Manuscript Location

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

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

1720-1820

Description

Written in a notebook of approximately 118 leaves, this English cookbook was authored by at least eight different individuals over a span of a century or more. Surprisingly, its original design was maintained almost to the end, and all of its authors except perhaps the final one were careful to write in neat, clear, and, in some cases, distinguished hands. The book's penultimate author took the time to lay out a complete index to the recipes at the back of the notebook and the book's final writer added her recipes to it. The book may have been kept by a single family across several generations. It provides a remarkable record of English cooking across the entire Georgian period and includes fine recipes for many classic English dishes, including pea soup, collars of mutton and veal, venison pasty, jugged hare, stewed carp, trifle, custard, lemon "cheesecakes," and plum cake. The first 97 leaves of the book are written only on the recto (or right-facing side). The initial 76 leaves were written by a single individual in a handsome hand. Most of her recipes were current throughout eighteenth century, but a few, such as her orange cakes and orange biscuits, look back to the seventeenth century, as does some of her phrasing, leading one to suspect that she was writing before 1730. She credits most of her recipes to their contributors, some of whom seem to have been household cooks, for they are identified as Cook Jones, Cook Chambers, Cook Evans, and Cook Nichols. This is extremely unusual. Also unusual is the author's recipe for trifle, which is baked to set the custard. A second hand, less distinguished than the first but highly legible, appears on the bottom of leaf 77 and continues through leaf 90. This author offers a number of recipes that did not become popular until the second half of the eighteenth century, including Damson "cheese" ("paste" was the common word before 1750), Omelet, Hotch Potch (a stew of Dutch origin), Ramakins (individual cheese custards), Dolma, a Turkish Dish (that is, dolmades, but in cabbage leaves, not grape leaves), and Eve's Pudding (a rhyming recipe seen in many other cookbooks). Three additional individuals wrote leaves 91 through 97. Starting with leaf 98, the leaves are written on both sides and both sides are numbered. The second writer returns on page 99 with a recipe for Tapioca Pudding, which suggests a date after 1800 for this section of the manuscript. (While tapioca "jelly" was made in the eighteenth century, tapioca pudding seems not to have emerged until the nineteenth century.) The final writer's French-inflected recipes for Burnt Rice (meringued rice pudding), Muffin Pudding (French cabinet pudding), Fondeau (cheese fondue), and Fish Rechauffe (creamed fish, gratineed) confirm the hunch that the book reaches into the nineteenth century.