Historical Culinary Recipe Reconstruction – Student Activity Sheet

Do the required reading and watching before you start your reconstruction. Explore and use the websites listed here to search for comparable recipes in contemporaneous sources.

Required Reading/Watching/Listening (do this first)

  • 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.

  • Syrup of Violets and Science video (ca 8 mins).

  • “The Best Medicine” RadioLab podcast (ca. 30 mins).

Choosing a recipe

Choose a recipe from any historical source. You can start your search with this list of historical recipes and recipe collections.

Keep in mind that we are more interested in your process than your finished product (although if it is delicious, all the better!) so do choose a recipe that you find intriguing rather than one you think will be easy to execute (in any case, processes which seem simple often turn out to be more complicated than they appear).

Work with a partner to cook a dish based on a historical recipe. As much as possible, try to simulate early modern ingredients, apparatus, and methods.

  • Some recipes calling for a large amount of ingredients may need to be halved or quartered.

  • 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 10-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.

  • Take lots of photographs during the process!

Questions and Food for Thought

  • Think carefully about the ingredients and processes. Check the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) for the early modern meanings of familiar and unfamiliar terms (for a familiar term that has a different meaning in an earlier period, see “biscuits”). NB. The OED requires a subscription. Check if your institution or local library has one.

  • Are these ingredients comparable to modern ingredients? How are they similar or different? What about their purity? Were they unusual (and perhaps imported) or common? Were they expensive at the time? What compromises will you have to make in sourcing ingredients?

  • 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?

  • Who might have formed the audience for your recipe? Can you identify whether they were part of a particular social group? Does your recipe contain any hints about power dynamics or social structure?