Ana Bittner
The Repurposing of Recipes: Examining the Unique Historiographic Properties of Early Modern Recipe Books
When speaking of the scientific discoveries, most historians and academics tend to emphasize tales of brilliant men and the impact of their discoveries on the foundation of modern science and deepened understanding of the world. Despite the “official” archival record generally supporting this interpretation of history, science in early modern Europe was not exclusively shaped by men, nor were their discoveries always predicated off original experiments. Communities of common women had developed their own scientific protocols long before the establishment of the formal scientific method. Women developed recipes for dishes, cures, and solutions to troubles plaguing their households and towns by sharing discoveries they had made with one another through networks defined by the respect they held for one another’s findings. Legitimizing one another’s breakthroughs and innovations was a form of radical kinship that challenged dominant narratives used by the scientific community to exclude women and lower-class men from contributing to scientific discovery. Interpreting the practice of recipe sharing as an alternative model of the scientific method opens the door to challenging how the archive gains legitimacy through contrived procedures that not only determine what counts as “legitimate” historical accounts but also the very frame of “objectivity” called upon to justify the exclusion of women from different fields of study and history itself.
Despite there being comprehensive evidence of women testing scientific theories and presenting their findings from experiments in recipe books, the historical record very rarely accredits women as being integral to modern scientific study. This phenomenon may come from a multiplicity of practices or norms developed to disempower women and/or maintain the delineations between the different roles of the sexes. However, recent efforts have been made by historians to expand modern interpretations of “the official record” to include sources previously characterized as not useful to the mission of constructing an accurate interpretation of historical events. Examples of this sort of scholastic work include efforts made by scholars in contributing to an ever-growing historiography about recipe books. Cookbooks hold incredible potential for a more expansive interpretation of history, as a family genealogy materializes from the pages, while the text itself contains details and notes that inform the reader of “social networks, power relationships, and the transmission of scientific and medical knowledge.”[1] Despite this incredible potential, there remains concerns over the ability to verify the accounts recorded in recipe books. This fear seems to be most evident in scholars indoctrinated in traditional methods of reading the historical archive, for whom legitimacy can only ever describe a document produced by the state or prominent figure. Such determinants seem rather contrived if not flawed methodologically in their ability to define an authentic historical account, for the metrics used are ones that conflate social hierarchies with expertise or truthiness. The resulting documentation of history can thus really only tell of a world defined almost entirely by wealthy white men’s policies and state mandates, which is incredibly flattening and does not at all provide genuine insight into the different components of social life determined by differences in socioeconomic status, gender, race, ability, and other identarian categories that did and still do inform perspectives of the world, lifestyles, and even societal customs.
Not only do recipe books as a medium of study represent a way of reading history that builds upon traditional interpretations of historical scholarship, but investigations into the compilation of the books themselves provide opportunities for learning more about the creation of networks of women working together to interpret the world by positing inquiries and solutions arising from doubts, challenges, interests informed by social forces unique to the female perspective of that particular era. Such viewpoints and opinions of the world were radical in their ability to challenge dominant narratives that informed every aspect of these women’s lives. For example, the early modern household was created as a site purely relegated to the private / domestic sphere where women and servants were relegated in order to support men or individuals of a higher status in their ability to be productive. One may be under the impression that the household was thus an incredibly limiting site in terms of what activities were deemed appropriate or fitting of the location. However, the very walls that mandated compliance to patriarchal authority provided a space in which women could form bonds outside of the formal conventions and rules that ruled almost all aspects of their lives. While the household may have been cohered by misogynist conceptions of women’s intelligence, abilities, strengths, and potential, the site itself transformed into sites of knowledge production that enabled a wide breadth of subjects to be studied and processes through which they were able to learn more about the world than seemed possible.[2] Women would gather to read, write, craft, engineer, amass information, and conduct experiments in an attempt to search for their own interpretation of order and truth.
