Summary: The 'Compositiones variae' is the earliest extant medieval collection of artisanal recipes. Translated into Latin from a Hellenistic source and copied at Lucca, it is said to preserve technical knowledge surviving in Tuscany about 800 CE and to have offered practical assistance to the Lucca scriptorium. Studies of the text , have examined its mainly historical and liturgical contents. Physical and material features are largely ignored. Because medieval manuscript culture conveyed meaning through textual content and physical object, both should be and are considered in this new publication. The 'Compositiones variae's' significance appears when its context is reconstructed, using evidence supplied by the Lucchese context and numerous other texts. An investigation of functional relationships - production, uses, practices and preservation - what the object's materiality represents, reveals the 'Compositiones variae' as a social product placed within the cultural and social history of medieval knowledge and power.

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