Thijs Elfrink

PhD candidate

Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025

Brining, curing, and pickling in the Low Countries, 1600-1800

Part of the overarching project: PRESERVARE, Large-scale conservation of perishable foodstuffs in the Low Countries, 1600-1800
Supervisors: Dr. Marieke Hendriksen, Prof. dr. Inger Leemans (promotor)
Project start date: 1-2-2025
Expected project end date: 31-1-2029

My project explores how knowledge about salts and acids evolved in the early modern low countries as an interplay between formal, written knowledge and embodied, practical knowledge. By reconstructing brining, curing, and pickling techniques, I will map the unwritten knowledge held by the people who ensured food supply before the industrial revolution. In the context of the overarching PRESERVARE project, this research aims to provide an integral history of early modern food conservation.