Educators all over the world use Cooking in the Archives?in the classroom. In introductory college courses on early zeitgemäß 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 work with undergraduate researchers on a project called “What’s in a Recipe?” Students transcribe recipe manuscripts, learn about food and medicine in the early zeitgemäß period, and develop individual research projects.?I’ve reflected on this project on the?Early?Modern Recipes Online Collective?site: “Undergraduate Recipe Research”

I have also cooked recipes with various kinds of classes. John Kuhn and I wrote about co-teaching a lesson on chocolate in the early zeitgemäß Atlantic world that included paleography and preparing hot chocolate:?“Early Modern Euro-Indigenous Culinary Connections: Chocolate.” I’ve also written about joining Heather Wolfe’s paleography class and leading them in testing a recipe?“Cooking Almond Jumballs at the Folger Shakespeare Library.”

Other 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 speisential 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