Category Archives: New Work Forum

Stretching the Boundaries

By Lino Mioni

Roselli, G. d. Epulario quale tratta del modo de cucinare ogni carne, ucelli, pesci de ogni sorte, et fare sapori, torte, et pastelli al modo de tutte le provincie / [giovanni de roselli]. Venice: 1538. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
Roselli, G. d. Epulario quale tratta del modo de cucinare ogni carne, ucelli, pesci de ogni sorte, et fare sapori, torte, et pastelli al modo de tutte le provincie / [giovanni de roselli]. Venice: 1538. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

Collating together in one single volume the medical and culinary knowledge and recipes, or any other form of instructions, of food preservation and fermentation, is an activity that has been performed by many social groups, regardless of size (be it family, estate, professional association, church, congregation). Usually in manuscript form, these recipe collections are the essence of shared culinary traditions and common knowledge and, ultimately, they are brought into existence by a desire to protect and preserve that knowledge and traditions for future generations. 

Not having the tangible economic value and purpose of their printed counterparts, manuscript culinary recipe collections represent a type of text that can offer a wide range of analysis exactly because of their more intrinsically personal and variable nature. Due to their different origins, scope, and purpose, these manuscript recipe collections can assume varied forms; they can be prepared exclusively for personal use or for collective fruition; they can be prepared to be shared with individuals outside of the social group or not; they can be created for simply preserving the common shared knowledge of a specific social group or to praise and extol the social group that produced them; and they can also be considered as cultural objects. These different types of culinary recipe collections are the focus of Kernan’s and Müllneritsch’s edited volume Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800. The nine contributions to the edited volume focus on culinary texts: the way these nine contributions are organized within the edited volume richly illustrates the wide scope of the research being done on manuscript culinary texts while, and at the same time, it stretches the boundaries of the research field itself. 

Ultimately, culinary texts are fascinating due to the low degree of authorship they display. One can claim authorship of a story, of a poem, of a play, or an idea, but is it even conceivable claiming authorship of the set of instructions for a culinary preparation, which is, by definition, shared and common knowledge? Although a person might inscribe herself/himself as the initial compiler of a manuscript recipe collection, this person is just the organizer and editor of the chosen contents. Moreover, in case of family recipe collections more than one initial individual might collaborate by commenting on, adding to, and expanding the recipes of the original collection.

Two concepts that stand out throughout the volume are recipe collection and dissemination. Collecting recipes, when it comes to manuscripts culinary recipe compendia, at least in early modern and modern times, implies combining personal or household traditions with knowledge from attestors(such as geographical region or personal connection via recipes offered by friends, a person from another family, etc.), along with other information collated and collected from a variety of other sources: printed books, other publications, etc. In this latter case, although not impossible, the source of that recipe is not always easy to trace. Culinary recipe collections dissemination, although much easily detectable when it comes to printed cookbooks, is also present in the manuscript tradition. Recipes can be translated and transcribed in another language, giving access to culinary traditions of foreign countries. In this respect the chapters on Sir Martin’s Westcombe’s Iberian Recipes by Annamaria Valent and on Finnish manuscript recipe books by Maren Jonasson and Märtha Norrback are particularly interesting since, although in different social and historical contexts, they reveal how not only culinary recipes and food preparations but ingredients can be disseminated beyond geographical and regional boundaries.

I mentioned before that Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800 by Sarah Peters Kernan and Helga Müllneritsch stretches the boundaries of the research field that focuses on manuscript recipe books. By giving a wider geographical scope to the research being done, this volume will not only entice further research and investigation, but also, and hopefully, expand the representation of other culinary traditions within the European continent within the research community.

Lino Mioni is Subject Librarian for Romance Languages and Literatures, Latin American Studies, and Linguistics at Washington University in St Louis Libraries. In his PhD dissertation (Indiana University 2020), he analyzes the 14th and 15th century traditions of culinary recipe collections of the Italian peninsula and investigates how these recipe collections are reappropriated and disseminated in printed editions. The introduction of print changed, among many other things, how culinary knowledge was produced, shared, and, consequently, used. Maestro Martino, and the manuscripts attributed to him, are a paradigmatic example of how a culinary recipe collection in manuscript form were used and circulated through print and by print. The many printed editions of the Epulario, which take the text from the Maestro Martino’s tradition, shed light on the editorial success a culinary recipe collection can have once it is transposed from manuscript to printed form, as well as on the characteristics of 16th and 17th century popular print culture.

Recipes in Cultural Flow

By Anil Paralkar

Attr. Rin Shihei, "Dutch people at the meal," Japan, ca. 1790-1810, color woodcut on paper, NG-1978-110, Rijksmuseum.
Attr. Rin Shihei, “Nederlanders aan de maaltijd,” Japan, ca. 1790-1810, color woodcut on paper, NG-1978-110, Rijksmuseum. In the image, two enslaved people from the Indonesian archipelago serve food and drink to five white Dutch men; they are probably intended to symbolise VOC personnel on Deshima/Dejima.

