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

Collaborations between the humanities and the sciences, this article argues, allow for novel insights into the material world of Renaissance recipe cultures, in particular theexperimentation and engagement cultivated by recipe practitioners. Recipes called for action and early modern users, we show, left behind invisible chemical traces on the surface of the paper that have thus far not been studied. The scientific analysis and thorough historical contextualisation of the biochemical fingerprints of early modern recipe users, we argue, reveals an exciting new range of insights into the age of material experimentation.