This cookbook of approximately 92 written pages is in a single calligraphic hand except for the final 16 pages, which are written in a second hand, in a neat conventional cursive script. A small square of paper has been pasted on to the front cover of the book, with the title: “Clothing Worsted & Stocking Acct / Spinning School / Febry 1st 1799.” The title is written in a calligraphic hand, possibly the same as that of the cookbook, as the uppercase “S” in the title closely resembles that in cookbook. The recipes in the calligraphic hand were current from around the last third of the eighteenth century through the first third of the nineteenth century, so it is reasonable to date them circa 1799-1800, as the library has done. Whatever their precise date, the recipes were almost certainly written before 1822, as the third and fourth recipes in the second hand (digital image 82) both bear the date 1822.
The exact date of the recipes in the calligraphic hand is of unusual importance because the recipe for Treacle Parkin (digital image 23) calls for “Potashess,” or potash, which is the alkaline leavening potassium bicarbonate. American home cooks had begun to leaven gingerbread and other cakes with potash (often called pearl ash) at some point in the late eighteenth century, but chemical leavening does not appear in printed English cookbooks until the 1820s. This recipe may suggest that its actual use was somewhat earlier. Parkin is a treacle (that is, molasses) gingerbread made with oatmeal that is identified with Yorkshire, in the north of England. The earliest known reference to the cake occurs in the diary of Dorothy Wordsworth, who wrote in 1800, “I was baking bread, dinner, and parkins.” Today’s recipes for parkin produce soft-textured and, often, rather sticky cakes. The manuscript recipe, in contrast, evidently results in a crunchy-crisp cake, for the recipe concludes “cut it in squares as a Batter pudding whilst it is hot or it will break in irregular pieces.”
There are three other recipes for gingerbread written in the calligraphic hand, including an extremely unusual one that calls for suet (which is otherwise unheard of in gingerbreads) and yeast (which is rare). The remaining recipes comprise a mix of dishes, savory and sweet, as well as a few drinks. The recipes are presented in no particular order and include Onion Soup, To Stew Cabbage, A Vermicelli Pie (filled with rabbit; the pasta is ground and incorporated in the crust), Baked Bread Pudding, Orange Jelly, Fillets of Eggs (creamed eggs, with an early mention of “Bechamell sauce”), Beef Collops, Anchovy Toasts, French Pease Pudding, Sorrel Sauce for Fricandeau, Ground Rice Paste, Birch Wine, Raisin Wine, and Apple Cheese-cake. The recipe titled “Pepper Pot” (digital image 44) turns out to be pea soup with various additions, including shellfish, if available. The name is more often associated with a tripe soup considered a specialty of the American Mid-Atlantic.
