The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes: Medicine and the Body in the German Material Renaissance

The ‘material Renaissance’, historians have argued, was an age of experimentation, and recipes were at the heart of this cultural movement. New collaborations between the humanities and the sciences allow for novel insights into Renaissance recipe cultures, and more specifically the degree of material experimentation and engagement by ‘recipe practitioners’. Scientific analysis and thorough historical contextualization of the chemical fingerprints of recipe users offer a new understanding of material cultures, medicine, and the history of the body in early modern Germany.