Madeline Bassnett – författare

In the Kitchen insists that the preparation of food, whether imaginative, physical, or spatial, is central to a deeper understanding of early modern food cultures and practices. Devoted to the arts of cooking and medicine, early modern kitchens concentrated on producing, processing, and preserving materials necessary for nourishment and survival; yet they also fed social and economic networks and nurtured a sense of physical, spiritual, and political connection to surrounding lands and their cultures. The essays in this volume illuminate this expansive view of cooking and aspire to show how the kitchen''s inner workings prove tightly, though often invisibly, interwoven with local, national, and, increasingly, global surroundings. Engaging with literary and historical methodologies, including close reading, recipe analysis, and perspectives on gender, class, race, and colonialism, we begin to develop a shared theoretical and practical language for the art of cooking that combines the physical with the intellectual, the local with the global, and the domestic with the political.

In the Kitchen insists that the preparation of food, whether imaginative, physical, or spatial, is central to a deeper understanding of early modern food cultures and practices. Devoted to the arts of cooking and medicine, early modern kitchens concentrated on producing, processing, and preserving materials necessary for nourishment and survival; yet they also fed social and economic networks and nurtured a sense of physical, spiritual, and political connection to surrounding lands and their cultures. The essays in this volume illuminate this expansive view of cooking and aspire to show how the kitchen''s inner workings prove tightly, though often invisibly, interwoven with local, national, and, increasingly, global surroundings. Engaging with literary and historical methodologies, including close reading, recipe analysis, and perspectives on gender, class, race, and colonialism, we begin to develop a shared theoretical and practical language for the art of cooking that combines the physical with the intellectual, the local with the global, and the domestic with the political.

Contemporary concerns about climate change often overlook past periods of upheaval despite the insights they can provide. In Climate Change Cookery Madeline Bassnett turns back to the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling that peaked in severity from around 1550 to 1700. Studying sixteenth- and seventeenth-century recipe collections, almanacs, diaries, manuscripts, and weather pamphlets, she details the close-knit relationship between weather, food scarcity, and famine.

Through an examination of references to the weather as a key element or influence on food practices, Bassnett shows how early modern households understood seasonal food cycles and developed systems to become more resilient during an unpredictable period. Identifying and discussing practices involving "weathering," "seasoning," and "preserving," this book investigates how perceptions of food insecurity, alongside strategies for resilience, were shared among networks of readers. Authors and works of particular focus include Hugh Plat's Sundrie Newe and Artificiall Remedies Against Famine (1596) and Delightes for Ladies (1600), the seventeenth-century manuscript recipe books of Ann Fanshawe and Mary Evelyn, and Hannah Woolley's The Queen-Like Closet (1670).

Connecting the historical record with modern concerns about disruptions to food production and distribution, Climate Change Cookery demonstrates how people previously increased their ecological and local awareness.