Manuscript Location

University of Iowa Main Library, Special Collections, Szathmary Culinary Archive

Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

1860s, 1880s

Description

The original author of this cookbook numbered the 128-page notebook through page 125, divided the book into sections (soups, beef, veal, lamb, pork, fish, puddings, etc.), leaving sufficient pages between each heading for recipes, and laid out an index to each section in the first 12 pages. Written in brown ink, in a clear, handsome hand, her recipes mostly date to the 1830s and 1840s, but she was probably writing around 1860, for several of her recipes, such as cottage pudding and a white-and-red marble, did not emerge until around then. Her recipes provide a fascinating glimpse into the great transition in American tastes and cooking styles that took place around the time of the Civil War. For example, some of her recipes for lemon pudding are rich in butter and eggs, as was typical in the early nineteenth century, while others are heavy in sugar and starch, as was typical later in the century. Likewise, two of her recipes for gingerbread call for large quantities of ginger--one recipe calls for "a teacup"--as was common early in the century, while others call for ginger by the mere tablespoonful, as was common later. In the 1880s and perhaps extending a bit later, at least three and perhaps as many as six other individuals wrote additional recipes in blank spaces in the notebook, for the most part observing the headings laid out by the original author. The principal writer among these later authors, whose contributions are identifiable by her blocky penciled hand, corrected and commented on some of the recipes of the original author, and her annotations also illuminate the changes that took place in the American kitchen around the time of the Civil War. For example, in a recipe for sausage, the original author called for 7 ounces of salt and "a cupful" of sage (presumably dried and ground) as a seasoning for 10 pounds of pork sausage meat, 6 pounds lean and 4 pounds fat. The later author corrected this to an ounce of sage and 3 ounces of salt, making the sausage considerably less pungent and less salty.