Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

circa 1725

Description

This 129-page cookbook is attributed to Mary Puleston (died 1764) because her name appears on the recto of the front free endpaper and her maiden name, M. Egerton, appears on the verso. However, the book is in two alternating hands from the outset, one writing recipes for fruit preserving and confectionary, the other recipes for meats. These two writers continue to the end of the volume, each broadening the scope of her recipes. The hand of a third writer appears on pages 44, 46, 48, and 50, and one or two additional writers add sporadic pages of recipes toward the end of the book. It seems likely that the book was compiled by being passed around within a circle of family relations or friends, each of whom added recipes of her particular expertise. 

About a third of the recipes are for dishes served in the two principal courses of dinner, about a third are for desserts and cakes, and about a third are for fruit preserving and confectionary. There are also wines and other drinks, as well as "Dutch wafers," or waffles (page 109) and a few medical recipes. Given the recipes "To Ice Cream" (page 75), "To Make Caramell" (sugar melted but not burnt, page 81), and "To Make a Seed Cake" (leavened by beating, page 95), the book was compiled in the eighteenth century. But the book is likely not later than around 1725, for many recipes look back to the seventeenth century, such as "To stew a Carps head in y^e blood" (page 6), "Bean Bread" (almond meringue cakes, page 57), rennet "Trifle" (page 67), sweet "Hartichoake pie" (page 98), "To Stuff a Shoulder of mutton with blood" (page 99), and "To make Beefe eat like Read dear" (page 101). 

Two recipes on page 92 are credited to "my grandmother Broughton" and a third is "My aunt Laudham Broughton's way." Some other recipes in the book are also attributed.