Manuscript Location

Middlebury College, Special Collections and Archives

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Vermont

Date of Composition

likely late 1850s

Description

In 1859, newlywed Vermont natives, Mary Elizabeth Martin (1839-1893) and Carlos Roscoe Martin (1835-1864), an ordained minister, sailed to Fuzhou, China, where they embarked on new lives as missionaries. While in China, the couple had two sons, but, sadly, the younger son, Lucius Allen, died in September, 1864, at age 2, and his father died the next day. In 1865, Mary Elizabeth Martin returned to Vermont with her older son, Edward Homer (1861-1917), who went on to become the Middlebury Town Doctor. Mary Elizabeth married again in 1881, to Reverend Clark Wedgeworth of Franklin County (1838-1904).

Mary Elizabeth Martin's cookbook is mostly written in ink, though with some blocks of text in pencil, in a single, neat hand, presumably that of Mary Elizabeth. The covers are missing as are several leaves at the front and back of the volume. Thus, recipes appear on numbered pages 3 through 120, followed by two pages of an alphabetical index that ends "Cake, Jenny Lind." Pages 3 through 84 contain culinary recipes, which are consecutively numbered from 5 to 148. Page 85 is headed "Miscellaneous Housekeeping Items" and begins a section of  unnumbered household, medical, and cosmetic recipes that continues through page 109. Pages 110 through 120 contain additional culinary recipes which are also unnumbered. 

The bulk of the culinary recipes concern cakes, puddings, pies, desserts, and tea and breakfast breads. However, there are also recipes for vegetables (eggplant, summer squash, cauliflower, potatoes, and sweet potatoes), batter-fried codfish "cutlets," curing hams, "Frittadella" (properly "fricadella," a forcemeat popular in the mid-1800s), and soups. While there is no formal organization, recipes of like kind are sometimes written in clutches. For example, there is a run of soup recipes on pages 64-68, and a run of preserve recipes on page 78-82. Eliza Leslie's unusual recipe for "Custard Cakes," which was added to 1840s and 1850s editions of Leslie's Directions for Cookery, first published in 1837, is paraphrased on page 83. This recipe is very difficult, so it is surprising to see it in a home cookbook.

The high level of organization of this book, as well as the neatness of the hand, suggest that Mary Elizabeth Martin compiled the book as she was preparing to depart for China, so that she would have a collection of her favorite American recipes at hand in that foreign land. The cookbook is part of Middlebury's Martin Missionary Collection. For more details about the Martins in China, see "Martin Family Brooch," by Charlie Rouhandeh.