Special Topics in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine: Recipes

Step by step, this class approaches the history of science, medicine, and technology through the lens of the "recipe." Craft handbooks, books of secrets, and experimental notes, as well as a fast-growing secondary literature, show how recipes generate and test knowledge of substances, practices, and theories about nature, as well as the social and cultural networks that produce them. Drawing on ancient, medieval, and early modern procedures, as well as historical reconstructions of past recipes and experiments, the class investigates how the genre evolved across such diverse fields as pharmacy, alchemy, mining, cookery, and magic.