This is part of a series of events accompanying our exhibition, 'FOOD: Recipe or Remedy'.
In our 21st world of superfoods, dietary supplements, ‘nutriceuticals’ and wellness recipe books and manuals we might think the synergies between food and medicine are a phenomenon of the modern world.
Yet, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the domestic kitchen and its products were the first port of call in the prevention and treatment of almost all chronic and even many acute medical conditions, from agues to warts.
In this talk, Dr Sara Pennell will go on a tour of the early modern kitchen, its ingredients, equipment and other resources, to map how central – and how sophisticated – ideas about eating to preserve and restore health were in this period.
Dr Pennell is associate professor of early modern history at the University of Greenwich. She is the author of the 2016 The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850 (Bloomsbury), and of several book chapters on the place of recipes in early modern cultures of domestic knowledge and care.
Tickets cost £3 and are available to book through Eventbrite. Medical practitioners who are Fellows or Members of the College will be admitted free of charge. Please email library@rcpe.ac.uk if you are a Fellow or Member of the College and would like to be added to the attendee list.