Tag Archives: literacy

Culinary Literacy in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Personal Recipe Collections

By Elizabeth M. Schmidt

When I graduated from college in 2011, my cousin Aurora gave me a cookbook she had compiled. Titled “Everything but the Kitchen Sink,” it was a binder filled with her favorite recipes: some she wrote herself and others she collected from friends online. Over the years, I added to the binder, slipping magazine cutouts between the pages and taping in small pieces of note paper on which I had scribbled instructions. The cookbook Aurora gave me is part of a long tradition of personal recipe collections created by, and for, women. These collections can be found in kitchens, attics, drawers, libraries, and archives around the world. As readers of The Recipes Project will know, historians have found recipes useful for thinking about how and what households ate, and they are often prized for their access to women’s voices and perspectives.

The varied nature of these collections make them tricky to catalog, and the lack of information on the compilers is often perplexing. An eighteenth-century recipe collection by Elizabeth Michel, currently housed at the Wellcome Library, was initially catalogued by someone around 1931 who referred to Michel as “illiterate,” even though the book was clearly written by someone familiar with the written word and educated to some degree. In 2010, literary historian Wendy Wall used this cookbook and catalog entry as the impetus for an essay that confronted the question of literacy in relation to what she called “the domestic arts,” specifically pointing out the ways that literacy is often unfairly gendered.[1]

What I want to make clear is that the people building these recipe collections were both compilers and authors. Women like Michel were acting as compilers by collecting recipes from various sources, but also as writers by modifying the recipes they collected and creating the books themselves. This became evident when I initially began researching personal recipe collections and wanted to find evidence of real-world use of published cookbooks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Like many, I have shelves of cookbooks that I have collected but rarely cooked from. I wanted to know if this was the case centuries earlier: if eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts were also collector pieces rather than used on a regular basis. In two nineteenth-century manuscripts I found explicit evidence of engagement with a published book. In the cookbook collection at Texas Woman’s University’s Blagg-Huey Library was a recipe book by Mrs. E. A. Foord, an author who copied out a “Claret Cup” recipe from Isabella Beeton’s 1865 book The Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery. Then, at the Huntington Library, I found a recipe collection written by Susannah Judith Blencowe which included the following note: “For Oyster Sauce refer to Miss Rundell page 320 Calves foot jelly Mrs. Glasse page 295 Carrot Soup Cobbet’s 131,” referencing Maria Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery (1842), Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1784), and Anne Cobbett’s The English Housekeeper: or, Manual of Domestic Management (1840).

These were certainly classic examples of literacy, but what I found in the rest of the pages of Foord and Blencowe’s collections, as well as in countless other manuscripts I examined, were examples of a larger “culinary literacy.” Culinary literacy includes the ability to read published cookbooks and competently write out recipes, but it also entails engagement with information networks, friends and family sharing recipes amongst themselves, as well as the ability to modify recipes based on experience, knowledge of how to find appropriate ingredients, and practical skills.

For example, in addition to Beeton’s “Claret Cup,” Mrs. Foord’s recipe collection had attributions to at least forty-nine different people, including a recipe for “Curry” attributed to Abraham Cook, one for “Mango Pickle” she received from Mrs. Norfor while Foord was living in Cuddalore, and a recipe for “Little Cakes” from a butler working for a family named Caldwell. Michel’s book, which instigated Wall’s initial inquiry into literacy, also includes attributions, such as “To Make Plum Cakes My Lady Nowell’s Way,” “My Lady Lucas’s Receipt to Pickle Wallnuts,” and “Sugar Cakes Mrs. Carter’s Way.” The networks accessed by Foord and Michel, evidenced by these examples, crossed international boundaries within the British empire, as well as class boundaries. Michel’s distinction between Lady Nowell and Mrs. Carter indicates that she was sharing recipes with women in the nobility as well as the middling classes.

Fig. 1. Page from Elizabeth Michel’s recipe book. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.

Beyond published cookbooks and acquaintances, culinary literacy includes engagement with other sources. Foord included clippings from newspapers in her recipe collection, such as three recipes for marmalades and five “tea-time” recipes for using marrow (a squash similar to a zucchini), and recipes cut from an advertising pamphlet created by a commercial flour company, Paisley.

Fig. 2. Page from Mrs. E. A. Foord’s recipe book. Photo taken by author, permission from TWU

Beyond just incorporating the recipes into their collections, our compilers also often made changes to them. Michel felt it necessary to include the caveat “my own way” on a recipe for cakes, implying that while this particular recipe was something she had invented, any other unattributed recipes in her collection were likely copied from books; by writing “my own way” she claimed authorship and exhibited pride in that fact. On a clipping for “A Breakfast Preserve,” an M. J. Foord added notes modifying the recipe to utilize the natural pectin in the orange seeds but avoid leaving them in the finished product. This example of “kitchen literacy” is key in understanding how these personal recipe collections are products of a larger culinary literacy that encompassed engagement with published texts, exchange of information within social networks, and a body of knowledge gained through experience. Incidentally, Elizabeth Michel’s entry at the Wellcome Library still describes the recipe book as being written in an “illiterate hand,” which showcases the need for resources to re-evaluate catalog descriptions across all archives and adjust them to reflect this idea of culinary literacy.

