The heterogenous nature of early modern manuscript manuscript recipe books: a study of recipe book functions [c.1500-c.1800]

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This project aims to survey the Wellcome Library's large manuscript recipe book collection for interesting physical attributes, recipe attributions, ownership, and use to explore how the materiality of manuscript recipe books has affected meaning, use, and transmission. This PhD project would also assist further recipe book study by creating online resources that supplement incomplete or outdated archival descriptions. Since the 1980s, there has been substantial growth in the study of early modern manuscript recipe books, partly due to a growing focus on women's history and the development of manuscript theory. Over the last decade, there has been a new appreciation of these manuscripts as being worthy of study in and of themselves, as opposed to being used purely as historical evidence. This increase in scholarship is also likely to have been supported by the Wellcome Library's microfilming and subsequent digitisation of their large manuscript recipe book collection which has made them globally accessible (Aspin, 2017). As a result, an interdisciplinary recipe book field has been established with early modern manuscript recipe books beginning to be appreciated as a valuable resource for early modern scholars in various fields. Despite this growing interest, the palaeographical and material aspects of early modern recipes and manuscript recipe books are underutilised. This is exacerbated by the fact that these manuscripts have been separated from family papers and sold/donated to libraries. The manuscripts are then catalogued to General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)) standards, which call for particular mandatory fields to be included with a catalogue, including the date an item was produced and its authors' name(s). This information is used to find material within an archive. However, due to the heterogenous nature of early modern manuscript recipe books production and use, ISAD(G) cataloguing has the unintended consequence of hiding recipe books' multigenerational and multipurpose nature. By surveying material/palaeographical characteristics, such as recipe attributions and evidence of multiple contributors, it becomes apparent that these texts were not only repositories for recipe knowledge but a site where domestic life took place. For example, palaeographical evidence in Martha Hodges' recipe book suggests that it acted not only as a place to document recipes and their efficacy, but was actually a site where domestic life took place. Research into the ways in which manuscript recipe books have been compiled, used, and disseminated will open up these texts further as a resource for early modern study. This PhD project would also contribute to recipe book research by sharing data online in appropriate standard and open formats, under the terms of a Creative Commons license to supplement current inaccurate and brief cataloguing metadata. In particular, the palaeographical, physical, and biographical details that are impossible to represent in archival metadata would be made accessible through an online platform similar to that of the Early Modern Female Book Ownership project. The project website will not only draw attention to the complex lives of recipe books, recipe network, and domestic medicine, but would fill the current need for accurate and comprehensive finding aids and item descriptions. This PhD project will project will place the materiality of manuscripts firmly in the centre of recipe book study, examine the impact of recipes and their authors on the transmission of early modern medical knowledge, and help progress this burgeoning new field through creating online resources which will open up these texts for further interdisciplinary (and also remote) study.