Cooking the Books

'Tacuinum Sanitatis' Northern Italy (late 14th century)

'Tacuinum Sanitatis' Northern Italy (late 14th century)

L'oignon Platearius, 'Le Livre des Simples Médecines' 1480

'Le Repas Amoureux' In: Boccaccio's 'The Decameron' 1432

'Les étuves' In: 'Le livre de Valère Maxime' 15th century
[I'm obviously going to the wrong restaurants]

Curtius Rufus : 'Geschichte Alexander des Großen'
(History of Alexander the Great) 1465-1475 [Detail]

Curtius Rufus : 'Geschichte Alexander des Großen'
(History of Alexander the Great) 1465-1475 [Detail]

'Le Service' In: 'Histoire de Renaud de Montauban' 1470

'Repas de noce' 'Histoire de Renaud de Montauban' 1470 BNF

'La Marchande de Lait' (Milkmaid) - Cries of Paris 1500

'Le Vin en Tonneau' In: 'Heures à l'Usage de Tours' 1500

Tafelaufsatz aus einem Skizzenbuch
- sketch of table decoration from c. 16th century.

Rumpolt Marx - Kochbuch (cookbook) 1600

Rumpolt Marx - Kochbuch (cookbook) 1600

'The Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet of
Rarities; or, The Ingenious Gentlewoman
and Servant-Maids Delightful Companion' 1696

Apicius - 'De Opsoniis et Condimentis' 1709

Conrad Hagger - 'Neues Saltzburgisches Koch-Buch'
(New Saltzburg Cookbook) 1718

Conrad Hagger - 'Neues Saltzburgisches Koch-Buch'
(New Saltzburg Cookbook) 1718

Maria Eliza Rundell - 'A New System Of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles Of Economy, And Adapted To The Use Of Private Families. By A Lady.' 1807

Frederick Accum - 'Culinary Chemistry' 1821

Isabella Beeton - 'Beeton's Book of Household Management' 1861

These essentially random images were variously obtained from:

• 'The Art of Cuisine and the Culture of Dining' - Culinary documents from the National Library of Austria (current exhibition).
• 'Medieval Gastronomy in Images' - extensive web exhibition (mostly in english) at BNF.
• 'Feeding America' - The Historic American Cookbook Project at Michigan State University Library.
• 'Books for Cooks' at The British Library's Learning collection.
• Kansas State University Cookery exhibit.

A few other sites of interest, but by no means exhaustive...

• Historical Culinary & Brewing Documents Online (these are mostly transcriptions from the sample I saw).
• 'Not by Bread Alone' - America's Culinary Heritage at Cornell University.
• 'Defining HER Life' - Cooking & Gardening at University of Delaware Library.
• 'Fooles and Fricassees: Food in Shakespeare's England' at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
• 'Of Food in General' at Kings College, London.
• 'Cookery, Gastronomy and Entertaining' at Waterloo University Library, Ontario.

Update - I forgot to include this: a thoroughly fascinating site - The Food Timeline. Definitely worth perusing.

Manuscript Castle

Another of the german digital media sites I blindly 'peruse' from time to time is Dr Klaus Graf's Archivalia. I followed a link today and gratefully came upon the beautiful 14th century images above, which I began downloading. {click on each image for an enlarged view}

Going back and doing some translating and quite a bit more digging, I found out that this beautiful illuminated manuscript is one of 3,500 (out of a total of 4,200) which, through some interesting legal wrangling, are being returned by Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe (State library of Baden-Württemberg) to the Baden family, who intend to sell them to pay for the upkeep of Salem castle. They apparently need 70 million Euros to restore and maintain their last remaining property. By all accounts and measures this is a priceless and culturally significant collection and it is surprising that there has been almost no media coverage outside of Germany.

However, the academic manuscript and archive community around the world have been rallying in the last week or so to petition the Baden-Württemberg regional government to prevent the sale and dispersal of the collection.

"The majority of manuscripts in question come from the libraries of
monasteries in the Black Forest, the Upper-Rhine, and Lake Constance.
They document a unique path of spiritual life in this region, and how
it developed. With few exceptions, these manuscripts arrived in the
care of the state 200 years ago during the secularization, which
expropriated the monastic libraries. Since that time, they have been
conserved and made available to the public under considerable
application of technology and public means. This sale will scatter
them to all ends of the globe."
[from a translation of an Open Letter published in 'Neue Züricher Zeitung' accompanying an article entitled "Philistines in Baden: End-of-Season Manuscript Sale in Karlsruhe"]

Links to english language reports/developments/petitions: Archivalia; Cronaca.

With respect to the manuscript images above ('Badische Landesbibliothek St Peter perg. 92': Raimundus Lullus – Thomas le Myésier. Electorium parvum seu breviculum.) -

"The significance of this MS, compiled c.1322 by Thomas le Myésier, lies not only in its illuminations, but also in the extensive texts preserved within these illuminations. A fantastic series of 12 full-page miniatures describes the life of the great Spanish philosopher Lull (died c.1315/16) and presents in allegorical form the content of his work. These miniatures, extraordinary for their artistic merit and originality have texts arranged in various shapes, some of them in gloses that could suggest a precursor of the modern “comic strip”."

The images are all from this page showcasing the manuscripts (tenuously, possibly formerly) held by Badische Landesbibliothek.

Microgeology

[click on the images for larger versions]

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876) from Saxony in Germany, began studies in theology, switched to medicine and he ultimately defended a PhD thesis in mycology. He befriended and accompanied the great Alexander von Humboldt on his Russian expedition and also undertook many of his own scientific excursions, particularly in the Middle East.