Fig. 3. Page from Mrs. E. A. Foord’s recipe book. Photo taken by author, permission from TWU

[1] Wendy Wall, “Literacy and the Domestic Arts,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 73:3 (September 2010), 384. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1525/hlq.2010.73.3.383.pdf

 


Elizabeth M. Schmidt is a recent PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara specializing in British Atlantic foodways of the eighteenth century. From roast beef to turtle soup, she researches the intersection of eating and identity during the Age of Revolutions and imperial turmoil. Using microhistories of figures like sailors, military generals, merchants, and housewives, she explores the impact of foodways on discussions of identity, belonging, inclusion, and exclusions. Elizabeth also enjoys cooking historical manuscript recipes, translating eighteenth and nineteenth century instructions, measurements, and tools into their modern equivalent to learn what she can about culinary knowledge and labor.

Revisiting Tillmann Taape’s Recipes against the plague – in pharmaceutical code?

Editor’s note: Today we revisit a post originally published in 2013 by Tillmann Taape on plague remedies given by the apothecary Hieronymus Brunschwig in his Liber pestilentialis (1500). The book included an interesting mix of recipes in the vernacular German and in Latin. Readers unable to read Latin could copy a recipe, visit their apothecary, and collect their anti-plague remedies a little while later. Tillmann’s post offers  insights into the use of Latin as a sort of code. 

It strikes me that, five hundred years on, in the midst of another pandemic, Latin has now been almost entirely replaced by English in scientific discourse. And yet, Latin still lingers on, not the least in the name of the disease that has changed our lives: corona, the crown. To this classicist, the name ‘coronavirus’ calls to mind an evil crown-wearing tyrant. But as it did in the late Middle Ages, Latin obfuscates as much as it clarifies, and I find it fascinating that, to many, the new plague, under its shortened name of COVID-19, evokes not an item of jewellery, but a family of birds: the corvids (Latin: corvidae).

Laurence Totelin


By Tillmann Taape

Although the plague is best known for having wiped out about a third of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, it continued to loom large as a threat to people’s health for hundreds of years, and medical writings on the Black Death or the ‘pestilence’ abounded. One of them, the Liber pestilentialis (1500) by the surgeon-apothecary Hieronymus Brunschwig (introduced here), was the first of its kind to be published as a printed book. Written in German, it had the potential to instruct a wide readership, reflecting Brunschwig’s mission to disseminate medical knowledge among laypeople. It struck me as somewhat odd, therefore, that quite a few of the recipes for remedies against the plague were given in Latin. What use were these to the readers of a book which was specifically addressed to all social ranks, including ‘common people’ who were not part of the Latin-speaking learned élite? Fortunately, Brunschwig provided an answer only a few pages on: simply copy the recipe on a slip of paper, send it off to your local apothecary, and collect your anti-plague pills a few days later.

Since Brunschwig was himself an apothecary in Strasbourg where the Liber pestilentialis was first published, one might suspect that by including these recipes he was hoping to advertise his trade, and draw attention to the knowledge and skill required to turn such coded messages into remedies. By his own admission, though, this only worked for readers who lived a manageable distance from an apothecary and could afford his services and ingredients, some of which, like theriac or amber, could be very costly. But Brunschwig also catered for those readers who lived in remote villages or were less well off. Often on the same page as the Latin instructions, he included an alternative recipe in German, using cheap everyday ingredients and simple household techniques.

This commitment to his less privileged readers, present in much of Brunschwig’s work, suggests that he was not printing recipes ‘in code’ simply in order to improve apothecaries’ image or to turn a better profit, much less to monopolise medical knowledge. There was, in fact, another very good reason for the use of Latin, as he explains in an intriguing comment: “Many recipes and ingredients cannot be succinctly expressed in the German language […], so I have left them in Latin.”

Some things are best left to professionals: mixing medicines at the apothecary's shop (from Brunschwig's 'Buch der CIrurgia')
Some things are best left to professionals: mixing medicines at the apothecary’s shop (from Brunschwig’s ‘Buch der CIrurgia’). (c) Wellcome Images

This points to a major difficulty faced by all medical authors writing in their native tongue. They were not only up against the disdain of learned physicians who wanted to keep all medical knowledge within university walls, well away from the ignorant ‘common people’. They were also facing the daunting task of creating a scientific vernacular in which to express medical concepts: how the human body works, what happens when it becomes diseased, and what to do about it. Finding their feet on uncharted linguistic territory and creating medical terminologies was the work of generations of practitioners from the middle ages to the early modern era. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, this process had come a long way, as Brunschwig’s writing shows: in his books on surgery and distillation (see here and here), he articulates elaborate techniques and medical theories in a confident technical vernacular – albeit one peppered with terms borrowed from Latin. In the case of specialist pharmaceutical ingredients and preparations, however, Brunschwig clearly felt that no adequate vocabulary was available in German. Some ingredients were just too  specific or too exotic to be known to the layman. Perhaps even more problematic were shorthand instructions such as fiat pulvis (it shall be a powder) or formentur pillule communi quantitatis (pills of equal quantity shall be formed). One can imagine what these few words translated to in practice: complicated series of decoctions, infusions, drying, boiling, grinding and mixing, all defined and learned over the course of an apprenticeship.

