Educators all over the world use Cooking in the Archives in the classroom. In introductory college courses on early modern literature, I often show the image of this recipe “To presarue aprecockes” and ask students to try to decipher the difficult handwriting and non-standard spelling. After reading the recipe we can discuss sugar, domestic labor, manuscript cookbooks, humoral theory, preservation strategies, and a range of other topics.

At Penn State Abington, I teach a project-based digital humanities course using items in Eberly Family Special Collections via PSU Libraries Digital Collections. In the past, I worked with undergraduate researchers on a project called “What’s in a Recipe?” In this course and this project, students transcribe recipe manuscripts, learn about food and medicine in the early modern period, and develop individual research projects.

Digitized Recipe Manuscripts (some with published transcriptions), a list developed with Sarah Peters Kernan:

Eberly Family Special Collections, The Pennsylvania State University Libraries

Digital Collections California Libraries Calisphere (Clark)

The Folger Shakespeare Library

The Huntington Library

The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

Lilly Library, Indiana University

The Royal College of Physicians

The Wellcome Collection

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto

See The Manuscript Cookbooks Survey for more (and a very helpful glossary and resources).

Resources:

Handout from MLA/SAA 2019 – Teaching Transcription with “My Lady Chanworth’s Receipt for Jumballs” (download a printable PDF)

Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC) – teaching resources

Folger Shakespeare Library – Folgerpedia “Practical Paleography” page includes helpful materials including this essential Alphabet Book and “Early Modern Measurements” page is very helpful for working with recipes.

The Recipes Project – teaching series and recent “Teaching Resource Roundup”

The Recipes Project – undergraduate series

The Historical Cooking Project – pedagogy series

Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights

“The World of Shakespeare’s Humors” NIH – National Library of Medicine

John Rees, “Digitizing Material Culture: Handwritten Recipe Books, 1600-1900” NIH – National Library of Medicine

Pedagogical Publications:

“Undergraduate Recipe Research” Early Modern Recipes Online Collective

“The Barclay Project” The Recipes Project

“Early Modern Euro-Indigenous Culinary Connections: Chocolate.” with John Kuhn, The Recipes Project

“Cooking Almond Jumballs at the Folger Shakespeare Library.” Shakespeare & Beyond