Description
This recipe book is written in a small sewn volume of 32 pages that has been pasted into a linen cover. The book contains eighteen recipes altogether. Four of these recipes are for drinks (curacao, cherry brandy, cocoa, and imperial [faux lemonade]), and three others are sickroom preparations (three meat "teas," one of which is designated "for invalids," and a cold chicken jelly called "Dutch Jelly"). There are also recipes for mutton soup, brisket of beef, curry (with chicken), cabinet pudding, and "Cayenne Cheese" The Cayenne Cheese is cheese straws of a sort and is described as good to have "in the house . . . in case you have to provide for unexpected company."
In addition to the recipe book, eight leaves containing shopping lists and memoranda have also been pasted into the cover. There are also a number of leaves laid in, these also bearing lists and memoranda.
Although the library has identified the book as American, it is more likely British. Two of the pasted in leaves bear the letterheads of British businesses, one a grocer, and one a purveyor of wines and spirits. These businesses are identified as having locations in towns in the British historic county of Somerset: Taunton, Yeovil, South Petherton, and Ilminster. A laid in handwritten leaf references the British city of Bristol, which borders Somerset, and Yeovil. The language of the recipes is likewise English.
The book has been dated on the basis of a label on the front of the linen cover, which reads "Mrs. Frances Garrow's recipes, from about 1830" and the date "1912," which appears on one of the business letterheads. The dating should be regarded as provisional. While all of the recipes were likely current by 1830, the specific ways in which some are made, particularly the meat teas and the "Cayenne Cheese," suggest a date after 1870.
Bryn Mawr College, Canaday Library, possesses a manuscript titled on the spine
"Household and Recipe Book of Mrs. Garrow and her Daughters." The library has dated this book 1810 to 1900, and has identified its origin as Newcastle, in the historic British county of Northumberland, which is quite distant from Somerset. It is possible that both of these Garrow volumes were compiled by two generations of the Garrow family. It is also possible that the two volumes were compiled by the Garrow daughters around the turn of the twentieth century, incorporating their mother's earlier recipes. Unfortunately, the Bryn Mawr volume is not currently available online to make a comparison.
