Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This cookbook is written in a small bound notebook with a leather cover and lined paper. It is inscribed “Receipt Book Woodland 1849 Nora C. Macon The most angelic creature that is known in these [capes?]” The individual inscribed is Nora Crena Braxton Macon (1824-1892), who had two children with her husband, William Macon. During the Civil War, the couple lived at Ingleside Plantation, in present-day Oak Grove, Virginia, which was garrisoned by General Grant during the bloody battle of Cold Harbor. The mansion is now a winery.

The handwritten recipes include: yellow pickle, whiskey by the pint, cucumber catsup, pickled damsons, to pickle ripe tomatoes, walnut catsup, tomato catsup, preserving peaches, crab apple jelly, quinces, to preserve pears, apples, gerkins or May apples & like trash, to pickle cabbage, sausages, canning beef. There is also a newspaper clipping with a recipe for tomato figs [dried tomatoes].

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