Love-in-idleness, Part One: Adapting an early modern recipe for heartsease cordial
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Author
Marissa Nicosia
Marissa Nicosia adapts an early modern recipe for heartsease cordial. This purple pansy syrup was used to “clear the heart” – to treat the chest and lungs or to reduce fever – but also for healing heartaches and other amorous ailments.
The three most popular recipes from Before 'Farm to Table'
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Shakespeare & Beyond
With the Folger’s four-year Before ‘Farm to Table’ project drawing to a close, we’re revisiting three of the most popular early modern recipes adapted by the project team and shared on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog. Before ‘Farm to Table’:…
Before there were Starbucks and the quirky coffeeshops masquerading as cozy work corners for many of us, there was the mid-17th century coffeeshop boom in England. During the 1600s, the general conversation about coffee nodded to its status as the…
Recipe: A 17th-century potato pie with marrow and dates
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Author
Elizabeth DeBold
Sweet potato pies, a beloved staple of North American fall and winter cooking, are baked out of mashed or blended sweet potatoes mixed with condensed milk, eggs, and spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and allspice. Few Americans and Canadians would think of such a dish as traditionally English, yet many cookery books written in England during the seventeenth century show that English people made and enjoyed pies like this. We decided to try one of these recipes, found in the Folger collection, during our recent Pi Day celebration.
Early modern recipe combinations to get you through the winter
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Shakespeare & Beyond
We’ve shared so many early modern recipe adaptations on this blog that it might feel overwhelming to choose from them all. That’s why we’ve created some delicious combinations for you to experiment with over the holidays and beyond. You’ll find recipes for breakfast, teatime, a fancy holiday meal, and more.
The early modern precursor to turducken: Adapting an old recipe to make mini pies
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Author
Michael Walkden
Learn about the early modern precursor to turducken (a huge turkey pie with duck but no chicken) and make your own mini pies using this adapted recipe.
Before the Thanksgiving turkey came the banquet peacock
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Author
Elisa Tersigni
Lavish dinners—and the cookbooks and instruction manuals for how to execute them—were popular during the Renaissance, and they emphasized the art of food, in addition to—and at times, over—its taste. Peacocks were thus an ideal banquet food because their colorful plumage made for artful display. But over the early modern period, turkeys came to replace peacocks as the customary food of ceremonies and holidays.
Roast joint of mutton: A recipe from ‘Fat Rascals’
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Author
Shakespeare & Beyond
John Tufts is an award-winning actor and the author of “Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare’s Table,” a cookbook featuring over 150 authentic recipes straight out of Shakespeare’s plays. Here, he shares his recipe for a roast joint of mutton, inspired by a line from Henry IV, Part 2.
Eggs in moonshine and spinach toasts: Two early modern recipes for a sweet breakfast
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Author
Michael Walkden
Even though the combination of eggs and sugar along with butter and flour forms the cornerstone of baking, the idea of poaching eggs in sweet wine, or adding sugar to your scrambled eggs, might seem heretical to many. But this is exactly how egg dishes were often prepared in the upper-class households of early modern England. In a time when sugar was still a luxury commodity, enmeshed in colonial trade networks, and purchased at the cost of countless human lives, its inclusion in practically every dish became a marker of wealth and status among elite households across Europe. The two recipes presented here will strike many modern readers as unusual.
"Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen": Hedgehogs in Shakespeare's plays and the early modern imagination
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Author
Haylie Swenson
Edward Topsell. The historie of foure-footed beastes. 1607. FOLGER STC 24123 copy 1 While the global population of European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) is stable, their numbers have been rapidly declining in the UK for decades, especially in rural areas. This…
Possets, drugs, and milky effects: A look at recipes, Shakespeare's plays, and other historical references
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Author
Khristian S. Smith
Shakespeare’s plays are full of references to food and cookery, but they’re not always very appetizing. In Hamlet, the ghost of elder Hamlet describes the effect of the poison that Claudius pours into his ears, how it winds its way…
