Category Archives: Transcribing

Jamming Out with Rosemary

Elizabeth Bulckley, Testing Recipes, Transcribing, Wellcome Library, , , , , , ,

By Samuel Fatzinger

As I was transcribing a recipe manuscript by Elizabeth Bulckley, “A Booke of Hearbes and Receipts,” (compiled in 1627, Wellcome Library) I came across a page title “The Vertues of Rosemary.” While apparently Rosemary can perform many medical miracles, what really piqued my interest was a brief sentence at the bottom of the page (12r):

Also rosemarie comforteth the braine

the memory, the inward senses, & restoreth

speech to them that are posessed with adumbe

paulsie, espetially the conserue made of this.

What did this mean, a conserve of this? A conserve of rosemary, certainly. But made out of what? A conserve, distinctly form other forms of preserving food, usually contains pieces of fruit (presumably because many fruits, especially their rinds or skins, contain pectin, which works as a congealing agent when it is prepared), and rosemary is certainly not a fruit. 

The idea of a rosemary conserve brings something into question that I find very interesting about early modern recipes. Recipes are generally written in the imperative, but in the case of early modern recipes, many recipes direct the reader to perform tasks that have an implied understanding such as: still, make it up, candy it. These directions point toward an understanding within cooking culture at the time that was taken for granted. Unlike modern recipes that direct the user to use certain temperatures when cooking in the oven, early modern recipes might suggest an oven that is quick, slow, or covered. At other times, heat directions find common ground, such as place on a slow fire (in modern terms, low to medium heat). Measurement directions work on the same principal. A recipe might direct the user to add a quantity of product according to a handful or spoonful. We still use a similar application in modern recipes, but at other times a recipe might direct the user to add a “quantity.” Recipes, then as much as today, fall in that valley between exact science and intuition (baking is usually the exception).

So, some boundaries in cooking are porous, either by default or understanding. There are some cooking practices on the other hand that are strictly differentiated, like that of conserves, preserves, waters, and syrups. This makes sense given the times. Lacking convenient modern preservation methods, early modern cooking required many differing forms of preserving foods. Having differing methods for preserving foods based on strict methods worked for both varying an otherwise limited degree of flavor profiles, as well as allowing similar cultural groups to share recipes and cooking methods with a knowledge of what the preparation and outcome of that recipe was supposed to be (see: implied understandings).

This difference between the strict and porous boundary is exactly why I became curious about a rosemary conserve. So I decided to make it, and some variations too. For the rosemary conserve, I made a rosemary water that reduced by about half (it was very pungent), and then made a syrup out of some of that water by adding sugar in a 1-to-1 ratio and then let it reduce by about a third. The result had the consistency of honey, but with a rich rosemary aroma and flavor (the needles were strained before adding the sugar). I also made a conserve out of grapefruit and cranberries (it’s about that time of year) that was based on two recipes for making a conserve of barberries (a mid-17th century recipe from Nicholas Webster and an anonymous early 18th century recipe, both from the Folger Library) and a conserve of strawberries and lemon rind. To both I added the rosemary water instead of plain water in order to give it flavor. These jellied much better, certainly due to the addition of pectin from the citrus fruits. But I still cannot figure out why Bulckley would assume that a rosemary conserve, without giving its recipe, is not a strange thing – that by mentioning it, the reader would know not only what it is, but how to create it. A thorough search of the Folger and Wellcome of a rosemary conserve were fruitless (please let me know if you find something otherwise!).

You might be thinking that it would be easy to simply add powdered pectin to a rosemary solution similar to what I concocted, but powdered pectin wasn’t isolated (much less distributed) until the mid-19th century. I’m still not sure what Bulckley meant, but (see video below) I was more than happy to explore the idea in my own kitchen.

 

Samuel Fatzinger is a former restaurant cook and current MA candidate, University of Texas, Arlington

Joining our Transcribathon without experience?

Digital Humanities, Events, Posts, transcribathon, Transcribing

Thinking about joining in #EMROCtranscribes this year, but feeling nervous? Worried about tackling old handwriting? Please read on for some tips from other first-time transcribers, as well as practical guidance on how-to join in!

What it is like to join a Transcribathon

One thing that participants often describe is the sense of team-work that comes from a transcribathon: from UNCC and from UTA. Whether you’re joining virtually and keeping touch on Twitter, or working in person with a group, it can be a lot of fun.

