Manuscript Location

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

Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

1825-1870

Description

The principal authors of this cookbook were three or four individuals (with frustratingly similar hands), who likely wrote during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as the recipes were in their heyday well before the Civil War. These individuals may all have lived in the vicinity of Springfield, Massachusetts (a city about five miles north of the Connecticut state line and eighty miles southwest of Boston), for "Springfield, Mass: 1825" is written opposite the first recipe and references to the Springfield Republican, the city newspaper, appear at the end of the volume. The recipes of the principal authors are sporadically interrupted by brief clutches of recipes (sometimes as few as one) written by at least six other individuals. These recipes are manifestly later than the bulk of the book; a few bear dates between 1861 and 1870. These later recipes do not appear in sequence—for example, a recipe dated 1869 appears on page 68 followed by one dated 1861 on page 70—leading one to suspect that the book, essentially complete by 1850, was later handed round to, or owned by, various other people who wrote favorite recipes of their own in random blank spaces. The (likely) original owner of this manuscript, Mrs. Mary Evans, made a note to herself to purchase William Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle, which was first published in London in 1817 and was republished in the first of several American editions in 1823. Several recipes, including one on page 50, are copied from Eliza Leslie, who published best-selling cookbooks between 1828 and 1859 (with reprints of her work appearing into the 1880s). Two cake recipes paraphrased from Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife, first published in 1829, appear on page 42.

The recipes include: Force Meat balls, Apple Jelly, To preserve Pine apples, Ginger Bread, Naples Biscuit, Tea Biscuit, Plum Cake, Dough Nuts, Queen Cake, Cocoa Nut Cake, Bath Cake, Sponge Cake, Pound Cake, Soft waffles, Honey Cake, Loaf Cake, Milk Ginger Bread, Composition Cake, Almond Cake, Wafers, Ginger Cake, Olea books, Calves Feet Jelly, To preserve Orange Peal, Patterson Pudding, Raspberry Jam, To Stew Fish, Shrewsbury Cake, Soft Pearlash Cake, Tea cup Cake, Apple Pudding, Lemon or Orange Pudding, Cocoa Nut Pudding, Potatoe Pudding, Lady's Cake, Puff Paste, Ginger Beer, Yeast, make up cake, Pickle for Beef, Cup Cake, Ginger Cake, Plum Cake, Muffins, Loaf Cake, Jumbles, Puffers, Sponge Cake, Bath Cakes, Wonders, Election Cake, Ginger Cakes, Rusk, Potatoe Pudding, Ground Rice Pudding, Plum Cake, Whip Syllibub, Ginger Cake, Malborough Pudding, Ginger Sweetmeats, Cup cake, New Year Cakes, Custard Pudding, Biscuit Pudding, Apple Pudding, Quince Pudding, Blamonge, Large Boiled Flour Pudding, Rice fritters, Jumbles, Soft Ginger Cakes, Cup Cakes, Tea Cake, Mackerel Pudding, pickling Tomatoes, Soft Ginger Cake, Wheat Muffins, Flannel Cake, Cabbage Pickle, potatoe, New York Cup Cake, Crullers, New Years Cake, Pine-Apple Tart, Peach tart, Almond Custard, Loaf Cake, Butter Biscuit, Rice Cakes for breakfast, cocoa nut pudding, Preserving Peaches, Tomato Catsup, Rusk, Composition Cake, Jumbles, Snow Cream Mrs. De Witt, Woodstock Jumbles, Waffers, Lemon Pudding, Tomato Catsup (1869), [lemon cake], Crullers, Crullers without Butter, Harvard Cake, Soft Waffles, Raspbury Jam, Lemon Jelly, Queen Cake, Pear-lust Cake, Macaroons, Plum Cake, Victoria Cake, Crollers, Oleo cooks, Sugar Waffles, Crolers, Soft Jumbles, Faney cake, Soft Jumbles, Doughnuts, Nut cake, Queen Cake, New Years Cake, Tomato Preserves, Sausages, Mrs. Leslie's Recipe for Preserving Citron Melons, Charlotte de Russe, Ginger bun, Plum Cake, Frosting for Cake, Potato pan Cakes, Baked Indian pudding, Soft Waffles, rusk, Hand buiskit, Currant Wine, To cure beef, Puffort, Nut Cake, Clay Cake, Chocolate filling for Cake, To cure Hams, Eve's Pudding, Victoria Cake, Almond Jumbles, Wheat Flour Pudding, Cottage Pudding, Soft Jumbles, Maccaroons, Dough Nuts, Mountain Cake, Loaf Cake, Popovers, Almond Jumbles, Sugar Cake, Rusk, Peach Pickles, Puffort, Pickled Plums, Orange or Apple snow balls, Omlet, Honey Cake, Coffee Cake, Crackers, Floating Island, Mock apple Pie, Strawberry Cake, Cup Cake, Soda Cake, Queen's Cake, Pound Cake, Loaf Cake, Lemon Pudding, Flumery or Charlotte Russe, Almond Cake, Floating Island, Ice Currents, Orange Cream, Batter Fruit Pudding, Thick light Gingerbread, Good little Cakes, Lemon Pie, Sponge Cake, Cocoa Nut Puddings, Wigs, Cocoa Nut Cake, Cocoa Nut Drops. Two recipes of particular interest are "Puffert," a Dutch-derived fruited sweet bread not typically seen in cookbooks compiled outside the Hudson Valley, an area of historic Dutch settlement, and Clay Cake, named for Henry Clay, a candidate for U. S. president in 1844.