The English manuscript is in two parts. One part consists of approximately 50 pages of arithmetic exercises written in a calligraphic hand. This part is headed Penelope Kynnersley her book 1754.
The other part of the book comprises 86 numbered pages that are written in italic hands and are upside down in relation to the arithmetic exercises. Pages 1 through 67 of this section contain (coincidentally) 86 numbered recipes, mostly for food and drink, with a few medical and household recipes mixed in. Many of the recipes are attributed. Pages 68 through 83 are blank, and pages 84 through 86 provide a complete table of contents to the recipes. The recipes on pages 1 through 57 appear to be written in one hand, the recipes on pages 57 through 63 and 65 through 67 in a second hand, and the recipes on pages 63 and 64 in a third hand. However, the same squib appears to be used throughout book, including in the arithmetic section, so it is possible that the entire book was written by the same individual, possibly Penelope Kynnerslee.
Most of the culinary recipes outline typical mid-eighteenth century English dishes favored by the privileged classes. However, there are also several uncommon recipes. Mutton Bashamol (#3) is mutton neck braised in its juices and finished with “gravy and boiled celery or onions.” The dish is fairly typical, but the name is unusual. The principal ingredient of Red Catchup (#20) is cayenne; cochineal provides the vivid red color. The eighteenth-century English were fond of cayenne (and of spicy food generally), but this sauce, probably meant for fish, is uncommonly pungent. Scotch’d Collops (#26) is escalopes of veal or pork in a piquant sauce. Extremely popular, the dish is usually titled “Scotch” in recipe books, but here the title indicates the true meaning of the word (gashed or scored). Hung Beef (#32) is salt-cured raw beef hung in the open air (or sometimes smoked) until hard and dry and served in thin “chips,” essentially the same as the Italian bresaola. It was a great favorite at supper (or “tea”) in America through the nineteenth century but is rarely outlined in English cookbooks. The book includes many sauces for fish, including four for carp (nos. 35-38). One of the carp sauces calls for the blood and liver of the fish, updating a favorite seventeenth-century dish that called for cooking carp in its blood. Two muffin recipes (nos. 48 and 49) are attributed to “Old Woman at Buxton.” She may have been an itinerant muffin seller, a precursor to the later bell-ringing “muffin man” of Victorian legend.
In addition, the book contains an early instance of the modern spelling of “porridge” in connection with the dish called Green Pease Porridge (#43), that is, pea soup, and an early instance of the modern term Sponge Cake (#62). (The cake was known to the English since the early seventeenth century but the term “sponge” did not become commonplace until around 1800.) The book also has a very early recipe for Potatoe Bread (#57), calling for equal weights of boiled mealy potatoes and wheat flour, plus yeast.
Finally, there is unusual (and possibly unworkable) recipe titled Fruit Bisket (#51), which calls for combining equal weights of sieved baked plums and sugar and beating the mixture for three to four hours “without leaving of[f].” The mixture is turned into small paper cases, in which, presumably, it is meant to firm up. Only a household endowed with a fleet of kitchen minions could consider such a recipe feasible.
The manuscript is collected with two complete typescripts, one on plain small paper sheets gathered in a 3-ring notebook, the other on lined yellow paper. The typescript contained in the notebook includes a page indicating:
Typed copy by: Jane F. Adams 3147 Kalmia St. San Diego, Calif. January, 1940.
The same typescript also contains 5 pages of American recipes. The recipes on the first four pages are of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as Election Cake and “oily cakes” (the Dutch precursors of American doughnuts). The last page features a recipe for cornbread that calls for cream of tartar and soda, a leavening pioneered in the last third of the nineteenth century.
