her PhD research at Washington University in St. Louis, which examines medical practices in military organizations during the Qing’s territorial expansion.

Gaza “War Recipes”: Cooking as Survival and Resistance in Displacement

By Noha Atef

In Gaza’s displacement camps, cooking has taken on a new meaning. It is no longer just a routine task; it has become a form of survival, storytelling, and resistance.

Since October 2023, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza strip have been forced from their homes, taking refuge in makeshift tents, often with little more than flour, canned goods, and the clay ovens they crafted. Amid this devastation, a form of digital documentation emerged: Instagram reels of people cooking with what little they have. These are not typical food videos. They are war recipes, or wasfat harb, shared in the middle of crisis.

A steaming pot sits over an open flame.
Fig. 1. The recipe for ‘Tuna Pot,’ described by the content creator as “one of the war recipes,” is designed to maximize the use of canned tuna provided in food aid to help overcome food scarcity. Image courtesy of the author.

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Between March and July 2024, I analyzed 100 of these Instagram reels, all produced by displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza. Using a mixed-method approach that combined content analysis with close discourse analysis, I explored how food becomes a medium through which people express resilience, preserve cultural identity, and push back against the flattening gaze of humanitarian imagery.

Much of the content comes from mothers improvising traditional stews without their essential ingredients. In each video, the act of cooking transcends the immediate need to eat and becomes a demonstration of resilience. The American Psychology Association research describes resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, or significant stress. It is not the absence of suffering, but the ability to persist despite it. In these reels, resilience is visible in the determination to recreate a dish, to feed a child something warm, to maintain rituals amid ruin.

The impact of war on the naming of dishes is particularly striking. Traditional meals, adapted with whatever substitutes are available, are often labeled as “false” or “orphan” versions. For example, maqluba, a beloved Palestinian dish typically made with chicken or lamb, is referred to as false maqluba in the camps due to the absence of meat. New dishes have also been invented based on aid parcels, often called “resilwar inventions” or “war recipes.” One such example is luncheon meat shawarma, a substitute for beef shawarma, where the canned meat is colloquially known as “war meat.”

Two dishes of eggplant fattah sit on a white board. A hand holding a spoon hovers above.
Fig. 2. An adaptation of Eggplant Fattah, a vegan traditional dish. Titled by the creator as “The Amazing Eggplant Fattah, Best Salads in the War.” The dish is elegantly plated, with a carefully chosen cooking spot to enhance its visual appeal. Image courtesy of author.

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Some recipes carry names that reflect the emotional landscape of displacement. Displacement Molokhia marks the first meal prepared by a family after fleeing their home. Tent pies refer to the first baked goods made by a woman in a tent for her family. These names do more than describe what’s on the plate. They document a collective experience and underscore the adaptability of displaced Palestinians navigating extreme hardship.

These recipes are about far more than nutrition. They serve as psychological and emotional coping mechanisms. Resilience, in this context, is not just about enduring. It is about adapting creatively under pressure and maintaining a sense of purpose and identity in the face of chaos. Additionally, the traditional dishes were emphasized as a symbol of home, which explains the garnishing of these meals despite the scarcity of food, likely done with the intention of showcasing Palestine to the world in the best possible light. Every traditional Palestinian dish was carefully garnished and neatly presented.

In contrast to mainstream media coverage that often portrays displaced people solely as recipients of aid, these reels offer a counternarrative. They present Palestinians not as passive victims but as agents of creativity and resistance. Cooking, normally coded as a domestic act, becomes political. It offers an alternative narrative to one of victimhood. It says: we are still here, we still cook, we still care. Through these everyday acts, people reassert identity, continuity, and connection in conditions designed to erase them.

The message of resilience through food was powerfully underscored by the chosen settings in many videos. While displaced Gazans often selected what appeared to be a ‘nice’ place to cook, this typically meant a spot near a surviving tree, a powerful symbol of Palestine, or one decorated with a keffiyeh. Some framed their shots tightly to avoid capturing the surrounding devastation. In many instances, people returned to the rubble of their destroyed homes (these videos and research were published prior to the brief ceasefire in January 2025), retrieved what dishes they could, and baked sweets directly among the ruins. They shared coffee and pastries in the remnants of their kitchens. Sweets, often associated with comfort, celebration, and happiness, carried a deeper message when prepared among the ruins: we love being at home, even if it’s been destroyed.

Two hands mix brioche ingredients in a small white bowl. Destroyed buildings and rubble can be seen just behind the bowl and in the background.
Fig. 3. A Palestinian woman baking brioche in her demolished home, after retrieving her kitchenware from beneath the rubble. Image courtesy of author.

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Palestinian food has always been tightly woven with questions of land, belonging, and resistance. But these war recipes reveal a new dimension: food as protest, as witness, as archive. In the absence of proper kitchens or ingredients, displaced Gazans are creating a digital record of survival, one that blends taste, memory, and defiance.

References

American Psychological Association. Building your resilience. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience.

Heldke, Lisa. Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Holtzman, Jon D. Uncertain Tastes: Memory, Ambivalence, and the Politics of Eating in Samburu, Northern Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Masten, Ann S. “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development.” American Psychologist 56, no. 3 (2001): 227–238.

Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.


Noha Atef is an Egyptian media scholar, educator, and consultant. She is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Galway. With a background in journalism, she transitioned into academia, focusing on digital humanities and media studies. Atef has held positions at universities and think tanks in the UK and Canada. As a consultant, she advises journalists and researchers in the Arab and Euro-Mediterranean regions on producing impactful social science research, including policy papers and industry-focused studies. Her work, published in both English and Arabic, has reached audiences across the Arab world, Europe, and Asia. She is also a recognized media commentator, providing analysis on various platforms.