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In Focus: Reading the Table in Early Modern Europe II
Spring 2020

This course is a research seminar that will enable students to undertake in-depth study of the objects and sources to be included in the upcoming focus exhibition, “Reading the Table in Early Modern Europe” that will open at BGC in February, 2021. The exhibition will examine a group of handbooks and manuals intended to demonstrate the arts of display on the tables of European elites during from the late middle ages through the end of the eighteenth century. Research in the spring term will focus on the social and material practices of carving meats, fish, fowl and fruits, and the creation of linens for presentation on the table.

Reading knowledge of one European language (French, German, Spanish or Italian) is recommended. Satisfies pre-1800 requirement. This course is open only to students who took Reading the Table in fall 2019.

In Focus: Reading the Table in Early Modern Europe I
Deborah L. Krohn
Fall 2019
Thursday 1:30-4

In conjunction with the “coming of the book,” knowledge of food, its preparation, and service moved from the realm of tacit, artisanal understanding to a more scientific and rational set of precepts and codes. Paralleling transformations in areas such as agriculture, botany, metallurgy and other scientific fields, cooking became subject to empirical standards that underlie both texts and images in various books published in the period 1500 – 1800. New markets, and the advent of printing, led to the prolif¬eration of prescriptive literature aimed at a broad audience, from country homemakers to the chefs of princes. This course surveys foodstuffs, the objects created to prepare and serve them, and the vast body of texts that provided instruction for cooks, stewards, and others, and sets the groundwork for a focus exhibition that will be mounted in Spring 2021.
The subject of the exhibition is a group of handbooks and manuals intended to demonstrate the arts of display on the tables of European elites during from the late middle ages through the end of the eighteenth century. Part I, offered in Fall 2019, is a pre-requisite for Part II, which will be offered in Spring 2020. The fall class may be taken without the second part, however. Course requirements include class reports, a research paper, and recipe reconstructions. Reading knowledge of one European language (French, German, Spanish or Italian) is recommended. Satisfies pre-1800 requirement.