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 … Continue reading Early Modern Research with Britain’s Favourite Organic Producer
By Florence Swan Whilst digging through medieval English cookery collections for my thesis I came across a curious fifteenth-century recipe that suggests using ale to make pastry short and supple: ‘Yf ye will have your past short and sopill that ye bake with, knede hit with good ale and it will be short’.[1] Intrigued by … Continue reading Food for Thought: A Medieval Experiment with Ale Pastry
By James Brown The HERA-funded research project Intoxicating Spaces (2019–22), on which I was fortunate enough to work and which explored material environments for the production, trafficking, and consumption of new intoxicants in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, and Stockholm 1600–1850, coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. An avid user of bars, cafes, and … Continue reading Outside Issues: Tea Gardens in Early Modern London
By Érika Wicky If the decorative arts of the eighteenth century shine so brightly, it is thanks to the innovation and mastering of techniques such as gilding and varnishing.[i] While the latter may have given surfaces the shiny appearance that was particularly desirable at the time, both were above all essential to protect wood, especially … Continue reading Roubo and Watin: The Sweet Scent of Early Modern Varnishes