With no alternative to certain elements of Latin pharmaceutical jargon, then, the recipes in Brunschwig’s Liber pestilentialis inevitably fell into two categories. On the one hand, his wealthier readers had the option of having ‘professional’ remedies made according to the Latin recipes, which allowed them to tap into the entire range of medicinal ingredients and preparation techniques available at the nearest apothecary’s shop. Poorer folks and country dwellers, on the other hand, were offered a different type of recipe which could be articulated in the vernacular, required cheaper ingredients and could be managed at home.

Recipes against the plague – in pharmaceutical code?

By Tillmann Taape

Although the plague is best known for having wiped out about a third of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, it continued to loom large as a threat to people’s health for hundreds of years, and medical writings on the Black Death or the ‘pestilence’ abounded (see e.g. Lisa Smith’s post on coffee as a cure for plague in eighteenth-century London). One of them, the Liber pestilentialis (1500) by the surgeon-apothecary Hieronymus Brunschwig (introduced here), was the first of its kind to be published as a printed book. Written in German, it had the potential to instruct a wide readership, reflecting Brunschwig’s mission to disseminate medical knowledge among laypeople. It struck me as somewhat odd, therefore, that quite a few of the recipes for remedies against the plague were given in Latin. What use were these to the readers of a book which was specifically addressed to all social ranks, including ‘common people’ who were not part of the Latin-speaking learned élite? Fortunately, Brunschwig provided an answer only a few pages on: simply copy the recipe on a slip of paper, send it off to your local apothecary, and collect your anti-plague pills a few days later.

Since Brunschwig was himself an apothecary in Strasbourg where the Liber pestilentialis was first published, one might suspect that by including these recipes he was hoping to advertise his trade, and draw attention to the knowledge and skill required to turn such coded messages into remedies. By his own admission, though, this only worked for readers who lived a manageable distance from an apothecary and could afford his services and ingredients, some of which, like theriac or amber, could be very costly. But Brunschwig also catered for those readers who lived in remote villages or were less well off. Often on the same page as the Latin instructions, he included an alternative recipe in German, using cheap everyday ingredients and simple household techniques.

This commitment to his less privileged readers, present in much of Brunschwig’s work, suggests that he was not printing recipes ‘in code’ simply in order to improve apothecaries’ image or to turn a better profit, much less to monopolise medical knowledge. There was, in fact, another very good reason for the use of Latin, as he explains in an intriguing comment: “Many recipes and ingredients cannot be succinctly expressed in the German language […], so I have left them in Latin.”

Some things are best left to professionals: mixing medicines at the apothecary's shop (from Brunschwig's 'Buch der CIrurgia')
Some things are best left to professionals: mixing medicines at the apothecary’s shop (from Brunschwig’s ‘Buch der CIrurgia’). (c) Wellcome Images

This points to a major difficulty faced by all medical authors writing in their native tongue. They were not only up against the disdain of learned physicians who wanted to keep all medical knowledge within university walls, well away from the ignorant ‘common people’. They were also facing the daunting task of creating a scientific vernacular in which to express medical concepts: how the human body works, what happens when it becomes diseased, and what to do about it. Finding their feet on uncharted linguistic territory and creating medical terminologies was the work of generations of practitioners from the middle ages to the early modern era. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, this process had come a long way, as Brunschwig’s writing shows: in his books on surgery and distillation (see here and here), he articulates elaborate techniques and medical theories in a confident technical vernacular – albeit one peppered with terms borrowed from Latin. In the case of specialist pharmaceutical ingredients and preparations, however, Brunschwig clearly felt that no adequate vocabulary was available in German. Some ingredients were just too  specific or too exotic to be known to the layman. Perhaps even more problematic were shorthand instructions such as fiat pulvis (it shall be a powder) or formentur pillule communi quantitatis (pills of equal quantity shall be formed). One can imagine what these few words translated to in practice: complicated series of decoctions, infusions, drying, boiling, grinding and mixing, all defined and learned over the course of an apprenticeship.

With no alternative to certain elements of Latin pharmaceutical jargon, then, the recipes in Brunschwig’s Liber pestilentialis inevitably fell into two categories. On the one hand, his wealthier readers had the option of having ‘professional’ remedies made according to the Latin recipes, which allowed them to tap into the entire range of medicinal ingredients and preparation techniques available at the nearest apothecary’s shop. Poorer folks and country dwellers, on the other hand, were offered a different type of recipe which could be articulated in the vernacular, required cheaper ingredients and could be managed at home.