Manuscript Location

Pequot Library, Special Collections

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

likely 1710s or 1720s

Description

This beautiful English receipt book is inscribed on the front flyleaf: “Mrs. Katherine Pirrott’s Receipt Book, Containing Cookery, Physick, & Preserving.” Intriguingly, another forename (possibly Jane), now erased or washed, is faintly visible beneath “Mrs. Katherine.” This individual could be the book’s original owner. Alternatively, Katherine Pirrott may have once styled herself by a different forename. The library has been unable to determine the identity of Katherine Pirrott.

The book is written almost entirely in a single beautiful hand, in a leather-bound notebook 8 inches tall and 6.5 inches wide. The notebook comprises 364 pages, approximately 80 pages of which have writing. (The rest are blank.) The cookery section contains 103 recipes, the preserving section 31 recipes, and the physic [medicine] section 40 recipes. There is also an alphabetical table at the back of the book that covers approximately two dozen leaves.

Katherine Pirrot’s Receipt Book is of the eighteenth century but quite early on in the century. This is suggested by the paper watermark, which the library has identified as likely that of Jean Villedary, from 1709. It is also suggested by the cookery recipes, many of which were in their heyday in the last third of the seventeenth century (or earlier), including hogs’ puddings (puddings formed in intestinal casings, like sausages); taffety [taffeta] tarts (delicate tarts filled with apples); Scotch collops (veal scallopine in a sauce); Wood Street cake; tarts in pattypans (after 1700, the use of pattypans is rarely noted in recipe titles); and skirret pie (a carrot-like vegetable increasingly rare after 1700). The cookery section contains a number of recipes for meat and fish dishes and sauces for the same, which many handwritten English collections of this date do not. The bulk of the remaining recipes concern puddings, pies, and tarts. As is typical in eighteenth-century English handwritten recipe collections, there are few recipes for vegetables, and nearly all are pickles. A complete list of the recipes in the book can be found here.

This book was donated to the Pequot Library in 1967 by Margaret Rudkin, the founder of the Pepperidge Farm company, along with other rare books relating to food and cooking.