How many Columbia students does it take to reconstruct a historical recipe? In the Making and Knowing Project’s laboratory seminar, each semester begins the same way as students get a hands-on (and sometimes edible) introduction to the Project’s unique method of combining collaboration and experimentation. Working in groups, students reconstruct recipes from historical culinary books. Unlike modern recipes, these entries often omit pertinent details, rely on colloquial language from the era, and lack precision. Instead, students have to make reasonable, substantiated assumptions to recreate the recipe and understand the reasoning behind certain steps.
Recently, we challenged a group of Columbia University undergraduate students to take on this assignment. Together, they attempted to follow a 1591 recipe for “marchpaine” from “A Bookrye of Cookrye.” Marchpaine is a simple confection and can be considered an ancestor to our modern marzipan, though this particular version is baked. Let’s see how the students do!
Want to follow along in your own kitchen? Visit the historical culinary reconstruction assignment page and learn more about the Project’s numerous lesson plans for hands-on coursework via the Research and Teaching Companion. The Making and Knowing Project is a research initiative at the Center for Science and Society.
