Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1650-ca. 1700

Description

This manuscript is paginated in three separate series: 1-30, 1-158, and 1-24 (with pages 13-14 skipped or missing). The first series of pages focuses exclusively on cosmetic, medical, and household recipes, including several for perfumes and one for "bleatching Lining" (page 12).

The second section is in two principal hands, the first of which wrote culinary recipes through page 73, the second of which wrote recipes for dyes from page 75 to page 106. (There are a few more recipes, some for dyes and some for foods, in various hands in the remainder of this section, amid many blank leaves.) The culinary recipes are idiosyncratic and colloquial in phrasing and highly specific in their instructions, which suggests that they were actually in use in a particular household. Although not rigidly organized, the recipes tend to run in like clutches, pies appearing on pages 39 through 42, puddings on pages 42 through 51 (with many more pudding recipes written sporadically on subsequent pages). Many of the recipes were in their heyday in the Restoration era, such as "to roast Muton with blood" (page 14), artichoke bread pudding with beef marrow (page 49), and "Spanish papp" (page 56).

The final section comprises medical recipes written in the same hand that wrote the culinary recipes in section two. Included is "A medison for the boiurning with Gownpowther in the face" on page 18.