Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1700-ca. 1775

Description

This manuscript comprises a cookbook of approximately 70 written pages (on 60 leaves) at the front of the notebook and a medical and household recipe book of approximately 46 written pages that begins at the back of the book and proceeds toward the center, upside down in relation to the front. Both sections include a partial index at the front.

The original writer of the cookbook wrote recipes on the recto sides of the leaves through leaf 29; a subsequent writer wrote additional recipes through leaf 46, mostly on the recto sides but also on the versos. These recipes are indexed at the front of the book in a third hand (which also wrote the medical index). Following leaf 46 there are additional recipes in at least two other hands that are not entered in the index. The indexed recipes were likely written during the first half of the eighteenth century, as they include marchpane paste, a veal fricassee with sweetmeats, plum pottage, and a number of yeast-raised large cakes, all of which were old-fashioned after 1750. The recipes after leaf 46 are of the latter half of the eighteenth century, for they include relatively modern conceits such as "Potato Fritters" (leaf 50r), "Indian cake" (a cold molded veal-and-egg loaf, leaf 52r), "Dessert Pancakes" (leave 54v), and "Macaroni" (with Parmesan cheese, leaf 60r). The recipes in both sections are more slanted toward the dishes of the principal courses of dinner than toward sweets.