“A gallon of the finest honey you can get”: Considering Quantity and Domestic Work in Mary Baumfylde’s Receipt Book Abstract

Keith Botelho, Kennesaw State University

This essay pays attention to a single ingredient—honey—in Mary Baumfylde’s 1626 receipt book, showing how Baumfylde showcases her authority on the everyday practices of the early modern household, particularly in the labor-intensive practices of gathering honey, an ingredient that depends upon the labor of a nonhuman beast. Baumfylde’s receipts that call for  honey serve as proof-texts to meditate upon issues of quantity, consumption, and domestic work and allow us to think further about how the practice of making involves complex engagement between the human and the nonhuman worlds.