Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1755

Description

This English cookbook, written in a single hand and titled "Receipts" on the cover, has been dated by the library "before 1755" on the basis of an early ownership inscription. The recipes are numbered 1 through 73. Number 26 is skipped, the leaf containing recipes 41-44 is missing, and the final recipe in the book is not numbered, so there are actually 69 recipes extant.

The book includes recipes for meats (mutton chops, beef stew, potted beef, cutlets, lamb fricassee), fowl (pickled pigeon, chicken pie), seafood (pickled herring, oysters, smelts in jelly), drinks (elder wine, gooseberry wine, mead, cowslip wine, shrub), condiments (ketchup, vinegar), and cakes (plum cakes, seed cake, gingerbread, and dessert biscuits). Curiously, there are no recipes for puddings and only one for sweet pastry, a tart crust for cheesecakes said to be renowned. Particularly interesting is the recipe titled "To make a fine seed cake the new way," outlined in digital image 35. The cake is a sponge cake, indeed a new or newish kind of cake in England in 1755. The recipe includes erroneous directions to let the batter "rise," as was required for traditional English seed cakes, which were raised with yeast. A few recipes at the end of the volume are attributed to individuals (Mrs. Turner, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Piggott, Mrs. Fuller).

Most of the leaves are damp-stained to varying degrees, making the digital images somewhat difficult to read unless magnified.