Manuscript Location

Litchfield Historical Society, Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Connecticut ➔ Goshen

Date of Composition

likely 1850s-1870s

Description

This recipe book is housed in folder 24 of the library's collection of the Beach, Webster, and Dickinson family papers. Its author has not been determined with certainty, but it likely belonged to Sarah Thankful Law Dickinson (1829-1903) of Goshen, Connecticut, in Litchfield County. She married Alvin Beach Dickinson (1828-1909) in 1852. The couple had one son, born in 1856, who died before his third birthday. Compiled in a notebook bound by rope ties, the collection mostly focuses on cakes. The variable mood of the handwriting suggests that the recipes were written over a span of time, and the recipes corroborate this hunch. Many of the cake recipes date from the 1850s or earlier, for they call for leavening with saleratus, a term replaced by “soda” after 1860. Other cakes in the collection date from the 1870s or later, including the Chocolate Cake, which, like many of the earliest chocolate cakes outlined in American cookbooks, is actually a plain yellow cake with a chocolate filling. The  book's recipe for wedding cake is paraphrased from Lydia Maria Child’s The Frugal American Housewife, first published in 1829, but with a serious error. The original recipe calls for 24 eggs, the recipe in this book for only two.