The 180 medieval manuscripts that will be investigated during this project include both recipe compilations and medical texts, but also scientific and alchemical, legal and literary, liturgical and devotional books, illustrating the many different routes by which medical knowledge of this kind was recorded, shared and transmitted.
These manuscripts contain appoximately 8000 recipes that are highly variable and have never been edited. Transcription will open up their contents to health researchers and historians of medicine, enabling keyword searching, surveys of treatments for specific ailments, or quantitative analyses of particular ingredients or preparatory techniques.
It will include books at Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and twelve Cambridge college libraries: Clare, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Gonville & Caius, Jesus, King’s, Magdalene, Pembroke, Peterhouse, Sidney Sussex, St John’s and Trinity.