Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-370) and index
Contents:
Historical introduction -- Folk culture, food, and the Renaissance -- The seventeenth-century English housewife : her work, knowledge, and authority -- Seventeenth-century Englishwomen's literacy and writing -- Receipt books -- Looking back, looking forward : scholarship on receipt books and a new consideration of cookbooks -- Reading receipt books in the kitchen -- Three seventeenth-century receipt books. MS V.a.430 : Receipt book attributed to Mary Granville and Anne Granville D'Ewes -- MS V.a.20 : Receipt book attributed to Constance Hall -- MS V.a.450 : Cookery and medical receipt book attributed to Lettice Pudsey
Summary:
"Apricot wine and stewed calf's head, melancholy medicine and "ointment of roses." Welcome to the cookbook Shakespeare would have recognized. Preserving on Paper is a critical edition of three seventeenth-century receipt books handwritten manuals that included a combination of culinary recipes, medical remedies, and household tips which documented the work of women at home. Kristine Kowalchuk argues that receipt books served as a form of folk writing, where knowledge was shared and passed between generations. These texts played an important role in the history of women's writing and literacy and contributed greatly to issues of authorship, authority, and book history. Kowalchuk's revelatory interdisciplinary study offers unique insights into early modern women's writings and the original sharing economy."-- Provided by publisher