Rare Cooking – a project by UPenn’s rare books

“Cooking in the Archives: Updating Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen” is a public food history project run by Alyssa Connell and Marissa Nicosia. Funding from a University of Pennsylvania GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation has enabled us to launch this project in June 2014. Follow our culinary and archival exploits at our blog and on twitter @rare_cooking

“Cooking in the Archives” sets out to find, cook, and discuss recipes from cookbooks produced between 1600 and 1800. This project is situated at the intersection between the practice of modern cooking and the history of early modern manuscript and printed recipe books. Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts holds over 100 recipe books from the early modern era. We believe these recipes belong in the modern kitchen as well as the historical archive. After all, what are recipes if not instructions for cooking?”

These days the SCA is described as an organization focused on pre-17th century Europe. The exact dates and geographic boundaries do become subject to discussion and occasional change. So I’m going to point out this local blog even though the recipes they cook vary from a tiny step out of the time period we’re focusing on – to a huge leap forward into the eighteenth century.

As far as I can tell, the earliest recipe they have shared so far is for Chery Brandy

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