A Doctor in the Kitchen: The Power of Nutrition in the Renaissance Recipe Collection

• In Event: Body in the City I: "Sperimentato": Testing Medical Recipes in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

Through the orchestration of spectacular banquets and the circulation of their illustrative texts, several Renaissance chefs achieved wealth and fame for themselves, while establishing a preeminent role for the future head of kitchen and constructing an imitable ladder for upward mobility. Yet very few scholars have pressed these guides to greatness that posed as recipe collections to discern their role as chroniclers of contemporary society, and thus inscribers of social anatomies and power systems, or to establish their implicit agendas. Examining specifically the standard recipes for “sick-dishes,” this paper will consider the Renaissance chef/scalco as a repository of crucial information that benefitted the household, and consider the potential power that he could thus wield as one invested with knowledge of recipes for curing illness and maintaining health.

Author

• Danielle Callegari, University of California, Berkeley