This cookbook is inscribed on the front flyleaf: Isabella Calley Her Resaite Book 1707. The book contains culinary recipes in the front and medical recipes in the back. The book is in the inscriber’s hand except for four recipes appearing in digital images 42, 44, and 45, which are in a second hand, and one culinary recipe in digital image 54 and three medical recipes in digital images 96 and 98, which are in a third hand. The inscriber wrote her recipes on the recto of the leaves. The second hand wrote a single recipe on the verso, in digital image 45. This recipe, To Candy Oringes, is continued in the hand of the inscriber, suggesting that the authors of the recipes in unknown hands may have been friends of Isabella Calley whom she invited to make additions to the book.
The inscriber’s recipes are organized under headings, although the organization lapses at several points.The book proceeds as follows: 11 leaves headed "Cookery," followed by 43 blank leaves; 1 leaf headed “Pickles,” with a single recipe "To Pickle Coucomburs,” followed by 9 blank leaves; 1 leaf with an unfinished recipe "To Make Ginger Bread," followed by 1 blank leaf; 1 leaf with a recipe for “good cake” in the inscriber’s hand; 1 leaf with a recipe for “Carraway Cake” in the second hand and one for “plain cake” in the inscriber’s hand; 1 leaf with a recipe for “Lemon cream that looks clear and white” in the second hand; 1 leaf with a recipe for “Hartshorn Jelley” in the second hand; 1 leaf with a recipe “To Candy Oringes” primarily in the second hand but continued by the inscriber; 3 leaves headed "Preserving”; and 2 leaves with recipes for "A Cake without Barme," "To make Hartshorn Flummery," and "Lady Kemeys's Receipt to make an Almond pudding," the last recipe in the third hand. Sixty-six blank leaves follow, succeeded by 15 leaves of medical recipes.
The cookery section contains recipes for many of the favorite dishes of the turn of the eighteenth century, including “To rost a shoulder of muton in blood,” “To make pease pottage,” “Beefe Alladobe, “New College Pudings,” Oringe Puding,” “dutch waffels,”A brown frigacy,” and “A white frigacy.” “A Cake without Barme" is an early recipe for modern fruitcake.
