Transcript
Speaker: This is Around the Table, a podcast from the Recipes Project. I'm your host, Sarah Kernan. Together, we will learn about exciting scholars, professionals, projects, resources, and collections focused on historical recipes.
Speaker: Welcome to Season 2, Dedicated to Making. In each episode this season, we will feature interviews with guests who describe what making means to them.
Speaker: For some, it is recreating a historic recipe as closely as possible. For others, it is creating something new in a modern setting. However imperfect the process or the outcome, making historical recipes offers a powerful methodology for connecting with and understanding the past in a direct and tangible way.
Speaker: I am so excited to welcome Marissa Nicosia to a Around the Table. Marissa is an Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature at Penn State Abington. She teaches, researches, and writes about early modern English literature, food studies, book history, and political theory.
Speaker: In addition to a voluminous body of journal articles, book chapters, and essays, Marissa has also co-edited two collected volumes and in 2023 published her monograph, Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play, Historical Futures fifteen ninety to sixteen sixty Today, though, we'll be speaking about her work making and updating early modern English culinary recipes, especially for her public food history website launched in 2014, Cooking in the Archives, Updating Early Modern Recipes, 1600 1800 in a Modern Kitchen.
Speaker: In it, Marissa curates, transcribes, and updates recipes from early modern English recipe books, including historical information alongside detailed step-by-step instructions and photos of the updated recipes.
Speaker: I'm thrilled to speak with Marissa today about her wide-ranging experiences cooking and writing about early modern recipes. Marissa, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I love talking about this work with other people.
Speaker: Can you share how Cooking in the Archives started and how it has evolved or changed over time? So Cooking in the Archives started with paleography, the practice of studying historical handwriting.
Speaker: I was PhD student in English literature, and I was learning to read secretary hand um and also round hand and italic hand, the kind of dominant forms of 16th, 17th, and 18th century handwriting.
Speaker: And one thing that we read a lot to practice learning these letter forms that looped below the line in strange ways or had interesting abbreviations, we learned by transcribing, copying out each letter of recipes.
Speaker: And recipes were great because you get excited about seeing sage or chicken, um or you'd have like interesting verbs like mingle. and And there were also numbers in there. So but they were really good for learning how to read handwriting that you would encounter doing archival research as a literary scholar, as a literary historian. And me and my initial collaborator on the Cooking in the Archives project, Alyssa Connell, we kept saying, oh, this sounds tasty.
Speaker: Oh, maybe we could try to make this. So we applied for an internal grant at the University of Pennsylvania where we were studying for interdisciplinary innovation. And we said we would like to innovate by actually cooking these historical recipes instead of just reading them to practice our handwriting skills and all of that.
Speaker: So we were awarded this grant, which was excellent cause we needed a way to pay our rent in the summer of 2014. And we we dove in. And at this point, my research had been in book history and manuscript studies and in thinking about Renaissance temporality and history.
Speaker: So i I felt like this recipe recreation was a ah different kind of time travel, but I i wasn't quite sure what. And while I knew a lot about um early modern manuscripts, I didn't know that much about food studies, food history, or culinary manuscripts in particular, um because that hadn't been like one of my major fields of my research at that time.
Speaker: So we started feeling our way through what it was like to read and research and prepare these recipes, Alyssa and I initially. And now I've continued that practice by reading and learning so much for people in the broader community.
Speaker: of historical reenactment, of food studies, of chefs who practice, scholars who practice about how to take historical recipes and make them today in all sorts of different ways.
Speaker: That's a great segue into the next topic I'd love to talk about. How do you approach that process of identifying what recipes you actually want to prepare and then researching and cooking and updating them? What all goes into that for you?
Speaker: The process always begins with me reading something and saying, ooh, that's interesting. It might be that I want to taste it, or I've been reading a menu or and a household account book where ah a dish gets mentioned and now I'm like,
Speaker: oh, there are this is a recipe for smelts. It's not just that that household was buying smelts. um So there's always something that piques my interest. And I've to date never done a project where I've cooked through an entire recipe book. I've always just kind of been more of a ah gadfly about it. I go with what is interesting to me. And that's part of what's enabled the project to last for 11 years um and for me to not get bored with it or burn out on it. So I start with something that's interesting, either because I want to taste it or I want to know about it.
Speaker: And at this point, 11 years into this work, I find that if there's a recipe I'm curious about, I have to cook it. Even if I'm not going to be publishing a recipe for it in, say, the journal article I'm writing, I feel like I need to know about it through cooking. I need to use my embodied method, my um practice as research method to fully understand what it's saying,
Speaker: Because I found that like I don't exactly understand what the difference between peeling or not peeling the mushrooms are until I've tried it. Or using sugar instead of honey.
