Manuscript Location

Texas Woman's University Denton, Blagg-Huey Library

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

likely between ca. 1690 and ca. 1710

Description

This anonymous English cookbook is written in a single flowing hand with flourishes, mostly italic but with some secretary traces. The recipes are written on the rectos of 43 leaves bearing original foliation. Leaves 10-13 and 34-37 are now missing, The final leaf is marked "Finis" at the bottom.

Based on images of the book supplied to Manuscript Cookbooks Survey by the library, all of the recipes appear to be culinary. While most English manuscript cookbooks of the period are filled with recipes for fruit preserving, cakes, and "sweet dishes" (in modern terms, desserts), this book is mostly composed of recipes for the principal dishes of the meal, including many savory sauces. In connection with sauce making, a particularly interesting recipe is one titled "To burn Butter," leaf 14.  This is brown roux, introduced to Europe by French chef Pierre Francois de la Varenne in his revolutionary cookbook of 1651, which appeared in an excellent English translation in 1653. The recipe includes the fascinating line, "then put this to thicken sawces instead of Eggs," eggs having been the most common English sauce thickener earlier in the seventeenth century. "Burnt Butter" is called for in one of the sauces outlined for venison, leaf 30. 

In addition to sauces, the book contains recipes for meat and fish dishes, pease pottage, and "French bread," the fancy enriched white bread so favored in the period. Sweets and cakes are not entirely neglected. There are recipes for Caraway Cake, another favorite of the period, tarts in puff paste, and preserved damsons.