Understanding global exchanges has played a central role in food history research in recent decades. Recipes, as a type of source, present both challenges and opportunities when it comes to investigating cultural flows. Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800 offers a series of case studies on topics such as English-Iberian and Finnish-Swedish culinary interactions, as well as the introduction of ingredients from the Americas to the Iberian Peninsula. Beyond offering a number of case studies, the volume reminds us that recipe collections are “material and textual manifestations of familial, friendship, and professional networks” and that they “contain traces of the places that people, ingredients, and recipes travel.” (Kernan, Müllneritsch, 25) The various contributions to the volume follow such traces and highlight how recipes showcase regional and global cultural flows.

As expected for the early modern period, many of the recipe collections under discussion show the influx of non-European ingredients. These ingredients serve not only as expressions of a new economic globalization, but also as evidence of how ingredients were adapted and adopted in new foodscapes. Yet Culinary Texts in Context provides its most valuable insights into cultural interaction not merely through analyses of ingredients, but by exploring how the transmission of recipes contributed to the creation of particular culinary texts. We learn how Philipp Hainhofer, agent to August of Saxony, assembled the ducal book collection with its culinary texts in Germany, Austria, and Italy (Denicolò, 71-74); which donors informed Sir Martin Westcombe’s Iberian recipes (Valent, 103-108); how familial connections between Swedish and Finnish upper social strata facilitated recipe exchanges in the 18th and 19th centuries (Jonasson, Norrback, 125-130, 150-151); how Maria Clara Dückher assembled her recipe collection with the help of family networks; or how Mary Leadbeater’s culinary collecting in 18th/19th century Ireland was nurtured through correspondences (Ridolfo, 265-270).

Tracing these paths of transmission offers a deeper understanding of the processes of inclusion and hybridization of foods and dishes. It tells the story of why certain collectors included unfamiliar recipes in their culinary texts, or how they even acquired such recipes in the first place. Analyzing signs of use—such as stains or marginalia—can also provide insight into whether such transmissions concerned mere textual knowledge or were part of culinary practices. By combining sources on the genesis of culinary texts, such as correspondence and diaries, with internal evidence from the culinary texts themselves, we gain an understanding of the “microhistories” (Valent, 101) of culinary cultural flows. At this intersection, we can begin to determine whether a recipe in a collection was the result of culinary transculturation—shaped by influences from all involved spheres of culinary culture—or whether it was an outcome of a superficial cross-cultural impetus that unleashed little cultural transformation. As Isabel Braga notes, there is an important distinction between “a recipe from a certain place” and one “in the style of.” (Braga, 197) Recipes “in the style of” are often found in early modern culinary texts, indicating a region of origin, such as Indian pickles. These recipes typically draw on ingredients or preparation methods characteristic of a specific region but were not collected in that region. Instead, they were recorded in the recipe author’s home region, often with modifications that reflect the culinary culture of the author or projected ideas of culinary otherness onto an imagined region of origin. In contrast, recipes like those of Francisco Broges Henrique from Brazil (Braga, 196-198), Martin Westcombe’s from Spain (Valent, 101-108), or, on a local scale, the recipes transferred by traveling confectioners between Barcelona and Northeastern Catalonia (Manzanares Mileo, 173-177), speak of an actual engagement with ingredients and methods from one region and how they were adapted and integrated into new foodscapes. The distinction made by Braga, is key to understanding how the cross- and transculturation of recipes operated within systems of global communicative and power imbalances.

As Marlene Ernst observes, while it may be possible to trace the transfer of specific recipes, these were often “adapted to local languages and dialects.” (Ernst, 230) In many cases, it may not be possible to locate additional sources, such as correspondence or diaries, that detail the transfer of culinary texts. However, by tracing similar recipes across different collections, we can examine the changes between them and investigate the linguistic shifts Ernst mentions. Culinary Texts in Context demonstrates how the history of culinary text transmission through individual actors and their networks, the use of ingredients, and forms of describing a ‘culinary other’ in recipes offer rich opportunities for understanding how culinary cultural flows operated in the early modern period.

Anil Paralkar currently writes his PhD on early modern European ideas about Indian food and foodways at Heidelberg University. He is also a lecturer at Witten/Herdecke University, where he explores the history of Renaissance and early modern knowledge with his students. In his research, he investigates how Renaissance and early modern European writers projected a culinary ‘other’ onto India and how the European presence on the subcontinent altered these projections. In this endeavor, he also published on the earliest English recipes for South Asian food. His interests include postcolonial and transcultural theory, global food history, and a good meal.

Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800: My Five Cents

By Thomas Gloning, University of Gießen, Germany

Leonhardt Thurneysser: Historia Vnnd Beschreibung Influentischer/ Elementischer vnd Natürlicher Wirckungen/ Aller fremden vnnd Heimischen Erdgewechssen (…). 1578; extract from page 76. BSB Munich, URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10147818-8

Reading Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800 was immensely enriching for me. Coming from linguistics with a focus on Medieval and Early Modern culinary and medical texts, the volume has reminded and shown me how much research perspectives have evolved during the last two decades and how much research has been done both on food texts and on medical literature in Latin and in the vernaculars. Here, I want to highlight five aspects of the edited volume or of some of its contributions.

Firstly, the temporal range (16th to early 19th centuries), the broad geographical range, the spectrum on culinary, medical, cosmetic, confectionary recipes, the analysis of both private and professional manuscripts and the richness of research questions provide a complex and inspiring matrix of the research field. While reading, I often said to myself: “Now, this is something that you did not yet encounter in your own previous research.” Which made me wonder: Was it not there? Or could I just not see it? In the future, I will look at German culinary and medical manuscripts differently.

Secondly, the contributions are a treasure trove in respect of bibliographic documentation. Earlier in this century, I tried to provide a “Bibliography on the history of cookery, food, wine etc., mainly 1350-1800” on the web , a project I gave up around 2013. The bibliographic sections of our volume show how much the body of research has grown recently and that a multi-faceted (languages, fields of practice, regions, gender, digitized sources, …) bibliographical data-base would be a valuable research tool. Or does such a multi-faceted bibliographical tool already exist?

Thirdly, in several contributions, one or more manuscripts are under scrutiny. E.g., Isabel Braga gives a systematically structured account of Franciso Borges Henriques‘ Portuguese Cookbook from 1715. In other contributions, several manuscripts are characterised (e.g. Barbara Denicolò) or a specific aspect of a cookery text is highlighted (e.g. in “Sir Martin Westcombe’s Iberian Recipes”). Which made me think about the relation of “broad and systematically structured accounts” of culinary or medical manuscripts vs. strategies of highlighting specific aspects of manuscripts for certain purposes. In respect to a “broad and systematically structured account,” one might ask: What are obligatory and optional topics of such a “portrait” of a culinary (medical, confectionary) manuscript? This question is essential for everybody writing a praefatio to an edition of a culinary manuscript. But the question is: What has to be dealt with in an editorial praefatio, what can be outsourced to special investigations? Anyway: It is good to have an overview about the aspects to deal or not to deal with in a portrait of a culinary or medical text. The contributions in our volume provide good examples for different strategies.

Fourthly, the chapter on “How to Be a Perfect Confectioner?” by Marta Manzanares Mileo contributes to an intersection field of professional/private and culinary/medical interests. It is highly interesting to see how the guilds of Barcelona used knowledge texts, or “repertoires of artisanal knowledge” (p. 177) to organize both training in and access to their craft. In this chapter and in other places in the volume we find very useful references to the vernacular tradition on confectionary making (e.g. Hannah Wooley, Serrano Larráyoz), which would deserve a more in-depth comparative study in the future. German language sources on this topic include Walter Ryff’s Confect Buch und Hauß Apoteck of 1544 (mentioned on p. 80, later editions), the German translation of Michel Nostradamus of 1572, and the translation of Nicolas Bonnefons with the title Der Frantzösische Confitirer, Welcher handelt: Von der Manier/ die Früchte in ihrer natürlichen Art zu erhalten of 1665.

Fifthly, in an edited volume with nine contributions on such a wide temporal, geographical and textual (culinary, medical) scope, it is clear that there must be lacunae relative to one’s own interests. From my point of view, the question of linguistic and multimodal organization of the manuscripts in question is not prominent (see the image from Thurneysser’s printed herbal, 1578, above, including a recipe for the medical use of fennel). And there are – of course – a few minor points of criticism related to some passages in the book. Quibbles aside, the volume’s contributions were immensely enriching for me.

Thomas Gloning is Professor of German Linguistics at Gießen University, Germany. His research includes text linguistics, multimodality, semantics, theory of meaning, lexicography, historical linguistics, the history of forms of communication, and the history of specialized texts in German (e.g. culinary texts, medical texts, herbals, balneological texts) among others. He tries to keep up with and now and then contributes to research on old culinary texts.

Images: coin icon is taken from Elizabeth I gold pound, 1594-1596, Coin Env. 100, Folger Shakespeare Library.

