G8906: Craft and Science: Objects and Their Making in the Early Modern World

Historical Culinary Recipe Reconstruction Assignment

***Due Monday, September 21 in class

meet in The Studio (Butler 208b)***

General Information and Instructions:

Do the required reading (which can be found here) and watching before you start your reconstruction.

Required Reading:

• Ken Albala, “Cooking as Research Methodology: Experiments in Renaissance Cuisine,” Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories, ed. Joan Fitzpatrick (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 73–88.

• See also Ken Albala’s blog on: http://kenalbala.blogspot.nl/ 

• Ad Stijnman, “Style and technique are inseparable: art technological sources and reconstructions,” Art of the Past. Sources and Reconstructions. The proceedings of the First Symposium of the Art Technological Source Research Study Group, ed. by Mark Clarke, Joyce H. Townsend, and Ad Stijnman (Amsterdam: Archetype, 2005). 

• Francisco Alonso-Almeida, “Genre conventions in English recipes, 1600-1800,” Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800, Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell  (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 68-90.

• Syrup of Violets and Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdEbMBe0aa8 

• Read over the HCR resource guide  and see also the online recipe databases and cooking resources compiled by Meredith Levin.

For an example of an exemplary reconstruction experiment, see:

Maartje Stols-Witlox, “Sizing layers for oil paintings…,” Proceedings of the Second ATSR Symposium (2008), pp. 148-163.

For a general historical introduction to colorful food preparations see: Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2004, pp. 68-69.

HCR Instructions:

Work with a partner to cook a dish based on a recipe found in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century book or manuscript. As much as possible, try to simulate early modern ingredients, apparatus, and methods. Images of several recipes have been uploaded to the web, and each group will choose a different recipe to decipher and concoct.

• Each group will work from home, and thus each group should include one student who is able to provide access to a standard kitchen (i.e. a kitchen which has a sink, oven, stovetop, and cookware).
• Some recipes calling for a large amount of ingredients may need to be halved or quartered.
• Each group will be reimbursed up to $30 for ingredients (please, provide a receipt and try to pay with cash).

• Bring your homemade historical dish to class on September 21 for consumption. If necessary, please refrigerate perishable items in airtight containers (which is historically anachronistic, but bacteria do not care about anachronism or historical accuracy!).
• Document the details of the cooking process in order to give a short 12-minute presentation with your partner in class. The means by which you document and present is up to you and your partner, but feel free to make use of photos, video, audio, notes, PowerPoint, YouTube, Prezi, etc.
• After you have finished your dish, rewrite the recipe in modern English in order to make it clear(er), using an appropriate amount of detail so that your colleagues in the class have a good understanding of what you did and why you did it.

Select Recipes:

The following recipes can be found either by clicking on the links or by going to the “Home Culinary Recipe Images” folder in the “Assignments” folder located in the “G8906 Student Files” in Google Drive.

Thomas Dawson, The good husvvifes ievvell VVherein is to be found most excellent and rare deuises for conceits in cookerie… (London, 1587)

• “To Make Blewmanger”

Hannah Wooley, The queen-like closet; or, Rich cabinet stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying & cookery (London, 1670)

• “To make fine black puddings”

Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

• Compost (http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec5.htm)

Robert May, The accomplisht cook, or The art and mystery of cookery…  (London, 1671 ed.)

[the following four recipes are in the pdf “May_Accomplisht Cook_1671” under G8906 Student Files, in the file “Home Culinary Images”]

• “Otherwayes in the Italian Fashion” [re: Fritters], p.171
• “To make Custards divers wayes,” p.237 (see accompanying illustrations of forms for custards, p.241)
•  “To make French Puffs,” p.425
• *also included in this pdf compilation from May’s Accomplisht Cook is a recipe for making mustard (pp.156-7) which is of interest, re: comparison with the Rx for “Excellent Mustard” in fol.48r, BnF Ms. Fr. 640

From Michel de Nostradamus, Excellent et moult utile opuscule à touts nécessaire qui désirent avoir cognoissance de plusieurs exquises recettes (Lyon 1552, recipe from 1555). In: Willan, Anne. The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook. Berkeley: University of California Press, c2012: p. 117

• “To Make Quince Jelly of Exceptional Beauty, Goodness, Flavor, & Excellence, Proper to Present before a King, & Which Keeps a long time”

(Nostradamus describes this spectacular jelly as “resembling an oriental ruby, of similar excellent color, & flavor even greater”.)

Questions and Food for Thought:

• Think carefully about the ingredients. Are these comparable to modern ingredients? How are they similar or different? What about their purity? Were they exotic or common?
• What about your modern heating apparatus and cookware, how might this impact authenticity? Could your pots, pans, ladles, ovens, and heating elements change the outcome of a recipe?
• What tacit information has been left out of your recipe? What did you do in your reconstruction that was not discussed by the original author?
• Who wrote your recipe? Why did he or she write it down and/or publish it?

Other Resources:

You may wish to search for period recipes on EEBO, Gallica, VD17, Europeana, Wellcome; also of possible interest are ECCO (18th c), Google Books, Archive.org  and Worldcat.

See also the Rijksmuseum recipe book collection; you can find the list here (a work in progress that already includes 583 titles):
http://library.rijksmuseum.nl/cgi-bin/koha/opac-shelves.pl?viewshelf=135&sortfield= 
(click "lists" in the top right and then "receptuurboeken").

http://www.kookhistorie.nl/index.htm

For kitchen implements, see Scappi's culinary treatise Opera (1570), which concludes with several illustrated pages detailing kitchen set up, equipment, and technologies (check it out here, scroll to the end of the book): https://archive.org/stream/operavenetiascap00scap#page/n935/mode/thumb 

Other Suggestions for Helpful Databases:

• The digital database of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM)

• See on how to find recipes in their online catalogue the interview with NLM staff:  http://recipes.hypotheses.org/category/food-and-drink

• Universal Short Title List and digitized editions:  http://www.ustc.ac.uk/

• Next to EEBO the just started new digital database project might also be of interest for us: EMMO: Early Modern (English) Manuscripts Online (EMMO), an online searchable database of encoded semi-diplomatic transcriptions of all Folger manuscripts from the period 1500-1700: http://collation.folger.edu/2013/11/emmo-early-modern-manuscripts-online/

See also the interview with the key organizer: go to the website below and search on this site for EMMO:

http://recipes.hypotheses.org/category/teaching 

• DIY History: transcribing of culinary manuscripts and cookbooks:

http://diyhistory.lib.uiowa.edu/transcribe/collections/show/7

General information about the DIY History project:

http://diyhistory.lib.uiowa.edu/about.php

and the interview with the key organizer on:

http://recipes.hypotheses.org/3216

• See also culinary historian Ivan Day, historic food recreations:
  http://www.historicfood.com/portal.htm

Other Interesting websites:

• http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/

You can search for 17th century recipes:

http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/search/label/17th century

• Ken Albala’s blog http://kenalbala.blogspot.nl/ 

• Ken Albala’s 16th century funnel cake from The Most Excellent Book of Cookery: An edition and translation of the 16th-century Livre fort excellent de cuisine

(http://kenalbala.blogspot.nl/2014/04/sixteenth-century-crespe.html)

• See e.g. two examples of reconstructed, yet “inedible” 17th century recipes:

“spinach tart”

(http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2014/04/a-spinach-tart-for-history-books.html)

and

“spice cake”

(http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2014/03/adding-bit-of-spice-wont-help-this.html)