But what about if you don’t have experience? Last year, I encouraged students in two undergraduate classes to participate in the Transcribathon. Here are accounts from two students who had only recently started to learn how to transcribe and one who had never done it before. I even managed to get my mom involved. Her account follows…

When a Non-Academic Transcribes for the First Time (and Tips for Newbies)

By Eluned Smith

Why was an retired health professional with a lengthy career in health services management attending a transcribathon session at the Folger Shakespeare Library?  When my daughter, Lisa Smith, invited me, I leapt at the prospect to see what was in an early modern recipe book.

Lady Grace Castleton’s “Booke of Receipts” from the seventeenth century provided me the chance to gain insight into her household, particularly the medical and cookery recipes used by her family.  To my delight the five short recipes I transcribed were medical recipes, dealing with treatment of such things as stomach ailments, sore eyes, consumption and included a recipe for “a soueran [sovereign] water for any thing that lyeth in the hart of stomeck Small pox or measells.”  Although the recipes were interesting, they are certainly not treatments I would advise anyone to use today…

Lady Castleton’s Booke of Receipts, Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.600, pp. 6-7.

I found it challenging to transcribe the old recipes – not only has spelling changed but the formation of letters such as an S were very different. (tip: Novices should always beware of the deceptive long S, which looks more like a lower-cased ‘f’!)  One would think that someone whose own handwriting is notoriously difficult to read would not have any problems, but Lady Grace’s manuscript had inconsistent spellings. (Another tip: always sound out the word, as it helps to decipher it.) Even her style of writing showed variation. Ink spots on the document and the changes in grammar and spelling over time made the process very slow for me. In addition, I had to fight the tendency of both my computer and me to automatically type modern spellings. (A final tip: keep checking the spellings and save constantly!) Fortunately, I enjoy puzzles and figuring out strange ingredients in old remedies.

Lady Grace was methodical in recording both the quantity of her ingredients and how the remedies should be used, but the recipes were filled with sensory details, too. The medicine made for sore eyes was to be dropped into the eye with a feather. The one for the stomach included boiling snails in beer until they made a ‘noyse’, then grinding them with a mortar and mixing them with washed and cleaned worms, roots and herbs. We had a lot of discussion in the room about the noise snails would make when boiling; this would have been a very precise measurement of doneness.

Today we have concerns about drug companies pushing meds, treatments that are not always helpful, and doctors who do not always correctly diagnose. However, these snail-filled recipes certainly made me appreciative that I live in time in which medications are made in a lab and not in my kitchen.

Getting started with transcribing

If you’ve read this far and are keen to join virtually, this is what you need to know.

Signing in

We’ll be using the Folger’s transcription interface, at: http://transcribe.folger.edu. The interface is called Dromio and associated with Early Modern Manuscripts Online. When asked to sign in, just enter your first and last names (or whatever name you’d like to use), and an account will be created for you. Please be sure to enter your name as you’d like it to appear in the database.

Finding something to transcribe

Once in, click “EMROC.” There is a folder called “Transcribathon” at the bottom of the list, which contains the three manuscripts we’ll be working on. (More on those tomorrow!) Click on a manuscript and find a page that needs transcription. Look to the right of the page number to see how many people have transcribed it. If there are fewer than three, go for it!

Spelling and old words

While transcribing, you’ll probably also want a window open to the Oxford English Dictionary, which many public libraries and most university libraries have available online. The OED Online lists old variants of words. And, if that doesn’t help, as Eluned noted above, you should also try sounding out the word.

Keep the spelling as you see it.

To encode or not to encode?

Use any of the encoding buttons you feel comfortable with; they’re explained at http://emroc.hypotheses.org/transcribathons/transcribathon-instructions-glossaries-and-more/glossary-of-xml-buttons .

This will make the text machine-readable, as well as human-readable. But if you don’t feel comfortable, we’ll be adding in the encoding during the vetting process anyhow!

If you do encode, here are a few tips for encoding that you should probably know about.
  1. Please do include page numbers.
  2. Mark recipe titles as headers (hd).
  3. Mark the layered efficacy marks as ‘cross in circle’ and ‘dot’ using the metamark (mrk).

what will it look like?

An example of the encoded transcription alongside the page image, from the Winche manuscript, can be seen here.

saving and finishing

Remember to save — a lot! Systems sometimes crash, especially with lots of users on it at the same time. Click “SAVE” as you go.

When you’re finished the entire page, just hit “Done”. You can then return to the EMROC folder, or exit altogether.

