Lindsay Middleton
email - l.middleton.1@research.gla.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1441-2554
Research title: The Technical Recipe: A Formal Analysis of 19th Century Food Writing
Research Summary
Focusing on the nineteenth century, this project examines the form and function of the most ubiquitous form of food writing: the recipe, and its ties with material cooking technologies.
With formal analysis I read the recipe as a form of literary technology: it has significant aesthetic qualities and practical aims, it reflects technological modifications in food and cooking, and it is shaped by the changing pace of print and publications.
Furthermore, the recipe is technological due to its participation in the transformative process of cooking. I argue that the recipe’s form and content reflect technological developments and instruct readers on how to make sense of those developments.
Methodologically, my project combines techniques from the history of technology and within literary criticism from English Literature, drawing upon ‘Strategic Formalism’ - defined by Caroline Levine - and book history, exemplified by Robert Darnton, Jerome McGann and Leah Price.
This dual focus on the uptake, use and perception of technologies and the literary qualities of the texts that describe them lends to nuanced observations about the place of culinary technologies in nineteenth-century culture.
The technological case-studies I select have distinctive relationships with temporality. By investigating perceptions of the past, present and future in the nineteenth century by looking at foods, material technologies and texts, I hope to find new ways of understanding contemporary attitudes towards innovation and cultural preservation in the nineteenth century.
Supervisors
Grants
Grants & Awards
- RSA-RSTG funding, £284.40 to attend the Cookbooks conference in Portsmouth
- The Bibliographical Society, via ‘The 1820s: Innovation and Diffusion’ conference organisers, 13.1.19, £60-80, to cover attendance and dinner at the conference, which I am presenting at.
- BAVS, 16.1.19, £300, for the running of a workshop at the GMRC titled ‘Queen Victoria’s Contemporaries’, co-organised by Dr. Helen Kingstone, Louise Creechan and Danielle Schwertner.
- UofG College of Arts PGR Community Building Fund, 8.3.19, £450 for the organisation of a field trip to New Lanark World Heritage Site for the 19th Century Reading Group.
- RSA-RSTG funding to attend the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium (returned due to Covid-19)
- Recipient of a Royal Historical Society year-long subscription to Adam Matthew Digital Collections, for help with archival research. 10.8.20
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SGSAH AHRC DTP Scholarship, Full Time Fee Coverage and Stipend for undertaking PhD Research.
Conference
- ‘Cookbooks: Past, Present and Future’ at the University of Portsmouth, presenting paper ‘Characters in Cookbooks: The Victorian Trend of the Fictional Housewife.’ 2nd of March 2019
- ‘The 1820s: Innovation and Diffusion’ at the University of Glasgow, presenting paper ‘Feeding the 1820s: Bread, Beer and Anxiety.’ 11-12 April 2019
- ‘Queen Victoria’s Contemporaries: born in 1819’, Glasgow Museum’s Resource Centre (organised through the University of Glasgow), 17th May 2019.
- ‘Waste Not, Want Not: Food and Thrift from Early Modernity to the Present’ at the University of Cambridge. Presented paper ‘Preservation and Textual Spaces: Interpreting Thrift through Victorian Food Writing’, 12-13 September, 2019.
- ‘Introductions English Literature PGR Symposium’, University of Glasgow. Presented paper ‘Interdisciplinarity in "The Technical Recipe: A Formal Analysis of Nineteenth-century Food Writing"', 25.10.19
- Public talk at the National Library of Scotland on ‘Eating the 1820s: Food Adulteration’ as part of the 1820s: Innovation and Diffusion project, 30.1.20
- ‘Food and Disruption – What Will We Eat Tomorrow? Dublin Gastronomy Symposium’, Technological University Dublin. Presented paper ‘No one wishes to say that you are to live on preserved meats’: Canning and Disruptive Narratives in Nineteenth-century Food Writing’, 25-29 May 2020
- '"Disguise as far as possible the fact they are tinned": Interpretations of Tinned Foods in the Nineteenth Century'. Solo talk for the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine reading group, 22.7.20
- 'M.F.K. Fisher, Food, and Transatlantic Belonging': Solo talk for the Transatlantic Literary Women group, 19.8.20
- '"The wonder now is how our ancestors did so well without them": Tinned Foods and Narratives of Progress, Globalisation and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Food Writing': Solo talk for the Institute of Historical Research's Food History Seminar, 29.10.20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBhhZnN-tAo
- Spoke about my internship experience at the SGSAH Heritage Careers event, 12.11.20.
- '"To Make Fairy Butter": Interpreting Edinburgh’s Historical Cookbooks': Solo public talk for the National Trust for Scotland. 14.1.21
Teaching
GTA for English Literature 2B: Writing and Text, 2019-2020, 2020-2021.
Additional Information
Affiliations
- Member of BAVS
- Member of RSVP
Organisational Committees
- Organiser of the University of Glasgow’s ‘19th Century Reading Group.’ Email l.middleton.1@research.gla.ac.uk to be included on the mailing list.
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Committee member for the Transatlantic Literary Women group at the University of Glasgow, July 2019 – present. https://transatlanticladies.wordpress.com/meet-the-team/
Internships
Currently undertaking a SGSAH-funded internship with the National Trust for Scotland, working to research and reinterpret historical food within the Trust’s Scottish properties, and particularly in partnership with Gladstone’s Land in Edinburgh.
Wrote the 'Tables through Time' tour for Gladstone's Land: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19337316.recipes-past-recreated-new-exhibition/