These alternate modes of relationality and community building informed women’s worldviews while also empowering other women in their scholastic pursuits. Early modern women had a wide variety of interests, as noted by recipe books, with medicine, botany, and food being but three common examples. Geographic locations and the needs of their families tended to inspire women’s interests and curiosities, in addition to the discoveries of and knowledge produce by other women in their community. For example, one Mrs. A.M. experimented in “the art of pickling fruits, buds, herbs, flowers, roots, [&] stalks,” while also learning about other culinary sciences from her maids, like seasonings, pastries, butchering, and the different products themselves available to her at the market.[3] Meanwhile, another woman, referred to as J.S., and her maids and companions used recipe books to record the “accomplished ladies rich closet of rarities,” which included “many excellent things for the accomplishment of the female sex,” like new methods of creating syrups or wines, practical advice for dairy maids, and guides to what she interpreted to be proper behavior for young women.[4] An aspect of recipe books that should be of note in documenting the potential additions to the historical record is the logged excitement, passion, and empowerment women experienced and found in their ability to preserve their contributions to the world for future generations to discover. Recipe books regardless of their subject gave women an opportunity to not just contribute to the production of history, but also register themselves as a part of the historical record. Authorship, then, operated as a sort of self-identification, which was not really afforded to women during this era. There were rarely intensive or very many restraints or requirements in how women chose to approach recipe books, not to mention the words they chose to describe themselves and their interests. Women could be whatever they wished to themselves and each other, as authorship also created the potentiality for recording one’s companions and female friends and conspirators. Many wealthier women included mention of her servants or maids in their writings, which also served as a sort of recognition of their employees as more than people from a lower social status, as they contributed to scientific discoveries and shared what knowledge they acquired with the future readers of the books. Thus, new modes of kinship were not only forged from the ability to describe a contributor in one’s own words but also in the inclusion of their own original knowledge in the books as a formal recognition of the impact this other individual had on their lives and perspectives.
The notion of co-authorship is not just relevant to the importance of recipe books as a mode of studying female friendships and relationships, as citations have and do play a role in both erasing women from history and assigning a value to their work and thought projects. For example, women’s ability to contribute original methods and discoveries to the field of gynecology drastically evolved over time. Originally, women were primarily responsible for providing care and medical attention to other women’s gynecological needs, which necessitated women originate all theories, treatments, and cures used when providing medical attention[5]. However, Enlightenment thinking touched gynecology just as the philosophical movement inspired other biological sciences and forms of medical care. Despite all treatments still originating from women, the Enlightenment era inspired more and more men to participate in gynecological health. The women responsible for discovering medical theories and practices were subsequently erased from the pages they had authored, for standardized medical texts were published so as to accredit male doctors and Enlightenment philosophers’ conceptions of the different sexes. The creation of standardized textbooks also pushed women almost entirely out of the field, since “even women who were literate did necessarily read specialized medical texts,” which delegitimized their claims to be capable of gynecological care, since not having access to the “official” knowledge meant women were nowhere near as qualified and could not demand the same level of expertise as men.[6]
Men have almost always had an extremely pertinent role in the creation of the historical archive, though one should also note that male discoveries and contributions to fields of study should not be read as oppositional to women’s work. The major exception to this premise is of course instances of plagiarism or taking credit for knowledge acquired from working with or learning from women. With that said, recipe books were also used by men in early modern Europe to detail their discoveries and passions for future generations and family members. Some books, like Robert May’s, was similar to many female examples in subject but radically differed in rhetoric. Instead of acknowledging others who helped him in his knowledge production or describing himself in the text, he described his writings on “the art and mystery of cookery” as a “more easie and perfect method than hath been published in any language.”[7] Even when women were to acknowledge their social location or socio-economic status, very rarely were their writings characterized as being superior to anyone else’s. This sort of difference in language brings to light the significance of recipe books to the different sexes, for men were not only able but encouraged to define themselves as members of society through their contributions to the community. While, women rarely ever had the ability to define themselves, since the society demanded women perform according to an unofficial guidebook that defined the limited role of women and what they were capable of contributing to the household alone.