Speaker: Or white wine instead of red wine. All these kinds of variations that I've seen in recipes. I know what they mean a little bit more through the process of trying it. And I wanted to speak a little bit to updating as well.
Speaker: But I wonder if that gets into the question of historical accuracy too. Absolutely. Obviously, like anyone who tries preparing historic recipes of any kind, that there are real challenges with translating that to the modern day.
Speaker: So how do you balance historical accuracy with the practicalities of modern kitchen and dining settings? I mean, it's a very different environment than what was available the early modern period. So how do you handle that?
Speaker: I begin from a position that what I make will not be authentic, but it will be in a open dialogue with that original recipe.
Speaker: So if the recipe calls for flour, butter, sugar, and cloves, like a recipe for cakes that I've made before and that I've been writing about recently.
Speaker: The strains of wheat and the strains of sugar that are cultivated now are not the same as the 16th century ones. The cloves have gone through different production processes. The climate is different.
Speaker: The ah milling and the processing is different. The butter is from a ah different breed of cow that's also like fed in a different environment.
Speaker: And I'm also constantly dealing with the fact that I am based in Philadelphia and North America and my specific climate and foodways. And the recipes I'm talking about are English recipes most of the time.
Speaker: So there's also that removal. So very simple ingredients like butter, flour, sugar, and cloves ah raise all of these ways we already can't get back to what they would have been like in 1616 or thereabouts. But we can still get something that is the modern equivalent of that thing.
Speaker: And then I'm baking them in my oven I'm baking these cakes in my oven. And ah that is quite different than the bread oven that's described in the recipe. So the this particular recipe describes drawing your brown bread out of your but bread oven, which could have been a kind of beehive bread oven, or it could have been one of the pocketbooks. bread ovens on the side of a hearth, but it would be some more enclosed baking space. So the recipe has a lot of information about how to watch the cakes so they don't over bake using that kind of radiating heat technology. And that's something that they're telling the cook to use instinct, but also use observational skills to do it.
Speaker: And there, it's a little different than me setting my oven to 350 in a timer. But like as a historical recipe recreator, I'm using my like im like, is it getting too brown? Are they setting? Like has the, or am I seeing the signs that I was supposed to look for in the bread oven?
Speaker: So that's one way that these forms of attention translate across ah early modern cookery practices and my my recipe recreation practices. So in many ways, I see myself as a person in a long line of recipe users who is adapting what I'm doing to the current realities of my situation in a way that's trying to honor the many people who prepared, compiled, circulated, and preserved these materials to bring them to us today.
Speaker: And it's important to me that most of what I put on cooking in the archives can be prepared with ingredients from your local grocery store plus rose water.
Speaker: Because I can't eliminate rose water and be truthful to the foodways. But a lot of the other things I want you to be able to buy at your big box supermarket, because I think people have a right to be able to access this kind of material that it shouldn't just be for people who can buy specialty products or or have immediate access to specialty products.
Speaker: Yeah, making these these recipes more accessible to a broader audience, in addition to translating them for a modern audience, but making them accessible for anyone to be able to cook.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's that's really important and kind of helps you understand the historical moment a bit more and have a grasp on that, no matter your ability to go to all these specialty markets or order food online.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, maybe I could try roast swan, but that would be very difficult for me to arrange. um So it would be very difficult for most of the cooking in the archives readers to to arrange, although perhaps maybe someone will write in and say, I have a line on on roasting swan, give me a recipe.
Speaker: How do you go about researching and filling in some other aspects of recipes, some of the trickier parts? There's always missing pieces and recipes. How do you figure out the things that are left unsaid, like the ingredients, quantities, or the timing? What are ways that you fill in those gaps?
Speaker: Yeah, there's variation or implied knowledge in amounts, in methods, in temperature, and in in timing.
Speaker: So sometimes there's something like a ah reference for using a parinder or something like that. And then i consult resources like the Folger's amazing, like weight and measurement resources to figure out like, well, maybe a parinder is about three, I think it's about three quarters of a cup.
Speaker: But porringers also vary wildly. So a person's porringer in their house might not be what a porringer is in another house. Or um a posnet, like a little three-legged cooking pot that you would use to make a posset or something like that.
Speaker: So for for some of these, there's a material culture of cookery implements that we can can turn to for some information. And ah there are certain resources I now know to go to for that.
Speaker: There's also ah spice prices sometimes become um really important. So I found some resources for deciphering spice price rates.
Speaker: There's occasionally putting the spices on top of a coin as well. So it's sometimes unclear if it's the price or the coin that's being called for in those situations. Those are a little tricky.