Although his central profession revolved around a medical Professorship, his primary interests were the broad areas of study related to microscopy. Ostensibly he had a passion for microorganisms but his enormous collection of plant, animal and soil specimens provided Ehrenberg with a unique opportunity to catalogue a wide range of micro-material for the first time.

Perhaps chief among his many credits, beyond the description of thousands of new unicellular diatoms and radiolaria (Haeckel continued/expanded this work) from the Protist Kingdom, was Ehrlenberg's astonishing report of an immense abundance of microfossils in rock formations. His world wide renown ensured he was plied with geological and organic specimens from all over the globe and I saw mention of many exotic and far flung places in the plates above. Thus did Ehrlenberg establish the scientific field of micropaleontology and he was likewise a pioneer in the geological discipline that came to be known as palynology (study of living and fossilized spores, cysts and associated molecules).

The huge natural bioscience and geological collection amassed by Ehrlenberg is today housed at the Museum für Naturkunde at Humboldt University in Berlin together with a large number of original drawings.

The plates above (from the section 101-140) are from a 2 volume publication by Ehrenberg from 1854 called 'Mikrogeologie'. Venturing into the download section of the Museum für Naturkunde is not for the faint of heart bandwidth, however. I had to download more than 250Mb of plates to collect the images for this post. The average size per plate is ~10Mb. Consequently, I haven't begun to scratch the surface of the legacy of Christian Ehrenberg available online and I'm sure there will be a next time with respect to lining up a clutch of downloads while I go off and watch tv, get a drink, build a house and read a book or 16. But I sense it will be worth it.

• 'Hundredth Year Memorium: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg 1795-1877' IN: 'Palynology' 2: 209-211 (1978) by W Sarjeant.
• There is an extended commentary, touching on Ehrlenberg's contributions to science and particularly the study of Radiolaria, in a bibliographic appendix to Ernst Haeckel's contribution to the HMS Challenger publications.
• Wikipedia. There's a lot more around online but these all pretty well cover the basics.
• UPDATE: later Ehrenberg posts - highly recommended: The Infinitesmal I AND; The Infinitesmal II AND Minimalism
  

Of Monsters and Maidens

"Femme Assise Fumant l'Opium"
1823 crayon drawing by Alexandre Bida

"Une loge d'Actrice" by Victor Giraud
watercolour sketch 3rd quarter 19th cent.

"Jeune Fille Masquée" by Henry Monnier
1859 charcoal and watercolour sketch

[from a search on 'femme' and 'dessin' at Joconde.
Toujours cherchez les femmes.]

I didn't collect the details on this one - I presume it's
an early design for a truss, perhaps 17th century.

Again, I didn't copy any information. It's a device to reduce fractures.

[both of these come from the extensive image database at
Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Médecine (BIUM)]

"Théodoros, Roi d'Abyssinie"
in 'La Lune' 22 December 1867

"Monstre multiforme"
Fortunio Liceti 1634

'Grande découverte d'un monstre
extraordinaire dans la forêt des Ardennes'
In: "Monstres humains, Géants, Nains, Centenaires, hommes
extraordinaires, singuliers, et autres bizarreries de la nature"(undated)

'Poisson Aérostatique' 1784
I believe this was in a letter from Louis St Juste
to one of the Montgolfier brothers.

It seems Le Visioscope image website at Rouen Library have added
another section 'Bêtes Curieuses' since I last posted book and print
images from there. Or I was completely blind last time I visited?

"Historia ; Ius Germaniae ; Ius Principum ;
Cautalæ ; Corp Iur JBBruhl - illustrator 1729"

"Unmaßgebliches Gut-Achten von Schul-Sachen, Darinne
Die Requisita einer wohlbestellten Schule gezeiget und zugleich
eine gute Methode angewiesen wird..Weiße, Christian Heinrich"
And quoting the only information I could find:
"Goldschmid, Peter, fl. 1690, d. 1713.... Höllischer Morpheus,
Welcher kund wirdDurch Die geschehene Erscheinungen Derer
Gespenster und Polter-Geister. Gottfried Liebernickel. 1698 Jantz
No. 1132; Hamburg; 8. [engr. t.p., t.p.r&b, 12], 409, [35]p.;
Engr. of devil as Lord of the Flies by the author ("P. Goldsch: fec:").
Full belief in apparitions, with a large collection of stories.
Against BalthasarBekker's Bezauberte Welt & similar skeptical works."

[The above 2 images come (from memory) from some recess
or other in the Pictura Paedagogica image database]

Untitled © estate of Harry Smith
c. 1978 watercolour/pen/pencil on board
[from the Harry Smith Archives {via}]

"Der Ackermann aus Böhmen"
by Johannes von Tepl (before 1415 but produced in 1460)
'Ploughman of Bohemia', aka: 'Ploughman and the Death'
was a humanist dialogue poem written in early modern high german.
These are 4 of about 40 similar minatures from Bibliotheca Palatina.

"The adventures of Roderick Random"
1748 2nd Ed. by Tobias Smollett.

'Painting in Fresco in the Sepulchres of Thebes'
In: "Travels to discover the source of the Nile,
in the years 1768-1773" by James Bruce

"Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiae Thesaurus"
(frontpiece, I presume) 1739 by James Anderson

[The above 3 images come from the 'Scottish Thought & Letters in the
Eighteenth Century" exhibition site at the University of Glasgow Library]

'Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons'
c. 1470–75 by Martin Schongauer at the Metropolitan Museum
(also see previously and Giornale Nuovo)

Sorry, I've been a bit busy. When the feedreader numbers 277 unread, it starts to look like work. Must be a job for the delete button.