Reading the London Cries: how to analyse food sellers in art
By Charlie Taverner (Birkbeck, University of London) This post is part of the European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food (IEHCA) series “Summer University on Food and Drink Studies” Across...
View ArticleTales from the Archives – Gumpowder? A strange little recipe for sensitive...
In September 2017, The Recipes Project celebrated its fifth birthday. We now have over 600 posts in our archives and over 150 pages for readers to sift through. That’s a lot of material! (And thank you...
View ArticleMary Napier’s “Snaile Milke”: Transmission, Materiality, and Medical Practice
By Alexandra Kennedy For a postgraduate project on material texts, I spent several chilly autumn weeks bundled in a scarf and coat in the Bodleian Library’s Special Collections, pouring over a small,...
View ArticleStrike Notice 2
Today, British universities entered their third week of strike. Like Lisa Smith, I am member of the striking University and College Union, and I have decided not to cross picket lines, be they actual...
View ArticleStrike Notice 3: international women’s day
Strikes in British universities are still ongoing. As explained in our previous posts, two of our editors (Lisa Smith and myself) are members of the striking University and College Union, and have...
View ArticleStrike notice 4: feeding a strike
Yesterday, British universities entered their fourth – and hopefully final – week of strike. Like Lisa Smith, I am member of the striking University and College Union, and I have decided not to cross...
View ArticleIntroducing our new co-editor: Jess Clark
Interview by Lisa Smith Welcome to your new role as co-editor of the Recipes Project, Jess! Tell us a bit about your own history with the RP. I first contributed to the RP in 2014, when I wrote two...
View Article‘From Past to Present – Natural Cosmetics Unwrapped’: Conference, Workshop,...
By Jane Draycott For the past two years, the Arts and Humanities Research Council has been funding the ‘From natural resources to packaging, an interdisciplinary study of skincare products over time’...
View ArticleMedieval Arabic recipes and the history of hummus
By Anny Gaul Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, cookbooks flourished throughout the Arabic-speaking world, from Baghdad to Murcia. Fortunately for scholars, in recent decades both critical...
View ArticleTales from the archives: Spring: when thoughts of fancy turn to itchy, watery...
In 2017, The Recipes Project celebrated its fifth birthday. We now have nearly 650 posts in our archives and over 160 pages for readers to sift through. That’s a lot of material! (And thank you so much...
View ArticleBooks of Secrets
By Mandy Aftel From Fragrant:The Secret Life of Scent by Mandy Aftel In the early sixteenth century, a new kind of book appeared in Europe: Books of Secrets were popular compendiums that professed to...
View Article“Lunch Shaming” and Lessons from History
By Nadja Durbach Early last year the news media reported on a surge in what has been called “lunch shaming”: practices that deliberately and publicly humiliate children whose parents have not settled...
View ArticleReturning the wandering womb with “fetid and rank smells”
By Dr. Amy Kenny When prescribing curatives for a wandering womb, early modern medical practitioners regularly propose pungent materials to return the womb to its rightful place in the abdomen....
View ArticleFood and Embodied Identities in the Early Modern and Modern World, c. 1500 –...
By Rachel Rich Katrina Mosley and Eleanor Barnett, who run the Cambridge Body and Food Histories Group, hosted a conference on ‘Food and Embodied Identities in the Early Modern and Modern World, c....
View ArticleCounting on the body: Reflections on Numeracy in Indian dyeing practices
By Annapurna Mamidipudi ‘I don’t know how to read, but I can count’ said Salim, ‘I was not much for school, my father put me on an old tractor when I was 12, and told me to go around in circles, till I...
View ArticleRecipes for honey-drinks in the first published English beekeeping manual
By Matthew Phillpott The Roman emperor Augustus is said to have asked the Roman orator, poet, and politician, Publius Vedius Pollio, how to live a long life. Pollio answered that ‘applying the Muse...
View ArticleTales from the archives: Love and the Longevity of Charms
In September 2018, The Recipes Project will be six years old. There’s been a lot of blogging on this platform, and we are so grateful to all our wonderful contributors. But with so much material on the...
View ArticleEating Crow
By Michael Walkden In 1936, the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma were seized with a craving for crow. Butchers sent children into the fields, offering $1.50 for every dozen crows they brought back for the...
View ArticleFevers and the Dog Star in Antiquity
By Laurence Totelin Summer this year in the UK has been particularly hot; we have experienced a heat wave for the first time in almost a decade. The hot days between roughly the tenth of July and the...
View ArticleConference report: “The Words of Medicine”
By Isabella Bonati From Wednesday 19th to Saturday 22nd September the international Conference “The Words of Medicine: Technical Terminology in Material and Textual Evidence from the Graeco-Roman...
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