Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This manuscript is a handwritten near copy of a printed cookbook by Edward Kidder, a cookbook author and cooking teacher active in London between ca. 1720 and ca. 1734. Kidder gave his students blank notebooks bound with a printed title page from his cookbook. The students then copied his cookbook, nearly verbatim, into these notebooks. There are five similar Kidder manuscripts in this database, in five separate institutional collections.  Three of these manuscripts can be viewed online. Additional information on these manuscripts can be found in the record of the Kidder manuscript at the University of Pennsylvania.

The printed title page of the University of Chicago Kidder manuscript lists the locations where Kidder held cooking classes through 1720, so the manuscript was presumably copied in 1720 or earlier. This manuscript is calf-bound and of a conventional size, measuring 182 x 118 millimeters (7 x 4.6 inches). In addition to culinary recipes, the 69 numbered pages include an index and diagrams showing the positioning of serving plates on the table. The scribe is anonymous; two later owners are identified by a bookplate: “A. Adams-Reilly” and “Howard Levis.”