Undergraduate Course: The Renaissance in Ten Recipes (HIST10533)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Can sensory history and reconstruction help us understand the past? Focussing on the Renaissance in Italy (c. 1400-1600) this course considers the history of the senses in this era by close analysis of material culture coupled with hands-on techniques of historical reconstruction using contemporary recipes and how-to books as key sources This will allow us to reframe the history of a period celebrated for its 'geniuses' - such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo or Artemisia Gentileschi - into broader cultures of making and experimentation. |
| Course description |
Recipes for all manner of things - from pastries to paint, from clothes dye to cosmetics - have circulated since ancient times, but the early modern period saw a great proliferation in the number and types of recipes that were shared across and beyond Europe. As paper became cheaper and print ubiquitous, both printed and manuscript recipe collections - often marketed as 'books of secrets' - held an important role in both commercial workshops and domestic households. These texts allow us to understand the histories of art and science in new ways. Recipes reveal much about everyday lives in this period, from the world of artisans' workshops to the inner workings of women's and servant's lives in the home. They give historians an insight into intimate concerns - recipes for body hair removal, baldness cures, diet drinks - but also reveal broader change in understandings of the body's interaction with the wider environment and reflect widescale technological change. We also see in recipes the end point of the circulation of global goods, sometimes employed as novel and expensive imported ingredients.
This course will engage with recent work in the history of the body and the senses. It will acknowledge the historical contingency of the body's engagement with the world, and analyse how (and if) historical reconstruction can provide avenues for understanding the past. We will visit collections to see historic objects at first hand, and experiment with reconstructions - such as drawing with a quill and brown ink, spinning with a spindle and whorl, and recreating sixteenth-century perfumes and cosmetics in the HCA historical reconstruction lab.
The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: violence towards and exploitation of animals; slavery and servitude; ethnic and gender stereotyping.
While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Students should only be enrolled on this course with approval from the History Honours Programme Administrator. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Non-written Skills«br /»
Participation in weekly discussion of primary and secondary sources (20%)«br /»
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Coursework«br /»
A portfolio of 1500 words (30%) incorporating: «br /»
a) a catalogue entry (450 words) and label (50 words) on objects relating to the course in Edinburgh collections «br /»
b) a modernised recipe and critical account of a reconstruction (1000 words). «br /»
«br /»
3000 word Essay (50%) |
| Feedback |
Students are expected to discuss their coursework with the Course Organiser at least once prior to submission, and are encouraged to do so more often. Meetings can take place with the Course Organiser during their published office hours or by appointment. Students will also receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify and understand key methodologies in sensory history and historical reconstruction
- Analyse and reflect critically upon key developments in early modern histories of art and science, and interrogate the connections between these two categories
- Apply a rigorous and methodologically-informed approach to using objects as historical sources
- Engage critically with replication, reconstruction and re-enactment as part of a methodological toolbox
- Communicate ideas about key themes to a non-academic audience through museum catalogue entries, labels and recipe adaptations
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Reading List
- Bell, Rudolph, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
- Bendall, Sarah and Dyer, Serena eds., Embodied Experiences of Making in Early Modern Europe: Bodies, Gender and Material Culture (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
- Connell, Alyssa and Nicosia, Marissa. 'Cooking in the Archives: Bringing Early Modern Manuscript Recipes into a Twenty-First-Century Kitchen' Archive Journal July 2015 (http://www.archivejournal.net/?p=6038).
- Davidson, Hilary, 'The Embodied Turn: Making and Remaking Dress as an Academic Practice', Fashion Theory (2019), 1-34.
- Eamon, William. 'How to Read a Book of Secrets', in Leong, Elaine and Rankin, Alisha eds, Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science 1500-1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011).
- Fors, Hjalmar, Principe, Lawrence and Sibum, H. Otto, 'From the Library to the Laboratory and Back Again: Experiment as a Tool for Historians of Science', Ambix 63 (2016), 85-97.
- Hendriksen, Marieke, 'Rethinking Performative Methods in the History of Science', Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 43 (2020), 313-322 and the rest of this special issue.
- Johnson, Katherine M. 'Rethinking (re)doing: Historical Re-enactment and/as Historiography', Rethinking History 19 (2015), 193-206.
- Leong, Elaine. Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine«Science and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).
- Smith, Mark M. A Sensory History Manifesto (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021).
- Smith, Pamela. From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).
- Tullett, William. Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Work with a range of textual, visual and material sources to strengthen and broaden their research and enquiry skills
- Communicate to an academic audience and beyond through verbal and written discussions of objects and texts
- Draw on their learning to engage with broader projects of reconstruction beyond academia in museum and heritage settings, teaching and media.
- Articulate the importance of historical training in accurate and meaningful reconstructions for public audiences.
Knowledge of the theory and practice of reconstruction enhances student employability beyond academia, particularly in education, public engagement and historical consultancy. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jill Burke
Tel: (0131 650 4112
Email: jill.burke@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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