Histories of Global Recipes: A Workshop on Sources and Methods
Histories of Global Recipes: A Workshop on Sources and Methods
Thursday 19 October 2023
10:30 AM - 3:30 PM
IAS, Zeeman Building (Ground Floor)
A one-day workshop at the University of Warwick
Convened by Dr Ricardo Aguilar-González (IAS, UMSNH)
Sponsored by University of Warwick’s Institute for Advanced Study and Global History and Culture Centre.
About the workshop
European colonial expansionism emerging in 15th century connected places and peoples around the world (Hausberger, 2019), and allowed for the circulation of goods, knowledge and people. Global connections brought about the expanding interchange of edibles and indigenous peoples’ knowledges on crops, roots, drinks and animals, while at the same time settlers used African and indigenous forced labour to produce cheaper commodities to supply European and Mediterranean markets. Changes were reflected in many different spheres, from competing European monarchs attempting to invade indigenous lands, to colonisers anxious to reproduce their Mediterranean diet in the Americas (Earle, 2012), to indigenous rulers negotiating conquests through foodstuffs and kin making. Likewise, on a material level, these changes brought about the global circulation of medicines and dyes from indigenous Americans to the incorporation of new ingredients in recipes in the Americas, Europe and the Mediterranean world. While specialists have studied edibles circulation across the Atlantic Ocean and Southeast Asia (Machuca, 2018; Crosby, 2003), in this workshop participants will further explore how these goods were incorporated into recipes, how the global trade changed portions, promoted guild tensions, and how Mesoamerican taste was exported and introduced to the ‘Old World’.
10:30-11:15 Welcome coffee
Panel 1
11:15 – 13:00
Chair: Guido van Meersbergen
Serin Quinn (Department of History, University of Warwick) Xitomamolli to Salsa de Tomates: Tomatoes and the Incorporation of Indigenous American Knowledge and Practices in Early Modern Spain
Marta Manzanares Mileo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) Sharing Sweet Recipes: Guild Confectioners’ Books in Early Modern Barcelona
Commentators: Ilaria Berti and Ricardo Aguilar-Gonzalez
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
Panel 2
14:00-15:30
Chair: Rebecca Earle
Ilaria Berti (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville): “The Tragedy of the Servant Problem”: Cuban cooks and kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century
Ricardo Aguilar (IAS-University of Warwick, UMSNH): Indigenous Mesoamerican recipes in the early colonisation of the Americas using bilingual dictionaries
Commentators: Marta Manzanares Mileo and Serin Quinn
Contact: jose-ricardo.aguilar-gonzalez@warwick.ac.uk