Manuscript Location

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

mostly 1655

Description

Near the front, written in an elegant script, this manuscript bears the title "The delights for ladys to adorne there persons beautyes stillyris banquits perfumes wators," with the date 1655. The title page is followed by an effusive dedicatory letter addressed to an unknown lady, the bulk of which is missing, signed "Jose. [Joseph] Lovett." There is a complete table of contents, followed by 74 pages of recipes, all in Lovett's hand. The final leaf of the volume is signed, upside down in relation to the front, "Mabella Powell Her Booke." A handful of recipes, some in the signer's hand and some in other hands, follow from back to front.  

The interest of this manuscript is the 74-page book written by Joseph Lovett. His book is clearly modeled after a famous work by the polymath Sir Hugh Plat, which was first published around 1609 and republished into the 1650s: Delightes for Ladies to Adorne their Persons, Tables, Closets, and Distillatories, with Beauties, Banquets, Perfumes, Waters. Plat's book, too, opens with an effusive dedication, albeit in verse, and it covers the same general subject material as Lovett's book. However, Lovett does not seem to have picked up any of Plat's recipes. 

The imaginative center of this manuscript is banqueting, and most of the recipes for food and drink focus on banqueting stuff, such as biskets, macaroons, gingerbread, syllabubs, sweet dairy dishes, preserves, and pleasant medicinal waters and cordials. There are also a number of recipes for perfumes, which were associated with banqueting because they were distilled. As in Plat's work, a few recipes for general cooking are included: a boiled capon and a fricassee on pages 31-32, and pickled lamprey on page 50.