Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1650

Description

This is the receipt book of Nicholas Webster, who was active around 1650. It is in two parts, as announced by a title that appears at the top of leaf 4r: "Certaine profitable and most experienced collections as well for makeing conserve of fruytes and preserving them: and also of Surgery approved medecynes, good for any to know and hurtfull to none." The culinary recipes are written from leaf 4v to leaf 25r and are indexed at the front. The medical recipes are written from leaf 26r to the end of the book, leaf 47. A few culinary recipes appear in the medical section, as well as certain approved points of husbandry (leaf 44). An index to the medical recipes through leaf 38 is written on an unnumbered leaf preceding leaf 41. (The book has several binding errors.)

The culinary section of the book properly begins on leaf 3r, which contains bills of fare for a three-course dinner and a two-course dinner, a list of "Meates and [their] Sauces," and, on the verso, a bill of fare for an elaborate two-course fish-day dinner. The culinary recipes particularly focus on the conceits of "banqueting stuff," including the fruit conserves and preserves touted in the book's title, printed almond and "ale" gingerbreads (leaves 8r and 8v), "To make a banquetting dish" (a sort of white stirred custard; leaf 9v), "Manus Christi" (a rose water fondant candy beneficial to the heart; leaf 14v), "Ipocras" (a medicinal wine usual at banquets; leaf 15r), and "fine bisket bread" (leaf 17r). Also included are lengthy, detailed instructions for a "Marchpane" (leaf 12v-13r), a broad, thin disc of marzipan that was often decorated with molded sugar figures and deployed as a banqueting centerpiece. 

The banqueting recipes are interspersed with recipes for meat, fowl, and fish dishes, including "Chalderon for a Swan" (leaf 9r), a medieval sauce of swan entrails and blood seasoned with cinnamon and sugar, to be served with roasted swan. This sauce is outlined in medieval English recipe manuscripts, including Forme of Cury and Ashmole 1439 and Harleian 4016 (both in Austin), but is rare in later cookbooks: 

Take the gibletts of the Swan seth them in fare water till they be tender and take some of that licour with the blood of the swan and laie bread in it, when it is well steiped streine it and put in Suger and Synamon boile it on a chafingdish till it be thick and serue it vppon sawcers

On leaf 11r, a later hand has marked a recipe for almond cakes "not very good" in the left margin, and the same hand has marked the subsequent recipe, "To bake a neats tongue," "the first [recipe] is the better."

The book is penned in a handsome secretary hand that is somewhat difficult to read. The name Robert Nalson, a former owner, appears on a front endleaf and, with the date 1670, on leaf 2r.