Manuscript Location

Litchfield Historical Society, Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Connecticut ➔ Litchfield

Date of Composition

1790-1800

Description

Mary Floyd Tallmadge (1764-1805) was the first wife Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835), who was chief intelligence officer during the Revolutionary War and later a businessman and U. S. Congressional Representative from Connecticut. A portrait of Mary Floyd Tallmadge and her two children, Henry Floyd and Maria Jones, was painted by American artist Ralph Earl in 1790. The portrait is in the possession of the Litchfield Historical Society

Composed between 1790 and 1800, Mary Floyd Tallmadge's book comprises thirty recipes, twenty-four of which are culinary. Half of the culinary recipes concern puddings, including two whose ingredients are added by equal spoonfuls (a fad of the late 1700s), a rich potato pudding surprisingly similar to Mary Randolph's famous 1824 recipe for the same, and an unusual "Rice Apple" pudding that entails baking rice porridge (of a sort) over stewed apples. Other culinary recipes outline pickled beef, "a plain way of dressing a calf's head," bitters, whipped syllabub, and several cakes. "A good plumb cake" calls for "a little Hot Ash," a rare term for what is presumably pearl ash, America's earliest alkaline leavening, which was refined from wood ashes. Besides the culinary recipes, the book includes, at the end, two formulas for boot blacking (one attributed to George Washington), instructions for household glues and wallpaper paste, and remedies for "the Gravel" (touted as "sovereign") and for a cold.

The online view of this manuscript is a typed transcription. The link to the transcription provides a link to the library catalog record.