It’s nearly #EMROCtranscribes day! I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to the introduction to Mary Hawker’s book and our wonderful speakers (Rachel Rich, Edith Snook and Tim Underhill), who bring some fascinating insights into working with recipes and recipe books. (Links to the recorded talks and registration for the speaker Q&A can be found in our previous post.)
In case you missed it, we also have a page that outlines how you can prepare for the transcribathon — such as setting up a FromThePage account or finding the sign-up for each page. The actual texts won’t open for transcription, however, until we kick things off at 11:00 GMT/7:00 EST on 4 November. The countdown is beginning…
One other thing that you could do, if you were so inclined, is to answer a little survey (no more than five minutes) so we can get a sense of our community members and your interests — it helps us to understand what you’re looking for in our transcribathons. Thank you!
We can’t wait to talk transcribing with you on Friday!
Have you ever attended an EMROC event? Are you planning to attend our transcribathon on 4 March 2021?
If you said yes to either, then please fill in our super-short, anonymous survey so we can get to know a bit more about our community. It takes only a couple minutes and is immensely helpful to us.
Join EMROC, the Royal College for Physiciants for some quick background talks on Transcribathon Day, 10am to noon ET (3-5 pm GMT).
Find out about the history and context of recipe books from a range of experts.Archivists, conservators and digital staff will reflect on the recipe book collection at Wellcome. Herbal Historian, Anne Stobart (University of Exeter) will discuss the interpretation of recipes in relation to early modern household medicine. Professor Jennifer Munroe (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) from EMROC will provide an introduction to the work of EMROC and the benefits of transcribing as a teaching resource. There will also be a chance to put questions to the expert panel which includes Pamela Forde, Archive Manager at the Royal College of Physicians.
The program:
Introduction: Julia Nurse (Research Development Specialist, Wellcome Collection)
EMROC and transcribing as a teaching resource (Jennifer Munroe, Professor of English, University of North Carolina and co-founder of EMROC)
The Wellcome recipe collection (Richard Aspin, former Head of Special Collections at Wellcome Collection)
The power of remedy books for the modern reader (Helen Wakely, Inclusive Collections Lead, Wellcome Collection)
Digitizing the recipe books (Christy Henshaw, Digital Production Manager, Wellcome Collection)
Household medicinal recipes (Anne Stobart, University of Exeter)
Please note this event will be recorded and will be made available after the event via the EMROC website. To participate, please book your virtual seat here to receive a link to the live session that will take place online via the Bluejeans platform. Notification of the live event will be sent via your booking through Eventbrite.
The year 2019 ended with some exciting news. Six new recipe manuscript transcriptions have now been vetted and uploaded into LUNA’s Folger Manuscript Transcription Collections. This now makes recipes from 49 different manuscripts made searchable thanks in part to the transcription help of EMROC and its members.
Most notable is the quick availability of Folger Manuscript V.b.400, which we hope rings a bell. MS V.b.400 was the subject of 2019’s fifth international transcribathon. Over three hundred unique transcribers brought the seventeenth-century collection to transcription conclusion on November 7. Within a month, through the herculean vetting efforts of Nicole Winard, Bob Tallaksen, and Sarah Powell, the manuscript was made ready for uploading into the database. Finally, Emily Wahl, Folger Metadata Librarian, added the transcriptions to the ever-growing collection of searchable pages. Those who have encountered the anonymous manuscript do not need to be told of its unique character, and the hope is that its presence within the LUNA collection will further illuminate its position within recipe book history.
A chart of “medicinall characters” found in Folger V.b.400, fol. 21
Even though EMROC did not have a hand in their transcription, there’s much to be excited about in the other five manuscripts as well. Folger MS V.a.396, the recipe collection of Penelope Jephson Patrick from 1671, has long been in the Folger’s possession and has added interest as the compiler’s husband would become Bishop of Ely in 1675. Folger MS V.a.397 was compiled by a woman named Katherine Brown in the mid-seventeenth century and contains a prayer to be recited by someone who is ill. MS W.a. 317 is an anonymously compiled eighteenth-century cookbook that contains several Indian recipes, and V.a.125 is a verse miscellany compiled by Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, that includes many pages of receipts. Finally, Folger Manuscript W.a.318, Cookery and medicinal recipes, was compiled by Dorothy Pennyman in the eighteenth century.
The variety represented within and between these various collections is seemingly limitless. Our hopes for 2020 are that new doors into historical recipes research will continue to open and that we may continue to point to the potentials here.
