Manuscript Location

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Kislak for Special Collections - Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England ➔ Hertfordshire

Date of Composition

begun ca. 1773

Description

This cookbook contains approximately 152 pages of mostly culinary recipes written from the front, and 29 pages of medical recipes written from the back, upside down in relation to the front. Both sections are in one predominant hand and one to three secondary hands. The predominant hand is evident from the beginning to the end of the front section, suggesting that the book was passed back and forth between this writer and one or more other writers, who each wrote recipes in it. The book was likely compiled over a span of several years around time that the recipe "To make Lemon Pies" (meatless mince pies; page 18) was entered. This recipe marked "much in fashion 1773." Several recipes are credited to cookbook authors who published during the second quarter of the eighteenth century but whose works remained popular to the end of the century: Hannah Glasse (page 28), Mrs. Fisher (page 107), and E. Smith (page 143). The library has determined that the book was compiled in Hertfordshire, a county on the northern border of Greater London.

The book includes a wide range of eighteenth century English dishes, both savory and sweet, with perhaps a greater number of recipes than would be expected for soups, sauces, preserved meats, curries, rice dishes, pickles, ketchups and other condiments, mince pies, and wines. Many of the recipes are attributed to acquaintances of the writers. The book includes a good deal of close observation. In a recipe for "Bouillie Beef" (page 27), the writer remarks that the minced carrots and pickles in the brown gravy "poured over the beef look very pretty." (The same recipe is written again, in the same hand, on page 82, but without the comment.) "An Incomparable way to make Mustard" (page 82) may have been so described because the mustard is made with sack, which was unusual, or because it omits garlic, which the writer disparages as "disgusting" to the breath. The recipe "A Ramakin" (page 27) outlines a dish strangely akin to Welsh Rarebit. The recipe "To make Ramekins" (page 69) outlines this favorite period dish in its usual guise, a cheese custard baked in individual small dishes. The recipe for "Dow Nuts" (page 77) is startling. The nuts are American doughnuts, as they are presumed to have been made in the late eighteenth century: an enriched, lightly sweetened yeast dough cut "into Nuts, as they are called, with a Jagging Iron."