Description
Titled
Receipts in Cooking, this manuscript was “collected and arranged” (says the title page) for Mary Moore, in 1832. Moore hailed from Wilkerson County, in Georgia, and the book has a clear southern bias. About two-thirds of the book's recipes are copied verbatim, or nearly verbatim, from Mary Randolph's
The Virginia Housewife, first published in 1824. Most of the remaining recipes feature the genteel British-inflected cooking fashionable among privileged classes in both the North and South in the early nineteenth century. There are also a few distinctively American recipes, including a handful of recipes characteristic of the South. This book is discussed at length in the blog post
"When Did Southern Begin?"
Mary S. Moore's recipe book is part of the library's Manuscript Recipe Book Collection, 1763-1959. The catalog record contains a link to a useful finding aid.
