Written recipes have never been an indicator of who cooks. They are an indicator of who views cooking as a discipline, a discourse that one needs to be taught or an art to reach mastery in. Recipes are records of the dishes that people have historically thought were worth sharing, either because they were necessary for survival, were particularly tasty or technically impressive, or were enjoyed by someone important. Recipes that the people of a culture didn’ t see as important are lost to time, along with any cultural clues they held in them.
Deborah Brandt, in her work“ Sponsors of Literacy,” describes those nominal sponsors of literacy as“ any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy— and gain advantage by it in some way”( Brandt 166). When it comes to recipe discourse, sponsors are the recipe authors, and literacy in the discourse is the ability to effectively understand the recipe as written and cook it. The nature of that discourse and how it is sponsored has changed drastically in the centuries humans have spent writing recipes down.
Here is a recipe from the Forme of Cury, a cookbook from 1390:
Douce Ame
Take gode Cowe mylke and do it in a pot. take parsel. sawge. ysope. saueray and ooþer gode herbes. hewe hem and do hem in the mylke and seeþ hem. take capouns half yrosted and smyte hem on pecys and do þerto pynes and hony clarified. salt it and colour it with safroun an serue it forth.( 35).
Or, here is a modern translation from the Tasting History cookbook by Max Miller:
Douce Ame( Capon in Milk and Honey)
Take good cow’ s milk and warm it in a pot. Take parsley, sage, hyssop, savory and other good herbs. Chop them and add them to the milk and cook them. Take capons, half roasted, and cut them in pieces and add pine nuts and clarified honey. Salt it and color it with saffron and serve it forth.( Miller, 68).
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