Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1650-ca. 1675

Description

This volume comprises 344 pages of recipes and a 23-page index at the end, all appearing to be in a single hand, albeit with many changes of mood. The volume seems to have been written during the mid-seventeenth century, perhaps over a span of decades. It contains many recipes characteristic of the first half of the century (indeed earlier), such as "boiled" meats (soupy stews), tarts baked in raised pastry crusts (page 57), fritters 'in the court fashion' (page 105), almond gingerbread "printed" in carved wooden molds (pages 37 and 198), and "Ceymitoes" (usually "cremitories," small marrow and dried fruit turnovers, page 292). However, many other recipes in the book did not emerge until the third quarter of the century: taffety tarts (pages 94 and 228), cookie-like cracknells (page 185), "Creame Piramida" (blancmange molded in a V-shaped beer glass, page 333), and fruit pies constructed with tender pastry in the manner of "Apple pyes my Cozen Baldwins" (page 342). The book's recipe for "Dutch wafers," or waffles, on page 325 is unlikely to predate 1670. 

The volume covers most English dishes extant in the mid-1600s. That said, the slant is toward sweet dishes, and several popular meat dishes of the second half of the century, notably fricassees, hashes, "collops," and "ragoos," are accorded far fewer recipes than one would expect. Large yeast-raised cakes, a passion of the century, are outlined in at least six separate recipes (on pages 216, 225, 234, 287, 319, and 320). However, Portugal cakes, the precursors of modern air-leavened cakes, which are seen in many Restoration-era manuscripts, seem to be absent.