By Hillary Nunn

The Renaissance Society of American conference this spring showcased a fantastic series of presentations involving EMROC members and their research. Recipes were a real presence during the Chicago meeting, as were digital projects involving domestic texts.

First thing on April 1, The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women sponsored “Mobile Knowledge in Early Modern English Recipes.” Edith Snook (University of New Brunswick) detailed Lady Grace Mildmay’s access to plants – and cures – from the Americas, while and Madeline Bassnett (University of Western Ontario) traced Ann Fanshawe’s collection of Spanish recipes during her years as a diplomat’s wife. Lyn Bennett (Dalhousie University) offered a preview of her book Rhetoric, Medicine, and the Woman Writer, 1600-1700 (forthcoming from Cambridge later this year), detailing the ways that recipes helped women like the Countess of Exeter establish authority within a patriarchal world.

So, in short:

In the session that followed,
“Glimpsing Women’s Experience through Early Modern Recipe Manuscripts,”
Marissa Nicosia (Penn State Abington) helped audiences understand the complexity and appeal of a recipe for Portugal Eggs. After my own discussion of water in EMROC texts, Katie Walker from the University of North Carolina addressed recipe books as satire, concentrating on Cromwell’s allegedly overly homely wife as depicted in a recipe book attributed to – but most likely completely separate from – her household.

Later in the day, Maggie Simon (North Carolina State) offered a fantastic discussion of recipe transcription with the Dromio interface in The Phenomenality of Digital Transcription. In her panels, part of a series entitled New Technologies and Renaissance Studies, Maggie outlined her students’ experiences working with EMROC texts, highlighting the ways that transcription helped her students feel more at home with early modern texts.

Hillary Nunn is Professor of English at the University of Akron.