Food, Thrift, and Experiment in Early Modern England

Abstract

This essay uses the framework of “thrifty science” to highlight commonalities between two early modern endeavours that seem distinct today–experimental science and cookery. Comparing Isaac Newton’s experiments on light using glass prisms with Anne Shackleford’s recipes for fruitcakes I argue that for early moderns the culture of domestic thrift united the two enterprises more than we might imagine. Thrift and frugality were values of “oeconomy” or household management and encouraged householders to diversify the uses of things, a motive for experimentation across various endeavours, including what came to be defined as cookery and natural philosophy. While the home was a common ground for diverse experiments, efforts to institutionalise experiment divided it into more distinct forms, prompting a separation of practices that came to seem self-evident later on.