Early Modern Food and Commensality

Recipes, methodology, history, heritage, sensory experiences, affect, assemblage, early modern society, food and religion, food and politics, food spaces and the early modern table

I want to use this blog as a space where I can share my experiments with early modern recipes and my explorations of early modern food. This is also a space where I can write about elements of my research into early modern commensality in the north west of England (Lancashire and Cheshire) and also further affield. This will include aspects of my research into my three case study families: the Moretons, Norrises and Heskeths of Little Moreton, Speke, and Rufford Old Halls respectively. These families used food in various ways during the 16th and 17th centuries and their stories include the Protestant household, Catholic food and priests in subversive domestic spaces, Civil War hardship, the East India Company, hospitality and entertainment, household accounts and early modern understandings of the body and mind inside and out of the domestic sphere. This blog will allow me to share my sources, how I combine them, and also how my research and arguments surrounding early modern comensality can be used to add depth to the heritage spaces of my three study halls, all owned by the National Trust.

Please enjoy the blog which promises to be a mixture of the practical, archival and theoretical surrounding historical foodways and food spaces.