As a predominantly Christian culture for several centuries, daily life in medieval Western Europe became closely entwined with religious practices. Food, in particular, reflected Christian beliefs and actions in both quotidian and extraordinary ways. What, when, and how people ate was partly determined by the liturgical year and the calendar of saints. Personal prayer and sacrifice was reflected by fasting and abstinence from specific foods. And every Church celebration, however solemn or joyous, was demonstrated by culinary practices. In my presentation, I will describe several of these, including:

• The Mass as a Eucharistic meal;

• The centrality and symbolism of bread and wine at medieval tables;

• The practice of fasting and abstinence to reflect personal and Church-mandated sacrifice and prayer;

• The importance of meat and fish recipes in celebrating the liturgical year;

• The production of specialty Christian foods, such as Communion wafers and convent-produced pastries dedicated to saints and religious orders; and

• The depiction of food and culinary practices in religious art, including literature, music, and visual art.

In everyday and extraordinary culinary customs, Christians in medieval Europe acted out their faith through food, continually shaping and understanding liturgical practices.

*ONLINE* In this cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste early modern European recipes influenced by the Age of Exploration and empire-building of Western colonialism. We will explore this period of culinary exchange and discovery and learn about premodern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes from a variety of European culinary sources.

*ONLINE* People have long turned to food to maintain health and cure ailments. In medieval and renaissance Europe, medical practitioners prescribed food and medicines recorded in recipes to preserve health and negotiate times of plague and illness. In this seminar, we will examine this historical relationship between food, health, and recipes. 2 Sessions.

People have long turned to food to maintain health and cure ailments; this was certainly the case in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Not only did diet play a critical role in regulating one's health, but many foods and recipes now consumed for pleasure, like sugar, chocolate, spiced wine, and distilled spirits, were prepared as foods specifically for healing. Recipes for items which skirted the line between food and health, as well as more traditional medicines, were found side-by-side with culinary recipes in printed cookbooks and household recipe books. These books spanned a broad range of genres, including dietaries, herbals, and guides to the natural and humoral properties of new ingredients found in the recently-discovered New World. Through an examination of historical recipes, literature, accounts, and images, especially from the Newberry's collections, participants will examine the close relationship between health, food, and recipes in medieval and Renaissance Europe.

*ONLINE* In this class, conducted as a cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste early modern European recipes influenced by the Columbian Exchange. This transfer of plants, animals, populations, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas led to many modern regional culinary identities and dishes. We will explore this exchange of foods and the adoption of culinary identities through reading and interpreting recipes from a variety of European culinary sources.

*ONLINE* In this virtual cooking demonstration, we will explore the medieval spice trade through the preparation of medieval European recipes. Learn about premodern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes featuring an array of historical spices.

*ONLINE* Sugar was one of the most precious and luxurious commodities in premodern Europe. In this seminar, we will explore its many culinary uses and the booming sugar industry in early modern Europe and its colonies, including farming, processing, trade, and widespread use of slave labor. 2 Sessions.

*ONLINE* In this class, which will be conducted as a cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste medieval European recipes from manuscript sources. We will explore the medieval spice trade and learn about premodern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes featuring an array of historical spices.

Contemporary cooking is driven by engaging recipes, but for students and scholars, historical recipes can provide valuable insight into the past, as these texts have been recorded for thousands of years to document ways to feed, preserve, heal, and transform. Drawing upon examples from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, we will explore how recipes—whether culinary, household, medical, or alchemical—can be used in classroom settings. Teaching with recipes can reveal new ways to consider themes as diverse as scientific experimentation, premodern communication, health and medicine, the environment, and the cultural transmission of marginalized groups. Participants will examine recipes from the Newberry’s collections, explore digital resources featuring recipe content from American and European institutions, and consider classroom activities based on historical recipe sources.

*ONLINE* This seminar, conducted as a musical performance, cooking demonstration, lecture, and discussion, offers a new way to consider American culture between the two World Wars. The instructors, a professional pianist and a culinary historian, will weave together musical and culinary examples of technology, popular and high culture, and foreign influences to speak more broadly about American culture. This seminar is co-taught with Elizabeth Newkirk.

*ONLINE* Cooking Demonstration and Presentation at The Ohio State University’s Conference on “The Experimental Archaeology of Medieval and Renaissance Food.”

