Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

Edward Kidder (1665/66-1739) was a cooking teacher active in London at least as early as 1720 and at least as late as 1734. He was also the author of a cookbook, E. Kidder’s Receipts of Pastry and Cookery, for the Use of his Scholars, which was printed in cursive script from engraved plates (a costly and rarely used process). The book appeared in as many as six slightly different editions between ca. 1720 and ca. 1740. Kidder gave his students blank notebooks bound with a printed title page from his cookbook into which they copied recipes. This database contains five such manuscripts. Four of these manuscripts can be viewed online, and assuming that these four are representative of all, it appears that Kidder’s students simply copied Kidder’s printed cookbook into their notebooks. These four manuscripts are all nearly the identical to a print edition of Kidder's cookbook that appeared sometime after 1723, omitting, adding, or changing the order of just a handful of recipes. 

The Kidder manuscripts can be roughly dated based on their printed title pages, which show the locations of the cooking schools where Kidder taught at different times between 1720 and 1734. The printed title pages of the University of Chicago manuscript and of the manuscript in the collection of Lilly Library, at Indiana University list the locations where Kidder taught in 1720 or earlier (St Martin’s-le-Grand, Norris Street, and Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields), while the printed title pages of the University of Pennsylvania manuscript and the manuscripts held by the University of Iowa and at UCLA Clark Library show the locations where Kidder taught between 1721 and 1722 or 1723 (St Martin’s-le-Grand and Furnival’s Inn in Holburn). The title page of the printed cookbook to which the digitized manuscripts have been compared shows Kidder teaching at Queen Street and Furnival’s Inn, Kidder’s locations from 1722 or 1723 to the end of his career. In addition, the various title pages of the printed book advise that “ladies may be taught in their own houses.”  

It is not clear why Kidder's students compiled these manuscripts or how many of them did. The hands of these books are neat and uniform, so it seems unlikely that students copied Kidder's recipes piecemeal while attending Kidder's classes. It seems more plausible that the copying was done at a desk, with the printed book at hand, in a series of closely spaced sittings. According to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (from which the basic information in his record is drawn), Kidder's students were mostly "lower class," that is, presumably, household cooks sent to Kidder's schools by their employers. ("Lower class" persons would have had no means to produce Kidder's highfalutin recipes in their own households.) If this is correct, Kidder's classroom students are unlikely to have produced these books, for the the hands of the books appear to be practiced and confident, those of well-educated persons. It is more plausible that the copiers were  those "ladies" whom Kidder "taught in their own houses." Perhaps these ladies copied Kidder's cookbook to re-enforce its contents in their minds--or perhaps they produced these manuscripts as special gifts, handwritten books being highly valued at the time.

This manuscript and the two other digitized manuscripts in this database hew closely to the organization of the print edition of Kidder's cookbook referenced above, slightly changing the order of a couple of chapters and altering the placement of a few of the recipes. The print edition is organized as follows: pie and tart pastries; forcemeat balls, lears for pies, and sauces for made dishes; sweet meat and vegetable pies; savory meat pies; cold meat pies; fish pies; florendines (rich tarts, sweet or savory), puddings, and custards; cakes (large and individual); soups, pottages, and boiled meats; made dishes (the longest chapter, with many fancy French dishes); potted foods; collars; picked foods, including meats and fish; and jellies, creams, possets, and fruit desserts. In addition to over one hundred recipes, the print edition includes a chart showing the correct positioning on the table for various dishes (top, bottom, center, or side), an index, and drawings of designs for fancy pies and tarts.  

This manuscript contains 66 numbered pages of recipes, followed by three unnumbered pages showing dish placement on the table, and a final unnumbered page containing an index to the chapters, all in one hand. The final page contains a single brief recipe in a second hand. The notebook measures 187 X 124 mm (7.4 X 4.8 inches). It is bound in stamped leather, with a gilt stamped title on the spine, "Kidder Receipts."