This conference explores the multiple ‘global dimensions’ of early modern recipe crafting, fashioning, and collecting. We will ask how global entanglements, transcultural encounters, and exoticizing fantasies shaped early modern recipe creation.

Early modern recipes were often co-produced by indigenous practitioners and deliberately incorporated exotic ingredients. Some recipes travelled across mercantile and diplomatic routes, while others were fashioned by ‘armchair’ practitioners to reflect the values and ideas of foreign lands. By asking how early modern recipes could be ‘global’, this conference proposes to shed new light on the influence of non-Western scientific knowledge, the roles of ‘forgotten’ actors, and the formation of Western ideas about non-European science and medicine.

Organisers: Lavinia Gambini ([email protected]) and Lucy Havard

Contact: [email protected] – X/Twitter: @GlobalRecipes24 – Bluesky: @globalrecipes2024.bsky.social

For further information about available travel bursaries, please do not hesitate to contact the organisers.

The organisers thank the Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM), the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS), the Society for Renaissance Studies (SRS), and the George Macaulay Trevelyan Fund (Faculty of History, Cambridge) for their generous support.