The processes of writing and amassing recipes in early modern Europe provided a unique opportunity to women. To record one’s original thoughts and discoveries and experiences gave women new ways of relating to themselves and other women in their communities, as the blank pages, along with their households, were sites open for reinterpretation and repurposing so as to build networks and new ways of relating to and working with other women that existed outside the patriarchal protocols imposed upon every other moment of their lives. Thus, the scholastic possibilities within recipe books offers an opportunity for the modern historian similar to the one granted to female authors. Instead of taking on the form of what we have come to describe as an “official” recording of history, these pages weave family histories into firsthand accounts of major historical events within the details of women’s discoveries and creations and experiences.
Works Cited
Mrs. A.M.: “Cookery refin'd. Or, The lady, gentlewoman and servant-maids useful companion.”
Published in London, printed for G. Conyers at the Ring in Little Britain, and Jo. Sprint at
the Blue Bell, app. 1697. URL: https://www.proquest.com/emb/docview/2240869539/
fulltextPDF/ED3DB846D1174FDDPQ
Fissell, Mary E.: “Introduction: Women, Health, and Healing in Early Modern Europe.” Bulletin
of the History of Medicine, 82:1 (Spring 2008), published by the Johns Hopkins
University Press. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44448504
Furdell, Elizabeth Lane: “Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: the rise
of male authority in pre-modern gynaecology.” Review of the book by Monica H. Green,
Women's History Review, 20:2 (2011), published by Routledge. DOI:
10.1080/09612025.2011.556329
J.S.: “The accomplished ladies rich closet of rarities: or, The ingenious gentlewoman and
servant-maids delightful companion.” Published in London, printed by W. and J. Wilde,
for N. Boddington in Duck Lane and J. Blare on London-Bridge, 1691. URL:https://
www.proquest.com/emb/docview/2240917511/fulltextPDF/723AF0A98B9040CFPQ
Leong, Elaine: “Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical
Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household.” Centaurus, 55:2 (2013), published
by the European Society for the History of Science. URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
/doi/full/10.1111/1600-0498.12019
Leong, Elaine: “How Recipes Created Knowledge in Early Modern Households.” Feature Story
published by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science on April 30, 2013. URL:
https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/feature-story/how-recipes-created-knowledge-early
modern-households
May, Robert: “The accomplisht cook, or, The art & mystery of cookery wherein the whole art is
revealed in a more easie and perfect method than hath been publisht in any language.”
Published in London, printed for Obadiah Blagrave, 1685. URL: https://www.proquest.
com/emb/docview/2240860614/3218F13698A841FAPQ
Rees, John: “Digitizing Material Culture: Handwritten Recipe Books, 1600–1900.” Historical
Collections of the National Library of Medicine, published by the U.S. National Institute
of Health on April 13, 2017. URL: https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2017/04/13/
digitizing-material-culture-handwritten-recipe-books-1600-1900/
[1] See Rees, John: “Digitizing Material Culture: Handwritten Recipe Books, 1600–1900”
[2] See Leong, Elaine: “Collecting Knowledge for the Family: Recipes, Gender and Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern English Household”; and “How Recipes Created Knowledge in Early Modern Households”
[3] See Mrs. A. M.: “Cookery refin'd. Or, The lady, gentlewoman and servant-maids useful companion”
[4] See J.S.: “The accomplished ladies rich closet of rarities”
[5] See Fissell, Mary E.: “Introduction: Women, Health, and Healing in Early Modern Europe”
[6] See Furdell, Elizabeth Lane: Review of “Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: the rise
of male authority in pre-modern gynaecology” by Monica H. Green
[7] See May, Robert: “The accomplisht cook”