Amanda E. Herbert, Associate Professor, History, and Member of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University 

British Atlantic women’s recipe books are crucial historical sources, offering evidence of the consumer and scientific revolutions, the rise of the city, female alliances, networks of knowledge and inquiry, and, perhaps most importantly, women’s authoritative voice. These same books also offer evidence of Black and Indigenous erasure. In this talk, Amanda Herbert demonstrates how free white women worked to deliberately erase Black food-workers from their practices of recipe writing, collection, and record-keeping; close reading of ingredients, techniques, and adaptations, however, can help us to recover Black culinary innovations and contributions.

The Robert K. Webb Lecture is organized by the Department of History.

Photo by Natalie Elder