Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1640-1700

Description

This volume is inscribed "Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke" at the front. The first 52 pages contain 48 pages of recipes and a 4-page index in the inscriber's handsome hand; additional recipes in several later hands follow on pages 53 to 80. A sketch of a head appears on page 83. An 11-page collection of recipes tipped into the book has been bound separately by the library conservator.

The index to the principal work lists the recipes under three heads: "Preserves & Conserves," "Cokery," and "Phisicke & Chirurgery." There are roughly twenty-five recipes each for 'cookery' and 'physick' (a few of which are missing from the index), somewhat fewer recipes for preserving. Roughly two-thirds of the culinary recipes concern sweet dishes, cakes, and possets, the remainder meat and fish dishes and puddings. Although Sarah Longe was apparently active around 1610, the culinary recipes appear to be a bit later. The recipe "To make Snow" (page 1) references a "glasse Sillibubbe pot," which was used for a type of syllabub that seems to have emerged circa 1640. Likewise, recipes similar to the book's  "A Gooseberie Foole" (page 1) and "A ffrigasy" (of chickens, page 40) are not seen in printed English cookbooks until after 1650. The recipe "To make an Excellent Sillibubbe" (page 26; omitted from the index) closely parallels the "Excellent Syllabub" in The Compleat Cook, published in 1655, although it is not copied verbatim. One of the book's recipes was evidently a royal favorite: "To make another Bisket, whereof King James, and his Queene have eaten with much liking" (page 20). Was the sovereign referenced James I (r. 1603-1624) or James II (r. 1685-1688)?

The later added recipes are in a single hand to page 74, in several other hands from page 75 to 81. They appear to be of the second half of the seventeenth century. The recipes are mostly medical, with a few dessert cakes, dessert creams, and sweet wines mixed in, along with a recipe for collar beef and another for vinegar. The recipe "To make cakes the Royal Princesse her way" (essentially, rolled sugar cookies with currants; page 69) contains this comment at the end: "wee put in but halfe the proportion of sugar & think it enough, wee also put in some nutmeg & mace and ginger &c." If the princess was either the future Queen Mary or Queen Anne, as seems plausible, the cakes are indeed quite sweet by standards of the day.

The tipped-in material, which is in several hands, includes eighteenth-century recipes for treacle gingerbread and flummery. There are also recipes for two lemon creams, two dessert jellies, forcemeat balls, and hashed calf's head.