Manuscript Location

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections - Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1700

Description

This volume of approximately 84 leaves begins with 15 pages of tables for weights and currency, followed by two pages of accounts (with dates 1699 and 1700) and ends with additional accounts (with many dates between 1700 and 1703). In between, there is an organized, comprehensive recipe book, written in a single hand, on leaves 18v-49v, followed by a hodgepodge of recipes, mostly medical, written in two other hands, on leaves 50r to 58r.

The interest of this book to culinary researchers is the recipe book written on leaves 18v-49v, which is headed "Cookrey." The length and detail of these recipes suggest that whoever wrote them either had to have made them herself or observed them being made. The recipes are organized as follows: meat, poultry, fish, and soups (18v-22v); meat and fish pies (23r-25r); meat and fish sauces (25r); puddings (26r-26v); miscellaneous second-course dishes (probably), including cheesecakes, custards, a tansy, and fritters or pancakes (27r-28v); creams and tarts (29r-30v); cakes (31r-32r); preserves and jellies (32v-38r); wines and other drinks (43r-44v); and remedies (46r-49v). 

Many recipes in this collection merit close study, including "To make a hash of calves-head and scotch-collops (18v), a 600+-word recipe that combines several favorite dishes of the day with elaborate sauces and a garnish of flowers; "To make oring or lemon Poding, or tarts" (26v), which illustrates the origin of lemon and orange puddings as tarts; "To make custards boyled, or baked, or sett" (27v), which confirms that a "set custard" is one baked in a crust; "To make Eile of Wite nuts, or hunny beens" (28v), which are essentially yeast-raised doughnuts, albeit shaped like small nuts or beans; and "To make harty : choke cream, or carrot" (29r), an uncommon dessert cream made with pureed artichokes, to eat cold or hot. The recipe "To make a rich seed-cake, or small hie patty-pan cakes" (31r) includes these illuminating instructions: "instead of carraways, put a pound of plumpt corrans, and bake them in littell hie round tinn-pans, made a purpose for that use, ice them, thes cakes are very much used for entertainments."