Speaker: If I have a sense from when I've prepared ah the dish, if I'm like, oh, that actually is like a meringue, or that actually is like shortbread. Then I turn to modern recipes that tell me what's a good temperature for a meringue to go into my oven, what's good temperature for shortbread to go into my oven.
Speaker: And I look at the timings on those modern recipes. And set a lot of timers. I set so many timers when I'm recipe testing. ah If I have um something going on the stove, I always have a stopwatch going.
Speaker: um But it's interesting how there are certain descriptions for preserves that you can... kind of approximate to candy height or other kinds of things you might see on a modern candy thermometer.
Speaker: There are ah descriptors like a gentle fire or a soft fire. And there you're putting your pot just over like a kind of low flame. and And learning what that method vocabulary is like is interesting. I've spent a lot of time...
Speaker: with the Oxford English Dictionary, not just looking up ingredient nouns, but also looking up some of the verbs to think about what is this? Is there a sense here in this word that I'm not totally getting?
Speaker: I'm trying to remember the name of this particular resource. Oh, the sifter. The sifter also is a place where I sometimes look up cooking implements and that that sometimes has volumes on it as well. It's a great resource.
Speaker: Could you talk about any surprising or interesting recipes you have found while working on cooking in the archives? One of the most fun recipe recreations that I've done started with a social media post that a bunch of people sent me.
Speaker: So a scholar um who works in political philosophy, was doing research in the John Locke papers at the Bodleian. And he posted to social media a recipe for John Locke's pancakes from the Locke papers.
Speaker: And a bunch of people sent this to me. I was very excited to see it. And I prepared this recipe and they're really luscious um crepe-like British pancakes with a lot of cream in them and also orange blossom water and butter and half a nutmeg grated into the batter.
Speaker: So they are extremely expensive pancakes because nutmegs were were very expensive during Locke's lifetime. And I did the recipe recreation. And after that, I had the opportunity to go to the Bodleian and look.
Speaker: And it looks like he's actually working through a couple of different recipes, one of which he received from a social connection to develop this kind of peak recipe. And the recipe that I shared with Half a Nutmeg is his like edited book.
Speaker: best version. So it's just such an interesting way to come at the life of this very important historical thinker who's had a lot of impact in the modern world to see that he also was interested in this negotiation of developing the best recipe in the kitchen for this kind of dish.
Speaker: And there's something funny about it being up pancake, right? It's not like a roast beef. It's not a celebration piece, but maybe it is a ce it maybe it was a celebration piece being served at a special occasion, but it doesn't have the grandeur of certain other historical recipes. It's a pancake, but oh boy, is it delicious.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really intrigued now. I saw those posts and I saw you working on that recipe a while back, but I haven't recreated those. And the fact that it has half a nutmeg in it really piques my interest.
Speaker: That is probably a pretty intense flavor. It's also one of the few recipes I can say that I've actually ah cooked using slightly more historical materials.
Speaker: So Anne Muellenthaler invited me to Potts Grove Manor and we prepared that recipe on a ah flat surface over a brazier of coals, which is likely how that kind of um pancake would have been cooked because you can do more detailed work ah over a brazier of coals than you can with other kitchen heat setups. It was one that we got I got to try using a more historical technology than I normally have because everything I do is for the modern kitchen. So was fun to see this recipe that I'd updated for the modern kitchen taken back into a historical kitchen and used. And the people who came to that event at Potspere of Manor really enjoyed these pancakes cooked in that way. We were surrounded by wood smoke, so that changed the sort of ambiance of eating, which was nice. It was very delicious. I can't say if they were more delicious in my kitchen or in that kitchen, but both were delicious. Well, I think we've kind of hinted at this in a couple ah of my questions and your responses. Could you talk a little bit about what role you think food and recipes
Speaker: this historic food and recipes plays in understanding or at least connecting to moments in the past, the history, cultures of a specific time and place.
Speaker: Do you have any thoughts on that? People really care about food. Because it's something that they have to deal with every day. It's something which they already have a history with through their family, whether their family is a like robust food traditions family or or or not. Food isn't so important, but they'll have a memory, whether it's like a highly advertised snack or a traditional family recipe that um links them to time and place.
Speaker: So i love showing people recipes from ah more distant history because there's an immediate connection with like, yes, I also eat food every day.
Speaker: i also have to think about these things. I also have some sense of food traditions, right? Whether that is like a favorite mass produced drink or a family dish.
Speaker: I think with something like ah jumbles or these kinds of um historical cookies or the historical hot chocolate that I've made from later 17th century manuscripts, people are like, oh, that's like a thing that I have consumed, but this is a very different version of it.
Speaker: And it makes sometimes the historical lessons go down um a little bit more easily or People leave with something that they immediately want to go tell someone else.
