ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that, during dearth years, early modern English households provided a basis from which existing cultural systems of making and interpreting food were re-evaluated. Preservation and substitution issues cut across boundaries of household and trade when producing bread, starch, and beer. Economy in one context directly influenced the workings of the other: household and workshop became linked knowledge-making sites, and while the overlaps widened opportunities for inventive adaptation to changes and crises, they also made the overall management of resources more complex. The making of Platt's receipt books indicates it was, equally, not unusual for men to take practical, hands-on, collaborative interest in female work, and this was not necessarily done with the aim of fantasizing. Dearth science aimed not only to outline for brewers low-cost techniques through the use of substitutes, but to present possible sidelines to their trade through the production of bread, starch, vinegar, aqua vitae, and alternative drinks.
