Tag Archives: Helga Müllneritsch

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.

Culinary Texts in Context: Continuing the Conversation

By Sarah Kernan and Helga Müllneritsch

Culinary Texts in Context began as an idea for collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were interested in working together, given our shared interests in early modern recipe books, and the new emphasis on Zoom calls and digital resources presented a great opportunity for us to easily collaborate, despite one of us residing, at the time, in Sweden and the other in the American Midwest. After several emails and Zoom calls, we excitedly began planning a collected volume from a decidedly international and collaborative perspective. Upon receiving wonderful proposals for contributions, we were able to construct a fresh take on recipe book scholarship: research from European manuscripts spanning a range of languages, social classes, professions, and perspectives. We have been excited throughout the process of writing and editing to reframe the recipe books genre as a European one, not just English. The wealth of research on English recipe books has provided a wonderful basis for examining European manuscripts; Culinary Texts in Context now highlights European exempla and invites researchers to more fully engage this large body of texts. We are thankful to Lino Mioni, Anil Paralkar, and Thomas Gloning for sharing their thoughts about our collected volume and its contributions to the study of recipe books. Here, we will reflect on these essays and our hopes for future scholarship. 

Mioni brings his expertise in considering collections of texts to his examination of boundaries and recipe books within our volume. That is, boundaries in the research of recipe books as well as boundaries of definitions of the genre. Recipe books have so much to offer scholars; the possibilities for research are exciting and promise to break down traditional scholarly silos. Mioni rightly hopes that our expansion of scholarship to include a broad geographical area will further promote research of and with these books.

Paralkar’s contribution hones in on an important component in the creation of culinary texts, evident after we collected and read all of the contributions to our volume. We expected that European recipe books would provide insight into broader cultural interactions, particularly through the rapid spread of ingredients during the early modern period. However, we realized that multiple examples from manuscripts around Europe revealed how recipe transmission was an equally important marker of exchange. The cultural flow that Paralkar describes was present in a surprising number of recipe books, spanning manuscripts compiled from a single region or kingdom to those collected from international sources. As records of action and embodiment, recipes can reflect interest in other cultures and ideas. These recipes were transmitted to recipe book writers through many channels and their inclusion signified the knowledge, authority, and social networks necessary for acquiring and using such far-flung ingredients and preparations.

Gloning approaches the volume from his perspective as a linguist, acknowledging the multitude of perspectives presented in the volume as well as its wide spatial and temporal range, noting that it inspired him to approach manuscript recipe books from a new perspective. He raises the interesting question regarding what the essential topics in the analysis of culinary and medical manuscripts are, and which topics which can be explored separately in specialised studies. Seeing the volume as a starting point from which to embark on many more studies, the call for working from the broad and systematic to the individual study of certain aspects of the manuscripts is an important one. We hope to incentivise more work on collections of manuscript recipe books, especially if they are part of a wider collection, investigating the reasons for their inclusion. Furthermore, Gloning touches upon an important topic concerning projects dealing with manuscript recipe books and culinary and medical history; he mentions a now-abandoned project of his own, in which he aimed to provide a bibliography on the history of cookery, food and beverages. This is, unfortunately, the fate many similar projects suffer. It would be worthwhile to think about how to gather information on those projects, similar to webrings of the past.

In Culinary Texts in Context, the nine contributors introduce us to a variety of digital projects that they either use or have created themselves.

We share these in the hope that the projects will have a long digital life and inspire even more digital recipes projects. These projects allow for more accessibility and international collaboration, so that research practices, insights, and data need not be limited to linguistic or national borders.


Sarah Peters Kernan is an independent culinary historian. She holds a PhD in medieval history from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the production and use of cookbooks in medieval and early modern England. She is a member of the editorial team for the Recipes Project. Sarah has been especially active as a public historian, working with institutions and organizations like The Met Cloisters, Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, and the Culinary Historians of Chicago. She collaborates frequently with the Newberry Library, assembling modules on food history topics for Digital Collections for the Classroom, teaching Adult Education classes on food history topics, and developing culinary history programming.

Helga Müllneritsch is an assistant professor in German at National Taiwan University with a research interest in female agency, manuscript cookery books, and book history in the long eighteenth century. Her thesis, ‘Memory, Education, Circulation, Prestige: Form and Function of the Austrian Manuscript Cookery Book in the Long Eighteenth Century,’ focuses on the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscript cookery book as object, its function, and female authorship and ownership. Helga was awarded her doctorate by the University of Liverpool in 2019.