Speaker: I've had students in class where I've made historical hot chocolate, have all sorts of different connections to other hot chocolates that they've had in their lives and tell me, oh, I need to go tell X family member, X friend that I had this so right recreation of a 17th century hot chocolate in class.
Speaker: So it really gets people um excited. And I think it's an amazing touchstone for showing people why the study of the past is important and what purchase the past might have on on what we do now and how we think about food now and how we think about history today. Well, you just mentioned preparing some of this food for your classes or or students preparing it. Do you do that very regularly? do and you incorporate historical cooking and recipes into many of your classes?
Speaker: How do you put the the process of making into your own teaching and your own research outside of the cooking in the archives project? It's grown and grown and grown. So it started out with, I end up talking about food more when I'm teaching a Shakespeare play or Margaret Cavendish poem or something like that. And then it became, well, why don't I have my students transcribe a little bit in class? Or we'll read ah we'll read something from a manuscript in the round so they can see the handwriting.
Speaker: And then I'm like, well, I can get this little grant and I can buy goose quills and then we can write out the recipe together. And then, oh, I have this this other little pot of funding that's connected to some undergrads who I have now transcribing. I'll buy a hot plate.
Speaker: I've made historical hot chocolate in the classroom a lot in literature classes. And I taught a Shakespeare in the Kitchen class about my book in progress where we made ah strawberry preserves on a hot plate in the classroom that was a little more involved. And I'm now teaching most semesters classes where students are transcribing for mostly 18th century, um later 17th century and 18th century recipe manuscripts that are held in Penn State libraries, Eberly family special collections.
Speaker: um That collection has grown over the 10 years that I've been a faculty member at Penn State through long-term collaborations with special collections, with curators, with the people who work in the digital library, digital collections side of special collections.
Speaker: So um at this point, I'm teaching out of my food history work and out of my cooking in the archives work every semester. But in the beginning, I wasn't. I had to learn a lot more to be ready to teach like that.
Speaker: Do these practices go more into your research and writing as well as your teaching? you find that all this has become very interconnected on on that side of your professional life as well?
Speaker: It really has. So I think I said earlier that I don't want to write about a recipe unless I've tested it, even if I'm not actually like publishing the recipe test as part of the article. you like If I write an article where I've tested a recipe, i'll test the recipe and I'll put that up on Cooking in the Archives when the article gets published to say, hey, I wrote this thing over here that maybe you want to read, maybe you don't. But here's the recipe recreation for anyone who wants it.
Speaker: And all of this work over the last decade or so has led to me writing a book called Shakespeare in the Kitchen. So I've been cooking the historical recipes for cooking in the archives, I've been writing these other pieces.
Speaker: And I've also been teaching Shakespeare pretty much every semester over that period of time. So I um have written a book that has 10 recipes in it. And in the chapters, I use those recipe recreations to show that Shakespeare's food metaphors are not just fun linguistic work, that they're connected to this larger culinary culture and that preparing the recipes in the kitchen has a lot to teach us about these food references.
Speaker: in Shakespeare's poems and plays. So that's the project that I'm finishing right now. I never would have written a book like this if I hadn't started cooking in the archives in 2014.
Speaker: And I'm really excited for this book to be material that I get to teach in the classroom because each chapter is written with the idea that I'd want to give it to undergraduates when I was teaching them the play.
Speaker: you want to tell us exactly when the Shakespeare book is coming out? Anything you want to plug? I believe Shakespeare in the Kitchen will be coming out in 2026, but I will up update you all with a fresh link and at a true date once i once I'm clear with the press about exactly when that's happening.
Speaker: I'm also writing a number of of different articles and and book chapters that think about the seasons and the way that seasons change and how different literary works and different recipe works ah reference the changing of the seasons. So that's something I'm very interested in.
Speaker: and it kind of links all my work about um temporality into my work about recipes. And I'd also note that cooking in the archives has been a little quieter over the last couple of years, in part because a lot of my recipe testing efforts have gone towards my Shakespeare in the Kitchen project But I have a lot of other ideas about um food references in Shakespeare that I did not have a chance to deal with in Shakespeare in the Kitchen.
Speaker: So I'm thinking about continuing a sort of complete works of Shakespeare in the Kitchen on Cooking in the Archives in the coming years, where I'll get to share some of the recipes that that didn't make it into the book and that were exciting to me ah in a shorter format than what I'm doing in my book chapters. So there'll be more material adjacent to that huge exploration I've done in Shakespeare in the Kitchen coming to Cooking in the Archives soon. Wonderful. Well, I can't wait to see that. and I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be very excited to see that as well. Marissa, thank you so much for speaking with me today.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Sarah. Thanks to everyone for listening today. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. I'll see you again next time on Around the Table.
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