Kate So (UCL) - 2020-21 Students

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

This pandisciplinary project pairs traditional archival research with network analysis to examine the different ways early modern manuscript recipe books functioned both inside and outside the early modern home. After surveying these domestic texts for biographical details, network analysis will be conducted in order to create visual representations of partial recipe networks, highlighting which recipes or recipe makers were most influential within these networks. The purpose of this project is twofold: to consider the ways manuscript recipe books functioned as biographies, memorials and places of self-expression, and to examine the afterlives of these texts within archives. This project aims to examine these manuscripts resistance to standardised cataloguing and produce a website which will not only draw attention to the complex lives of manuscript recipe books, recipe networks and domestic medicine, but fill the current need for accurate and comprehensive finding aids and item descriptions.