Manuscript Location

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

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

18th century

Description

This cookbook comprises 97 numbered pages of recipes, paginated from pages 35 to 132, followed by 62 unnumbered pages, most of which contain recipes but some of which are blank, followed by an 8-page index containing entries for recipes on pages 1 through 132. The index indicates that the first 34 pages of the book, now missing, contained recipes for small cakes (cookies), biscuits, and confections. It also suggests that the first 132 pages of the book, which appear to be in a single hand (albeit with changes in mood), was considered a complete work by the compiler. This section of the book is organized, proceeding from creams (steeple cream, ice cream), to puddings (almond, carrot, lemon, pippin, sago), to pies (lobster, chestnut, pigeon, carp, hare, mince), to miscellaneous dishes (French bread, fritters, pancakes, wafers, oyster loaves, posset), to meats and fish (stewed turkey, stuffed mutton leg, bacon, ham, chicken, salmon, stewed carp), to pickles, to drinks and preserves (including an outsize selection of fruit and flower wines). The organization begins to break down in the last section, which incorporates random recipes for puddings, cakes, and waffles, among other out-of-place items. The paginated portion of the book bids fair to have been written fairly early in the eighteenth century, for it contains recipes that were archaic by 1750, such as still-frozen ice cream and stewed carp made with the blood of the fish. The recipes in the unpaged portion of the book are written in multiple hands and many are pasted in rather than written directly in the notebook. Some of the pasted-in recipes are likely as early as those in the paginated section of the book. The rest are of the mid-eighteenth century. There are some medical recipes in the mix.