On February 11-12, 2022, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies will host its biennial celebration of Popular Culture and the Deep Past (PCDP) at the Ohio State University, with ‘The Experimental Archaeology of Medieval and Renaissance Food.’ As in past years, this event will feature a scholarly conference (with papers, round tables, and other academic events) nested within a Renaissance-faire-like carnival (featuring exhibits, gaming, contests, and activities of all kinds).

Can you imagine the American Midwest without wheat fields, Italy without marinara sauce, or Spain without gazpacho? Wheat, tomatoes, chili peppers, and many other foods were transferred between the Old and New Worlds following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492. This transfer of foods, as well as other plants, animals, humans, and diseases, is now known as the Columbian Exchange. Contact between Europe and the Americas resulted in a fantastic array of foods available globally. With the discovery of the New World, Europe secured enormous tracts of fertile land suited for the cultivation of popular crops such as sugar, coffee, oranges, and bananas. Upon introduction of these crops, the Americas quickly became the main suppliers of these foods to most of the world. In an effort to produce new ingredients for their markets, European empires laid claim to land in the New World, impacting the culture, language, religion, and politics in the Americas for centuries. Furthermore, the desire to grow valuable crops, procure prized resources, and transport them globally resulted in the rapid spread and transportation of enslaved populations from Africa to the Americas. Through the evaluation of sources from early modern books, art, maps, and recipes, many found within the Newberry Library’s own collections, we will examine foods of the Columbian Exchange and their lasting impact.

Celebrate the Medieval Institute's 75th Anniversary at every home football game this year! Join us this week for a talk on medieval food culture by culinary historian Sarah Peters Kernan, and enjoy a harvest feast.

*ONLINE* In this seminar, conducted as a cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste early modern English recipes from manuscript and print sources. We will explore the background, methods, and meanings behind a few historic preparations for dishes with ingredients harvested or served each autumn and learn about premodern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes.

*ONLINE* Sugar was one of the most precious and luxurious commodities in premodern Europe. In this seminar, we will explore the sugar industry in Europe and its colonies, including farming and processing, culinary uses, trade networks, and the widespread use of slave labor in sugar colonies. The seminar will include a presentation of Newberry materials so participants can observe the impact of sugar through early modern texts, images, and maps.

*ONLINE* In this cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste early modern English recipes from manuscript and print sources. We will explore the background, methods, and meanings behind a few historic preparations for dishes inspired by summertime produce and learn about premodern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes.

*ONLINE* In this seminar, conducted as a cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste dishes made using early modern English recipes from manuscript and print sources. We will explore the background, methods, and meanings behind a few historic preparations for sweets and learn about pre-modern food culture through reading and interpreting recipes.

*ONLINE* Despite sugar’s ubiquity in the modern Western diet, it was once reserved as a medicinal ingredient for the wealthiest consumers. From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, sugar transformed from a rare luxury item to a commonplace ingredient, shaped by dramatic shifts in health, trade, and politics. Sugar became increasingly desirable in the early modern period as its consumption became essential in several new, caffeinated drinks: coffee, tea, and chocolate. The rise of sugar was also encouraged by the popularity of molasses, a byproduct of sugar processing, and rum, the distilled spirit made from it. Colonial structures and the exploitation of enslaved people facilitated the remarkable increase in sugar production and popularity. Through evaluation of sources pulled from literature, art, economic and political texts, maps, material goods, and recipes, many found within the Newberry Library’s own collections, we will delve into the history of sugar (c. 1100 to 1900), focusing on the connections between sugar consumption and production with social, economic, and political power.

*ONLINE* Institute of Historical Research Food History Seminar

In this seminar, I propose a new model in which to consider the development of cookbooks in medieval and early modern England. I propose a framework shaped not only by the food and structure of recipes, but also the networks of readers who copied, purchased, and used these texts. I will particularly focus on the shift from manuscript to print in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Reader networks ranged from professionals like medical practitioners, elite households, and middling class women. These groups and the overlaps between them reveal much about the changes in cookbooks throughout this period, such as the types of recipes contained within and the presentation of the recipes on the page. My conclusions were formed by an examination of over one hundred manuscript and printed cookeries in libraries across the United States and Europe and tens of digitized books and manuscripts. In carefully documenting diverse textual, codicological, and bibliographical features including dedications, ingredients, mise en page, marginalia, watermarks, and stains, I was able to identify several distinct groups of readers. Unraveling the web of cookbook readers in conjunction with concurrent changes in food trends and book production is important in demonstrating the growth of the cookery genre and the rapid expansion of readership in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This expansion of readership furthermore supports a broader claim in my research that a widespread audience existed for manuscript cookeries prior to the introduction of print and subsequent explosion in cookbook production. These early reader networks shaped the prodigious circulation of recipes among families and individuals in seventeenth and eighteenth-century recipe books and the parallel circulation and readership of cookbooks as printed texts.

