18th Century German Recipe Book Digitised

This pocket-sized eighteenth-century collection of medical, cosmetic, practical, prognostic, and culinary recipes has now been digitised and is available online via Cambridge Digital Library. The recipe book was donated to Newnham by alumna Edith Renouf (1864-1956, NC 1881) as part of her family collection, which includes significant holdings in the field of German Romanticism, with books and manuscripts by Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and his circle. 

Newnham Bye-Fellow Dr Janine Maegraith has written the accompanying gloss to introduce readers to its contents, including a variety of recipes, from the production of gold to animal husbandry and medical treatments for toothache. 

The manuscript offers many pathways of research: historical linguistics and dialects, social history and aspects of everyday life, cultural and culinary history, global connections of the recipes’ ingredients and local practices of diet, and the history of medicinal knowledge and skills. All in all, the recipe book offers a window into the everyday lives and practices of well-to-do households in urban contexts in the German lands during the transitional period from the early modern to the modern era.

Dr Janine Maegraith

This manuscript joins several others from Newnham College Library online, including William Langland's Piers Plowman and Epistre Othea by Christine de Pizan.