FoodCult research on early modern drink has featured in a great article on the history of Irish poitin. The article written by Chrissie Russell for the Sunday Independent explores the evolution of the drink through time, and the reasons for its current popularity. We were delighted to share our insights on the development of distillation in the sixteenth century.
Delighted to announce the publication of a new open access article in Food and History. The article, “Food and Social Politics in Early Modern Ireland”, is a deep analysis of fictional representations of food in Gaelic Ireland. It demonstrates the acceptance and interpretation of broader cultural food ideas in early modern Ireland. The article received an honourable mention by the jury for the the Food and History biennial prize.
On 16th June 2022 Meriel will present new findings from the ‘Mapping Diet’ work-package at the 19th Conference of the International Workgroup for Palaeoethnobotany, held in České Budějovice. The paper, entitled “Foodways in Flux”, will explore the nature and meaning of foodways in early modern Ireland based on a survey of archaeobotanical remains from more than 50 excavations across the island.
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On 26th May, Charlie and Susan will present their reflections on the process of experimental brewing at the ‘Beyond Cooking’ conference. The conference is hosted by CRASSH, Cambridge and features a range of exciting interdisciplinary papers on gender and food culture in the early modern world.
We are delighted to announce that Susan will give the keynote lecture at the first annual Myrtle Allen memorial event. This will take place on 12th May at UCC. The event will also feature taster presentations from Postgraduate students in Irish Food Culture. All are welcome.
We are excited to welcome Dr Alice Rose to the project. Alice is a bioarchaeologist specialising in the isotopic analysis of archaeological skeletal remains. Before joining the FoodCult project, Alice completed her PhD and a Postdoctoral Research Associate position as part of the ‘After the Plague: Health and History in Medieval Cambridge’ project at the University of Cambridge. Alice will work at Durham University, with Prof Janet Montgomery and Dr Darren Gröcke, on the isotope component of the project. Human remains have already been sampled from a range of 14 burial sites relating to the early modern period. These include Carrickmines, Clogh Oughter and King John’s Castle. We look forward to sharing some exciting results.
Delighted to announce the launch of a ‘Virtual Exhibition’ focused on the Brewing Project. This presents a photo-journalistic overview of the project in five chapters, exploring the background, ingredients, equipment, process and analysis.
On 16th October 2021, Susan presented some initial findings from the FoodCult Brewing Project at the National Monuments Service Nexus: People and Places Through Time Conference. The lecture is now available as an online podcast.
As part of the brewing project, we developed some very exciting collaborations. One of these with Warminster Maltings, who made malt for the experiment. Bere barley was shipped to Warminster from Orkney and then malted using traditional floor malting techniques before being delivered to the brewers at the Weald and Downland Museum. Warminster’s pride themselves on using authentic historic methods and the malt produced was as close as we could get to a sixteenth-century equivalent.
We are delighted to announce a new partnership with Good Food Ireland, an innovative company that strives to promote Ireland’s unique culinary heritage at home and abroad. As part of this collaboration, we will be sharing our progress through the Good Food Ireland platform. This presents a unique opportunity to make new research in Irish food history available to a wide range of interests.