How to join the group

Further details will follow in a blog post here tomorrow, just before everything kicks off at 7:00 a.m. ET. But you can also follow along at #EMROCtranscribes on Twitter or our Twitter account @EMRecipesOnline. Please do wave hello in blog comments our on Twitter if you are joining in!

What constitutes a diet drink?

Ann Fanshawe, Dromio, Early Modern Manuscripts Online, John Gerard, Margaret Baker, Posts, Rebeckah Winche, Thomas Cogan, Transcribing

Written by Solveig Roervik

While transcribing the Ann Fanshawe manuscript, I came upon a drink called a diet drink. Because of the way the ingredients were suspended in liquid, the recipe resembled a modern herb tea, but in two other manuscripts I transcribed, other “diet drinks” had differing methods of creation, from brewing, suspending and boiling to a combination of these. Although the OED defines “diet drink” as “a drink prescribed and prepared for medicinal purposes” (1a), the styles of preparation involved seem in practice to be vastly different. These varying approaches made me question why they were all called diet drinks, what connected them, and if the method of creation had something to say about its medicinal effects on the humoral body. Did the recipes have any ingredients in common? And how are these ingredients activated or tempered by the method of its creation? After addressing these questions, I propose that diet drinks can be said to help alleviate the conditions caused by an excess of coldness and/or dryness, and the recipes’ methods maximise the warmth and moisture of the ingredients.

The diet drinks that I found address four conditions — kidney stone, scurvy, rickets, and dropsy — by attempting to rebalance the amount of moisture and heat in the body. John Gerard explains these conditions in The herball, or, Generall historie of plantes, connecting the conditions to a possible imbalance of moisture. The stone is a hard mineral concretion, “the stone of the kidneies” (238), which Thomas Cogan recommends treating with warm and moist ingredients, like asparagus (45). Gerard goes on to describe scurvy as “that plague and hurtful disease of the teeth, gums, and sinewes, … being a depriuation of all good bloud and moisture” (401). While the dropsie seems like an outlier because it’s a condition where the body retains too much moisture, the blockage causing the extra liquid retention can be broken up by hot and dry ingredients like saxifrage, which according to Gerard causes “one to pisse freely,” releasing the extra liquid (1048). (Even though saxifrage is hot and dry, it can be used in a wet medium to release the water retention.) Humorally, conditions from kidney stone to dropsy could be balanced out with warmth and moistness, which can explain the usage of medicinal liquids in curing these conditions.

Since these conditions are linked humorally, how do the methods used affect the medicinal properties of the drinks? In the Receipt book of Margaret Baker, the “Diet drinke for the Scuruie” is boiled, increasing the level of heat of the ingredients and liquids (front endleaf 3, V.a.619).[1] Cold water itself could disrupt the balance of heat in a vulnerable body, like a body that has just exercised; Cogan instead recommends a drink with warm properties, because it’s less disrupting for the temperatures (236-237). In addition, the recipe uses wormwood, which can help with “open[ing] the liver and spleene: which vertues are chiefe, for the preservation of health” (Cogan 61). Both wormwood and boiling increase heat in the drink, and give a relief to the aching mouth caused by scurvy.

In the “Diett Drinke” recipe in the Ann Fanshawe manuscript, the ingredients were not boiled, but rather suspended (7, MS7113). The herbal tea is a delivery mechanism for hot and dry ingredients to clear the blockage causing the dropsie. Gerard says the herb Galingale, which is included in the recipe, “help[s] the dropsie”, where Galingale “[is] of an heating and drying qualitie” (31). This diet drink is the only one I came across that doesn’t require any sort of alcoholic beverage, like ale or wine, which is interesting as wine is said by Cogan to be “hot in the second degree… and it is dry according to the proportion of heat” (238). Why would water be used, with its coldness, instead of using wine which has the hot and dry qualities needed to cure a dropsie? Here, humorally hot ingredients are delivered by a cold vector, implying a mixture of cold and hot ingredients can also be curative for this condition.

 

The second diet drink found in the Fanshawe MSS, “A Receipt of a Diet Drink for the Stone” (78, MS7113) contains fewer herbs compared to the previous recipes: only ashen keys, parsley, saxifrage roots, and malt (which is helpful as the recipe goes through a brewing process). Saxifrage is explained by John Gerard as “hot and dry in the third degree”, helping it “break… the stone in the bladder and kidnies” (1048). Like saxifrage, the process of brewing itself increases heat and dryness, showing the doubling effect of ingredients and method, which relates to the condition it was to alleviate. And there is still more doubling in the recipe’s methods, as the drink is first boiled, then brewed in the sun — building methodological heat upon heat from the ingredients, which is opposite to the previous diet drink.

