For Healthy and Sick People. Production and Transfer of “Recipe-Knowledge” in the Early Modern Period.

In the early modern period, recipe books, such as Books of Secrets, cooking books and other similar texts, were very popular. This can be deducted from the fact that they were re-edited several times, translated into different languages, and published widespread. In addition, one can still find many existing copies in libraries all over the world. In my project, I focus on the recipe books published by, and in the name of Johann Jacob Wecker (1528-1586/88). He was a city physician in Colmar in the late sixteenth century. Besides recipe books, he also published other medical books, such as books titled Medicinae utriusque Syntaxes, collections of medical knowledge ordered in ramistic tables. He was an important compiler and translator of recipe books at the time: His books were re-edited several times, translated into French and English and later on “re-used” to make other books out of the collected knowledge. I follow his books from their coming into existence until the disappearing of his name on the title pages of medical or recipe books in the seventeenth century. My approach combines ideas of micro-history, historical anthropology, practice theory, and “material culture”. I zoom in on different aspects of Wecker’s books, which reveals more of the complexity of the researched object: the zooming in leads to questions concerning the organisation of the collection of knowledge, the ordering of knowledge, reading practices, and looks into how they influenced each other. I argue that recipe books are good examples for the intermixing of social and educational spheres in the early modern period, as well as of knowledge traditions, which were not separated, but merged to a high extent.