This manuscript is a handwritten near copy of a printed cookbook by Edward Kidder, a cookbook author and cooking teacher active in London between ca. 1720 and ca. 1734. Kidder gave his students blank notebooks bound with a printed title page from his cookbook. The students then copied his cookbook, nearly verbatim, into these notebooks. There are five similar Kidder manuscripts in this database, in five separate institutional collections. Four of these manuscripts can be viewed online. Additional information on these manuscripts can be found in the record of the Kidder manuscript at the University of Pennsylvania.
The printed title page of the Lilly Library manuscript lists the locations where Kidder held cooking classes through 1720. The book may have been copied by Mrs. Anne Mills, who wrote her name on the inside front cover. The hand of the inscription appears to be similar to the neat, attractive hand of the rest of the volume. A few recipes in a different hand have been inserted near the end of the book.
