Sweet Bags as Embodied Artifacts of Olfactory Heritage

Sweet bags were small, embroidered textile pouches used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to carry fragrant substances, money, books, sewing tools, mirrors, or other personal items. They were often exchanged as gifts, used to preserve clothing in wardrobes, or used to protect against contaminated air. Beyond their material function, both their name and some of their uses suggest an olfactory dimension, as they were typically filled with aromatic herbs—combinations frequently recorded in recipe books, medical, and household manuals, including Countrey Contentments, or The English Husvvife, Praxis Medicinæ, or The Physitian’s Practise, and Exenterata, among others. Through close reading and literary analysis of such primary sources combined with a sensory approach, this article traces the possible ingredients of these pouches in Early Modern recipes and argues that their olfactory content positions them as objects of the “olfactory gaze” (Verbeek), thereby transforming them into elements of olfactory heritage. Ultimately, the article seeks to recreate the olfactory component of sweet bags within recipe-related practices, and broader domestic traditions of Early Modern England.