Introduction: “Russian Recipes” at the July Recipes Project
Clare Griffin Dear Readers of the Recipes Project Blog, Earlier this year I was asked to put together a series of posts on Russian Recipes. But how to introduce the posts to help non-Russianists grasp...
View ArticleWhat to Feed the Servants in Sixteenth-Century Russia
Carolyn Pouncy There is a Russian proverb, well known among historians of the prerevolutionary years and especially of the peasantry—“Cabbage soup and kasha are our food.” It sounds better in Russian,...
View ArticleA Medieval Russian Hangover Cure
Darra Goldstein In 1635 the German scholar Adam Olearius (1599-1671) set out on a journey through Russia, down the Volga and across the Caspian Sea to Persia, part of an embassy sponsored by Frederick...
View ArticleHow to Heal a Foreigner in Early Modern Russia
Clare Griffin One of the big questions for me when reading recipes is, did anyone actually use these? This is always a tricky point, especially when we consider the range of ‘recipes’ and recipe...
View ArticleA Modern Culinary Manuscript from Russia’s Ural Mountains
Aleksandra Ippolitova Everyday literacy and literate folklore from the twentieth century has for a long time been on the periphery of scholarly interest. One of the most widespread genres of everyday...
View ArticleLove Magic in 18th century Russia: a Search for Passion in Russian History
Elena Smilianskaia Love magic has existed in human history from the very start, and it continues to exist today – the Recipes Project has already featured some fifteenth-century English love spells. It...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Vodka? Juniper Berry Vodkas and the History of Distilling in...
Clare Griffin Vodka and Russia seem to always go together. To find images to accompany my posts for The Recipes Project, and for Powerpoint presentations, I search image databases. On such sites, the...
View ArticleRe-Centering Europe
By Clare Griffin Think about the histories of Europe, European medicine, European science or European magic and witchcraft you have on your desk. Think about the European cookbooks, or travel guides,...
View ArticleThree Croatian Glagolitic Recipes Against Toothache
By Marija-Ana Dürrigl and Stella Fatović-Ferenčić, Historians working on recipes often use sources that, from the outside, do not look like recipe books. One of the most common places for recipes to be...
View ArticleHow to Fatten a Carp
by Christopher Nicholson Few ingredients are as significant to the Czechs as carp. This fresh-water fish is so important that it has become the key ingredient in the now traditional Czech Christmas...
View ArticleIn Search of Alchemy
by Agnieszka Rec The exploits of John Dee in Prague cast long shadows over the history of Central European alchemy. Colorful tales of the English alchemist dominate both popular and scholarly legend,...
View ArticleWomen’s Health in the South Slavic Orthodox Tradition
By Adelina-Angusheva-Tihanov and Margaret Dimitrova This intriguing fresco was painted on the walls of the Rila Monastery, Bulgaria, in 1844. If you look closely at the bottom left-hand corner of this...
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