This book is inscribed on page 2: "Receipt book purchased by Frederick T. Tallmadge and dedicated to I. E. Canfield and Mary F. Tallmadge, Nyack, January 9, 1845." The 120-page volume contains 164 culinary recipes and twenty-six recipes for remedies, household products, dyeing, brewing and winemaking, and knitting. The book was likely continued for at least a decade after the inscription date, for sixteen recipes call for a leavening of cream of tartar and soda, which did not come into common use until the 1850s.
The book includes many recipes for cakes both small (i.e. cookies) and large, by such names as Bread, Brooks, California, Cream of Tartar Sponge, Good Family, Litchfield Light, Magic, Poor Man's, Pop, Rhoda, Tunbridge, and Walnut Street Fruit. There are also recipes for Boston Cream Cakes [cream puffs], Chocolate, Almira's Fritters, Pear Sweetmeats, and Virginia Egg Bread.
