Cherries, almonds, bread, and anise.

My interest in how technology can mediate food culture came about with an email forwarded to me that contained this recipe for chyryse, a cherry pudding, that was written by Richard II’s chief cook around 1390.

My interest in how technology can mediate food culture came about with an email forwarded to me that contained this recipe for chyryse, a cherry pudding, that was written by Richard II’s chief cook around 1390:

“Take almaundes unblanched, waisshe hem, grynde hem, drawe hem up with gode broth. do þerto thridde part of chiryse. þe stones take oute and grynde hem smale. make a layour of gode brede & powdour and salt and do þerto. colour it with sandres so that it be stondyng, and florissh it with aneys and with cheweryes, and strawe þeruppon and serue it forth.

Take unblanched almonds, wash them, grind them, draw them up with good broth. Add a third part of cherries, take out the stones, and grind them small. Make a layour (thick sauce) of good bread and powder (spice mix) and salt and add. Colour it with sandalwood so that it is standing (thickened) and flourish it with aniseed and with cherries and strew on top and serve it forth.”

This got me interested in the scanning and transcribing of medieval recipe manuscripts and how digitized archives can mediate food culture. You can read my full essay here.

The EMROC project, or Early Modern Recipes Online Collective, has embarked on the task of transcribing these archived works, and opening access to them as a research resource across multiple scholarly disciplines.

For this podcast, I spoke to Mairi Cowan, a scholar and professor of late Medieval and Early Modern history in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, about the mediation of food culture through the technology of archiving food texts, and her involvement in an EMROC “transcribathon” held at the University.

And as promised, here is the recipe for Grandmaman Voisine’s famous chili sauce.

Thanks for listening!