Manuscript Location

Winterthur Library, Quaker and Special Collections

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Ohio ➔ Canton

Date of Composition

ca. 1810-ca. 1840

Description

This 150-page recipe book contains 176 consecutively numbered recipes through page 61 and hundreds of additional recipes, unnumbered, to end. It appears to have been written by a single individual. The book opens with three recipes for soap, then outlines culinary recipes through page 15, most of which are copied from Amelia Simmons's American Cookery (1796), although not in Simmons's order. Pages 16 through 46 contain mostly medical and household recipes. Thereafter medical and household recipes predominate, but many culinary recipes also appear. A number of recipes for curing, preserving, and pickling are written towards the end of the volume. Many recipes are marked as having been copied from Ohio Repository and Ohio Almanac, some from Cincinnati Almanac, Pittsburgh Gazette, and New England Cookery. In addition, some recipes are credited to individuals. A full index of the recipes is provided in a database available at the library.

The book has been attributed to the Rappe family on the basis of a biographical note about Andrew S. Rappe that is pasted to the first flyleaf, in a hand other than that of the book's author. The note tells us that Rappe was born in Paris in 1789, emigrated to America in 1805, and ended up in Canton, Ohio, in 1808. The second flyleaf bears the heading "Various Receipts Canton August 4th 1830," possibly written in the hand of the author; a slip of paper, pasted on beneath, reads "Grand mother Rappe." who may have been Andrew's wife. The heading must have been written before the book was completed because the recipe for Harrison Cake appearing near the end of the volume emerged in connection with the Van Buren-Harrison presidential election in 1840.

To view digital images of this book, click on the link in the library catalog record under "Multimedia," and then click on "1800s."