Manuscript Location

Texas Woman's University Denton, Blagg-Huey Library

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

recipes ca. 1750

Description

This English book is in two distinct parts. Written from the front of the book are 69 pages of culinary and medical recipes, all likely written in a single hand. Written from the back of the book, upside down in relation to the front, are 74 pages of tables (weights, measures, time), mathematical exercises, and other similar material, inscribed "Stephen Tabor His Book 1754." Based on a few images of the back of the book supplied to Manuscript Cookbooks Survey by the library, most of this section of book is written in a particular stylized hand that was typically used in the writing of this kind of material in the period. However, one page in this section is written in an ordinary italic hand that could possibly be the hand of the book's recipe section. That said, given the way the book is constructed, it seems more likely that recipe section was written by a different individual and subsequently fell into Stephen Tabor's hands, who proceeded to write "his book" from the back of the volume.

The front of the book contains a table of the recipes extending only through page 22. According to the library, the recipes in the table are outlined in the text except for those listed as appearing on pages 5 though 8, which are missing. The pagination then proceeds from pages 9 to 69. The book's culinary and medical recipes are interspersed at random. Based on images of the recipes supplied to Manuscript Cookbooks Survey by the library, the culinary recipes are characteristic of the age of cookbook author Hannah Glasse, that is, of the mid-eighteenth century.