This volume is written in a small notebook measuring 17 X 21 centimeters (7 X 8 1/4 inches). It contains 227 numbered pages of recipes plus two complete indexes, one at the front of volume, which lists the recipes by page number, and an alphabetical index at the end of the recipes. Twenty pages of legal material have been written from the back of the volume going toward the center, at a 45-degree angle to the recipes section.
The recipes are written in at least eight different hands, some or all of which recur in clutches throughout the volume, strongly suggesting that this book was a collaborative project. Many of the recipes are attributed. In four instances, a recipe has been tipped in adjacent to a different recipe for the same item that is written in the volume: Cold Cream (page 73); Green Pease Soup (page 100), To Bottle Ripe Currants (page 112), and Recipe for Rheumatism (page 137). The rheumatism recipe is dated 4 Dec 1815. Other dates occurring in the manuscript include 15 March 1811, as well as the dates 1827 and 1828, on pages 185 and 187 respectively.
The recipes are primarily culinary, but there are also a fair number of household recipes and some medical formulas. The culinary recipes feature a mix of savory and sweet foods as well as sweet wines. Three recipes for gingerbread show early English experimentation with alkaline chemical leavening, which first shows up in printed English cookbooks in the 1820s but which may have been in use somewhat earlier. As originally written, To make Gingerbread, page 73, called for “a teaspoonful of pearl ashes [potassium bicarbonate] dissolved in a little water,” but was later annotated, in pencil, to read “pearl ashes & allum” and “dissolved in warm milk.” Mrs. Watson’s Gingerbread Loaf, page 194, reads: “Instead of yeast 1 oz of pearl ashes dissolved in water. Let the cake stand 2 to three hours to rise.” It is doubtful that this recipe was tried because an ounce of pearl ash is wildly excessive, given the recipe’s overall proportions, and likely would have caused the batter to run out of the pan. Gingerbread loaf, page 216, also calls for “pearl ashes,” but in a reasonable quantity. On page 141, there is a recipe for Honeycomb Gingerbread, a wafer-like gingerbread once typical at English fairs.
