A plate of beautifully baked cookies is a wonderful thing. It is a welcoming gesture for guests, it signifies a holiday or a special meal, and it is a demonstration of a baker’s skill at making something pleasing to the eye and the palate. In Shakespeare’s England, bakers in elite households prepared sugar sculptures, confectionary,… Continue Reading »
Today, turkey and stuffing are central fare on the holiday table. But turkeys weren’t even known in England until the 1520s, when they were introduced by explorers returning from the Americas. Turkey was immediately popular in England; within a hundred years, turkeys had become a common Christmas food. The story with stuffing is less clear…. Continue Reading »
In Shakespeare’s plays, we find scenes that take place in taverns and alehouses – but no coffee shops – and characters who drink ale and wine – but not what we now think of as the quintessential English beverage: tea. While Falstaff spends much of Henry IV, Part 1 calling for another cup of sack… Continue Reading »
See education in Shakespeare’s day through the eyes of Ben Jonson: learning ABCs and the Lord’s Prayer with hornbooks, and drilling Latin grammar endlessly.
Attitudes towards mushrooms in Shakespeare’s England reveal deeply held cultural anxieties about groups perceived as threats to the social fabric.
Food is intimately connected to climate and season. It was for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and it is for us today. Beautiful, local produce is once again available in the northeast now that spring is turning into early summer. In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, Berowne insists that all things have their season: “At Christmas I… Continue Reading »
Like Elizabeth, Xiaozhuang was a woman with intellectual and political interests, attaining the powerful position of Empress Dowager in Qing China.
Italian regions share a culinary history that is rooted in the ingredients, tastes, and techniques that came out of early-modern innovations, explorations, and cultural movements.
One of Hannah Woolley’s books has sat hidden in plain sight at the Folger since 1990—included in the Folger online catalog, but missing from an international database that scholars often use to search for early English books. It is the only known copy in the world.
Food historian and The Great British Baking Show winner Mary-Anne Boermans writes about piecing together 17th-century manuscript recipes for Taffety Tarts.
