Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1674

Description

Inscribed "Susanna Packe Her Booke Anno Dom 1674" on the first page, this book contains 307 numbered pages. As completed by the author, the book was written only on the right-facing pages, each of which included only one or two recipes. Subsequently, a number of other authors wrote additional recipes on the left-facing pages, particularly from page 172 to the end, and in other open spaces.

Susannah Packe organized the book in eight sections, each of which is dated 1674: Presardes [fruit preserves]; Past & Cadies [fruit pastes and candied fruits]; Waters [medicinal] and Wins [wines]; Powdrs [medicinal] and Syrops; Cookery [general]; Comfits; Gely and Consrve [pectin and gelatin jellies and jams]; and Oyntments. Some of the original recipes were inserted out of category. For example, "Comfits" contains recipes for jumbles, wiggs, seed cake, and almond gingerbread; "Oyntments" includes recipes for sauces for fish and fowl and for chicken fricassee. The added recipes, which appear to be of roughly the same date as the original book, have been inserted without any regard to the book's organization. 

Most of the recipes in the book are conventional for the period. However, the (three) recipes for comfits are exceptional, for these these conceits required specialized skill and equipment and were usually bought rather than made at home. Also of interest are the sheeps' tongue pie with partridges on page 159, which is unusual, and the notes on sugar heights, or stages, on page 279. 

The author may have been the Susanna Packe who was the third daughter of Sir Christopher Packe, Lord Mayor of London, and who married Sir Thomas Bellot, bart., in 1675.