The most complicated recipe of the group is a brewed “diett Drinke for the Ricketts” found in the Receipt book of Rebeckah Winche (74, V.b.366). This recipe has an interesting addition of large raisins, “reasons of the sunne”, which according to Cogan are hot and moist, channeling the heat of the sun into the ingredients themselves (109). It is a rather complicated process to make this drink: first it is boiled, then brewed, some of it is then consumed, before being bottled and brewed a second time. As it is consumed at different stages of fermentation, the drink experiences variations in alcohol content. Cogan explains how levels of hotness and moistness vary with age, as wine is usually hot and dry in the second degree, but “if it bee very old, it is hot in the third degree, and must, or new wine is hot in the first” (238). Both ingredients, like raisins, and the methods, like brewing, build upon themselves to increase the heat in the drink.

Based on these recipes, I propose that diet drinks can help alleviate the conditions caused by an excess of coldness and/or dryness, where the recipes’ methods maximise the warmth and moisture of the ingredients. While one of the recipes uses hot ingredients in a cold medium, the other recipes build the heat and/or wetness in the ingredients upon the heat produced in the methods. Although the definition of diet drink is focused on its medicinal purposes, I would argue that diet drinks are also focused on correcting the imbalance of heat and/or moistness in the body.

Works Cited

Baker, Margaret. “Receipt book of Margaret Baker.” LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. Ca. 1675. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Cogan, Thomas. The Haven of Health. Fourth Edition. London: Anne Griffin for Roger Ball, 1636.

“ˈdiet-drink, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2017. Web. 4 April 2017.

Fanshawe, Lady Ann. “Recipe book of Lady Ann Fanshawe.” Wellcome library. Ca. 1651-1707. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

Gerard, John, et al. The herball or Generall historie of plantes. London: Printed by Adam Islip Joice Norton and Richard Whitakers, 1636.

Winche, Rebeckah. “Receipt book of Rebeckah Winche.” LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. Ca. 1666. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.

[1] Instead of cold water, Cogan recommends alcohol or drinks with warm properties like a “hot posset” as “they use in Lancashire” (236-237). Cogan also talks about the boiling of whey, and how clarifying milk affect its properties (255). Boiling could also at the period be a way to check the purity of a liquid, like water, where clean water had “little skim or froth in boyling” (237).

Solveig Roervik is a student of Dr. Nancy Simpson-Younger at Pacific Lutheran University.

To Make a Selebub

Constance Hall, Early Modern Manuscripts Online, Folger Shakespeare Library, Posts, Testing Recipes, Transcribing, , , , , , , ,

Written by Marissa Nicosia

Reposted from Cooking in the Archives

The day after Christmas I opened my laptop and started transcribing a page of Constance Hall’s recipe book, Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.20. I did this every day for twelve days as part of an Early Modern Recipes Online (EMROC) holiday Transcribathon. I transcribed sitting next to my sister-in-law, in the early morning hours before a pre-semester faculty meeting, after yoga, and at the end of a long day of preparation for the Modern Language Association conference. It was nice to pause amidst the festivity, work, and routine to transcribe a few pages of Constance Hall’s book. It’s not that I never complete transcriptions anymore – I transcribe lots of recipes for this site and other related projects – it’s just that I usually skim physical or digital recipe books looking for recipes I’m excited to cook, rather than transcribing everything on a page, fussing over abbreviations, musing about alternate spellings, and puzzling through tricky lines. Transcribing daily reconnected me to my research for this project in a new way, honed my skills, and, of course, added many recipes to my long “to cook” list.

hall-cropped
The EMROC blog has a wonderful post with background information about Constance Hall and her manuscript.

Hall’s lovely, calligraphic title page is dated 1672. I decided to try this recipe for “selebub,” or syllabub first because syllabubs were all the rage in the last decades of the seventeenth century when Hall compiled her manuscript. Alyssa’s “Solid Sillibib” post offers an excellent account of this syllabub craze and she includes many transcribed recipes from other manuscripts as examples of the trend. I’m also tipping my hat to Gina Patnaik and Lili Loofbourow whose epic quest to make a birch whisk to stir their syllabub over at The Awl still leaves me in awe.

marissa-2marissa-3

The Recipe

syllabub-cropped-4

To make selebubbe
Take 2 quarts of cream and sweet[en]
it and put it in to a bason and squise
in to lemons in to it and on of the p[eel]
put in a quarter of a pint of sack and
put in one drop of oring flower water
take out the lemon whip it with a cl[ean]
whiske and put it in your glasses halfe
this will fill seauen

Our Recipe

Since the recipe notes that it will fill seven syllabub glasses half full (serving seven), I quartered the recipe. These proportions produced a quart of syllabub. I also guessed on the sugar and used sherry for the sack.

