Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This book of approximately 400 pages contains 335 culinary recipes and forty-seven recipes for brewing, winemaking, medicines, household products, and dyes. A table of contents is written on pages 2 to 5. Pages 138 to 182, which contain farm advice and recipes for dyes, ink, and medicines, are written upside-down in relation to the front of the book.

The book is inscribed on the first page: “Sally Bella Dunlop 1795 James Dunlop January 1806 S. B. D. The Housewifes Recourse Containing a number of receipts for cooking, making wines, dying, and after some medical ones. Not collected in any order but just as were suggested Sally Bella Dunlop." The book appears to have been begun in England and then continued in the United States. At least twenty-three of the recipes are attributed, and some attributions include American locations, such as Dr. Buckman of New York, C. C. Ludlow of Cincinnatan [sic], and Mrs. MacSherry of Virginia. There is also an attribution to Mr. Hess of Zurich.

The recipes include To Make a Good Bitter, Portable Soup, Beef Olives, To Ragoo Pidgeons, Calfs Feet Pie, Red Currant Cream, A Spread Eagle Pudding, To Preserve Water Melon Rind, French Bean Pudding, Scotch Scallops, Apple Pudding Very Good!!!, Parsnip Fritters, To Mango Cucumber, To Roast Larks, Juniper Water, Saffron Cake, Pan-Cake Pudding, Fidget Pye, Hash Venison, To Make Currant Shrub, Staffordshire Syllabub, Tomatoes Ketchup (page 72), To Make and Preserve Yeast, To Dress a Turtle about 30 Weight, Peppermint Drops, Pea Beer, Maple or Sugar Tree Wine, and Maple Beer. At least twenty-three of the recipes appearing throughout the manuscript were apparently copied from printed English cookbooks, including E. Smith’s The Compleat Housewife (1727), Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), and Mrs. Frazer’s The Practice of Cookery, Pastry, Pickling, &c. (1791).  

The recipe for “Sham Pig” (made with mashed potatoes; see image at left), pages 18-19, includes a small drawing of a pig on a platter. The recipe titled "A Rabbit truss'd, A Chicken, A woodcock, A Pheasant," page 65, is illustrated with a drawing of trussed birds and a rabbit. Page 63 includes a diagram of a place setting. The inside back cover of the notebook contains a poem by Sarah Bella Dunlop citing various dishes that "mama cull'd," as well as a list of chinaware, dated 1813, that includes "Soup plates - 3 Best old ones - 4 large flat new ones [and] 13 Large Blue dyed plates..."

A photocopy of the manuscript is available at the library.