Recipes on the move in early modern England and British North America: domestic medicine, mobility, and manuscript culture

Abstract

"Using feminist and ecocritical approaches alongside recent historical work on early modern trade and commerce, this volume focuses on early modern manuscripts whose travels can be traced from one location to another. It illustrates how recipes came to blend newly encountered ingredients and practices with long-established healthcare methods. In the process, it offers attention to both the English countryside and the American colonies to expand what is often a London-centered view of English healthcare. Tracing the circulation of women's domestic knowledge and considering the availability of ingredients, this work shows how mobility brought new methods and materials to home healthcare, which in turn influenced how women and their families envisioned their relationships to their environment, their bodies, and their nation"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction. Recipes on the move -- Chapter 1. Local waters and notions of home in early modern recipe manuscripts -- Chapter 2. "North and south and middle countries are proud in this lady": Lady Grace Castleton's recipes and women's mobility -- Chapter 3. Considering the starter collection: Fanshawe, family, and imported knowledge -- Chapter 4. Keeping English bodies: preserving, seasoning, and englishness in early Virginia recipes -- Chapter 5. Traveling diseases, imported cures: rheumatism and sassafras in home medical manuscripts -- Epilogue. The travels of the great cordial.