Print and Continuity in Reading Practice

By Grace Murray

As the market for printed practical books in England expanded in the first half of the sixteenth century, a host of titles promised their readers something new. From herbals to husbandry manuals, these books advertised their novelty, promising not only ‘new matters’ but also new translations, additions, and corrections to previous editions. But as Melissa Reynolds shows in Reading Practice, with meticulous attention to multiple editions of long-running titles, these claims of novelty were initially much more about how old knowledge was organised for eager readers. In fact, many of these early titles were hardly new at all, and derived their content from the fifteenth-century manuscripts that occupy the first half of Reading Practice, which were themselves ‘read and reread well into the era of print’ (p. 175). In the 1520s, even as books like Richard Banckes’ herbal indexed and organised medieval medical recipes for ease of consultation, they hardly touched the recipes themselves.

The title page of the 1552 edition of Banckes’ herbal. Courtesy of the U. S. National Library of Medicine.
The title page of the 1552 edition of Banckes’ herbal. Courtesy of the U. S. National Library of Medicine.

Spanning over two centuries from 1375 to 1601, Reading Practice returns printed practical books to the ‘textual tradition’ (p. 199) of natural knowledge to which they belonged, making it possible to see continuity as well as change.

The tradition from which English practical books developed was at once local and transnational in scope, borrowing as readily from Middle English manuscripts as from continental sources. Reynolds’ database of 475 editions of printed practical books published in England between 1475 and 1600, which accompanies Reading Practice as an open-access digital appendix, will be of enormous value to anyone looking for trends and patterns in this sprawling genre. Chief among these is perhaps the change effected by the Stationers’ Company’s establishment of a system of licensure in 1557, which granted members of the guild rights to the printing of a text. The new system ‘made space for new and exciting knowledge to gain a foothold in a market no longer glutted with reprints of the same old material’ (p. 120), and yet it also pushed English printers to disavow older repositories of natural knowledge in favour of texts that promised that their advice had been ‘proved’ for modern readers.

The Copernican universe, in a later edition of Thomas Digges’ version of his father’s Prognostication Everlasting (1605). Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
The Copernican universe, in a later edition of Thomas Digges’ version of his father’s Prognostication Everlasting (1605). Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

At the same time, older genres continued to offer a safe veneer to test more radical ideas, as in the case of Thomas Digges’ 1576 edition of his father’s prognostication, in which diagrams of the Copernican and geocentric models of the universe sat side-by-side. As Reynolds argues, ‘English readers would make the final judgement about what to believe’ (p. 148).

Nowhere is this readerly responsibility more apparent than in the genre of ‘books of secrets’, which owed its popularity to Master Alexis of Piedmont’s Secreti, printed in Venice in 1555 and quickly translated for English readers in 1558. In England as in Italy, these books were often implied to draw from the unwritten oral traditions of poorer, illiterate women, tantalising their male readers with the danger of forbidden feminine secrets while at the same time sanitising that knowledge by drawing it into an orderly printed book. Reynolds reveals that ‘neither secrecy nor women’s knowledge were particularly stable categories’ (p. 162); it was up to readers to distinguish between them. Here, too, Reynolds observes a distinction between secrets in print and manuscript, as the latter became increasingly suspect post-Reformation in the context of witchcraft allegations and a distaste for superstition. And yet, all along, readers continued to engage with the centuries-old manuscripts that had once been the first port of call for understanding the world – even if it was only to obscure or obliterate recipes related to reproduction and fertility, as attested by several older manuscripts Reynolds examined that contain the marks of early modern readers.

These marks are a window into the personal relationship between reader and text. The final chapter of Reading Practice turns to several early modern readers of earlier manuscripts, among them Henry Dyngley, a Worcestershire gentleman of the mid-sixteenth century. A copious annotator of both printed books and manuscripts, Dyngley’s collection included British Library Royal MS 17 A.xxxii, a fifteenth-century medical text into which he copied some verses from John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments for his children, ending with the couplet, ‘I leave you here a little book to look upon / to see your fathers face when he is dead and gone’ (p. 185). What Reynolds does so well is to place Dyngley into a history of reading practical texts in manuscript and print that bridges generations, looking back to the distant past as well as anticipating the rhetoric of ownership and control of nature that characterised England’s nascent imperialism. As he prepared to bequeath his collection to his children, and with it the textual bedrock of English natural knowledge, Dyngley registered that the long tradition of writing and reading practical books had come to shape how the English understood, interpreted, and sought to cultivate the world around them.

Grace Murray is a Lecturer in English Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, specialising in the history of reading in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She is working on a monograph adapted from her PhD research at the University of York, which examines how early modern printed ‘how-to’ books anticipated and mitigated misreading. Following a doctoral fellowship on marginalia in the horticultural collections at the British Library and National Trust, she has also consulted on garden history for the Trust, and continues to research the relationship between reading and gardening in the early modern period.