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Author Biography

Kimberley Connor is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University where she is completing her dissertation "From Immigrant to Settler: Diet in Nineteenth-Century British Institutions of Immigration". As a food historian and archaeologist, her work combines material and archival approaches to food and dining in the past. Her research interests include recipes, cookbooks, identity production, immigration and institutional foodways.

Abstract

This paper uses recipe contributors named in three early modern manuscript receipt books (Sloane MS 2485, Sloane MS 2486 and Folger V.a 619) to identify the author as Margaret Baker, daughter of Richard Baker the Chronicler (c.1568-1645) and Margaret Mainwaring (died c.1652). A familial connection is also made to Wellcome MS 212. The Margaret Baker example is used to argue for the necessity of identifying a broader range of receipt, or recipe, book writers in order to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of recipe book production, and their social context. In the case of Margaret Baker, additional information about her family background, marital status and age at the time of writing the books both shed light on the recipes included in the book, and raise new questions about her culinary and medical practices.

Keywords

recipes, receipt book, early modern, genealogy

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