Papering the Household: Paper, Recipes and Everyday Technologies

The early modern household was filled with paper. In kitchens and stillrooms, it lined cake tins and glass funnels, delivered ointments and salves to the body and preserved precious fruits, cakes and materia medica. In the library and the study, it not only served as the carrier for inscription practices but paper technologies such as notebooks and loose slips enabled householders to sort, categorize and express their ideas about the human body and delineate boundaries between areas of knowledge.  The ubiquity of paper use across different spaces, labor sets and knowledge spheres within the household enables us to examine a wide range of quotidian practices, juxtaposing information management strategies with bodywork and food production. Following the paper trail, this talk investigates the interconnected epistemic and hands-on practices used by householders to shift and filter, contain and shape both knowledge and things. Based on analysis of early modern household recipe collections, the talk examines the various paper-based everyday technologies outlined in the texts whilst, at the same time analyze how paper technologies were utilized to codify recipe knowledge. The focus on the household as the location of these practices offers the opportunity to consider anew the construction of gender hierarchies in the production of knowledge. By recovering these practices, I offer a fresh perspective on everyday technologies in pre-modern medicine and science.