2 c cream (1 pint)
1/3 c sugar
half a lemon: peel cut into long strips, then juiced
2 T sherry (for the sack)
1/4 t orange blossom water
Optional: extra grated zest (orange and/or lemon) to serve

Stir together the cream, sugar, lemon juice, sherry, and orange blossom water. Add the lemon peel. Let sit for 1 hour.

Remove the lemon peel. Whisk until a stiff foam forms using a standing mixer, a handheld mixer, or a whisk. Serve in small glasses or bowls.

marissa-5marissa-6

The Results

The most decadent whipped cream I’ve ever tasted: This is my best effort at describing the syllabub. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. It’s slightly boozy, but grounded by the acidity of the lemon and the unavoidable creaminess of the, well, cream.

I want to spoon it over chocolate ice cream. I want to spread it on dense, rich cake. I want to serve it with poached or roasted fruit. Basically, I want to eat it in the least seventeenth-century way possible. I’m not especially interested in sipping or spooning it from a glass. I’m curious to see what happens with the rest of the batch over the weekend.

marissa-7 marissa-8marissa-9

Marissa Nicosia is an Assistant Professor of Renaissance Literature at Penn State University, Abington

Twelve Days of EMROC

Constance Hall, Dromio, Early Modern Manuscripts Online, Early Modern Paleography Society, Folger Shakespeare Library, Testing Recipes, Transcribing, , , , ,

Come join us for 12 celebratory days of transcriptions! From Boxing Day (Dec. 26) to Epiphany (Jan. 6), EMROC is hosting a transcription event in which we invite you to participate by transcribing Constance Hall Her Book of Receipts Anno Domini 1672, Folger V.a. 20. For those of you who are goal oriented, why not make a commitment to transcribe a page a day for 12 days? Or if you have more limited time, come and transcribe for a day or two or three. However much time you have to transcribe, we would love to have you join us and help complete the triple transcription of this fascinating recipe book.

Primarily consisting of culinary rather than medicinal recipes, this manuscript begins with a beautiful inscription on the title page that indicates that Constance Hall cared about her calligraphy. The book, however, has a variety of hands, so you can try your hand at transcribing several different styles of writing. constance-hall-title-page

Once you have transcribed a recipe, you might even want to make some of the dishes to try on your friends and relatives. How about trying “To make a cheesecake” (page 22):to-make-a-cheesecake-constance-hall-p-22

or “To make a lemon pudding” (page 50).

to-make-lemon-pudding-constance-hall-p-50

Or maybe you want really to go from the bones up and make early modern Jello with “To make calfes foot gelley” (page 57) flavored with lemon and cinnamon and sweetened with sugar

.calves-foot-gelly-constance-hall-p-57

If you prefer something savory, try “To pickle mushrooms” (page 25).

to-pickle-mushrooms-constance-hall-p-25

We would love to have you post pictures of your early modern creations.

What you need to know to get started transcribing:

TOOLS:

We’ll be using the Folger’s transcription interface, at: http://transcribe.folger.edu. The interface is called Dromio and associated with Early Modern Manuscripts Online. When asked to sign in, just enter your first and last names, and an account will be created for you (please be sure enter your name as you’d like it to appear in the database). Then, click “EMROC.” Our manuscript will be listed as “MS7113” (Fanshawe’s receipt book).

While transcribing, you’ll probably also want a window open to the Oxford English Dictionary.

PROCEDURES:

  1. Go to Dromio and select a page.
  1. Keep the spelling as you see it. Use any of the encoding buttons you feel comfortable with; they’re explained at http://emroc.hypotheses.org/transcribathons/transcribathon-instructions-glossaries-and-more/glossary-of-xml-buttons .
  1. Click “SAVE” as you go, and “Done” when you’ve finished the entire page.

If make a dish, take a picture of it, and post it here: https://www.facebook.com/EarlyModernRecipeOnlineCollective/

Happy Transcribing and Happy Holidays from all of us at EMROC!