Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This collection consists of a 133-page recipe book and an envelope containing twenty-five loose sheets. The collection comprises 235 culinary recipes, forty-one household recipes, and forty-one remedies, as well as a few recipes for brewing, winemaking, and dyeing. The recipe book is inscribed “Putnam Family Saratoga Springs” on the inside front cover. A number of the recipes are credited to members of the Putnam family, including eight to E. E. P. (E. P. Putnam) and others to Mrs. M. Putnam, Mrs. Washington P. Putnam, Mrs. Rockwell Putnam, and Dr. Putnam. (Other recipes are attributed to Mrs. William Clement, Mary Hodges, James Pennycook, and Miss Watrous.) Thirty-eight recipes are dated between 1838 (Mary Hodges' Plum Pudding, page 49) and 1866 (Mary L's Marsh Mallows for the Kidneys, page 110).

The culinary recipes include Christmas Cookeys, Macaroons, Dairy Bread, Whip Syllabub, Balloon Pudding, Clay Jumbles, Ice Cream, To Pickle Butternuts, To Make Tomato Catsup (10/8/1840), To Pickle Tomatoes, To Preserve Fruit in Cans, Higdum, Soused Shad, Rose Scent Bags, Doughnuts, Crullers, Wonders, and a number of cakes by such names as Composition, Queen's, Tumbler, Tumbridge, Christmas, Water, Imperial, Cocoanut, Harvest, Buena Vista, and Poor Man's Woman's Cakes.