*ONLINE* The ubiquity of coffee, tea, and chocolate obscures their past at the center of geographical exploration, religious debate and medical observation. Explore topics like the medical properties of chocolate and immorality in early modern coffeehouses. 4 Sessions.

*ONLINE* Contemporary cooking is driven by engaging recipes, but for students and scholars, historical recipes can provide valuable insight into the past, as these texts have been recorded for thousands of years to document ways to feed, preserve, heal, and transform. Drawing upon examples from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, we will explore how recipes—whether culinary, household, medical, or alchemical—can be used in classroom settings. Teaching with recipes can reveal new ways to consider themes as diverse as scientific experimentation, premodern communication, health and medicine, the environment, and the cultural transmission of marginalized groups. Participants will be provided with a guide to digital resources featuring recipe content from American and European institutions and examples of remote and in-person classroom activities based on historical recipe sources.

*ONLINE* Food was an important feature of everyday life in the Middle Ages and appeared regularly in late medieval English literature. Writers used cultural conventions surrounding food and dining to illuminate ideas about power, class, gender, spirituality, and much more. In this seminar, we will read and discuss excerpts from some of the most celebrated works in the medieval English literary canon, examining how and why the authors of these texts turned to depictions of food and dining.

In the modern Western world, coffee, tea, and chocolate are viewed as daily necessities, found everywhere from convenience stores to chain restaurants to artisanal markets. These three caffeinated foodstuffs—all originally consumed as beverages—first made their way to Europe in the sixteenth century, awakening a continent accustomed to alcohol. Over the course of three centuries, these drinks became popular in different pockets of Europe; geography, religion, class, gender, and politics highly influenced these preferences. In this lecture, we will examine the rise of coffee, tea, and chocolate in early modern Europe and the consequences of their popularity.

*Online* In this seminar, conducted as a cooking demonstration and workshop, we will study, prepare, and taste medieval and early modern English recipes from manuscript and print sources. We will explore the background, methods, and meanings behind a few historic preparations and learn about pre-modern food culture through reading and making recipes.

*Online* People have long turned to food to maintain health and cure ailments. In medieval and Renaissance Europe, professional and household practitioners prescribed food and medicines recorded in printed and manuscript recipes to preserve and manage health during times of plague and illness. In this seminar, we will examine the historical relationship between health, food, and recipes, considering professional medical theories, household health practices, medical and culinary recipes, and more.

Have you ever wondered about the origins of French cuisine? This seminar will trace the flavors and traditions of French cooking to the royal courts of medieval and Renaissance France. These courts embraced the art of dining, producing celebrity chefs and cookbooks, exquisite entremets, and eventually national dishes and customs. In particular, we will explore the development of courtly dining through accounts of several historic feasts, delving into a world of edible sculptures, fountains of wine, and extravagant performances.

Can you imagine Kansas without wheat, Italy without tomatoes, or India without chili peppers? These foods, so central to modern regional culinary identities, were adopted as a result of the Columbian Exchange—the transfer of plants, animals, populations, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas. Through observation of Newberry items and the examination of recipes, we will learn in this one-day seminar how modern tastes have been influenced by the Columbian Exchange.

In the modern Western world, coffee, tea, and chocolate are viewed as daily necessities, found everywhere from convenience stores to chain restaurants to artisanal markets. These three caffeinated foodstuffs—all originally consumed as beverages—first made their way to Europe in the sixteenth century, awakening a continent accustomed to alcohol. Europeans adopted exotic drinks from faraway lands (Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas), assimilating foreign flavors into their daily diets. Over the course of three centuries, these drinks became popular in different pockets of Europe; geography, religion, class, gender, and politics highly influenced these preferences. Furthermore, these beverage preferences became entangled in the perilous economics of colonialism and slavery. Many contemporary texts and material goods were devoted to the consumption of coffee, tea, and chocolate. These included books and tracts by physicians, explorers, and theologians; recipes for the perfect cup of chocolate in manuscript recipe books and printed cookbooks; and dishware and tools for preparing and serving all three drinks. Through the evaluation of these and other sources pulled from early modern literature, art, economic records, maps, material goods, recipes, and more, many found within the Newberry Library’s own collections, we will examine the rise of coffee, tea, and chocolate in early modern Europe and the consequences of their popularity.