Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1700

Description

The receipt book of 27 leaves (approximately 48 written pages) is in at least five different hands that recur throughout the volume, suggesting that the book was compiled by a circle of acquaintances who passed it back and forth among themselves. Two or more recipes for the same preparation are written in different hands on some facing pages, including 4v and 5r (gooseberry wine) and 6v and 7r (mead), lending further support to such a supposition. 

Medical and practical recipes, including instructions for Japan lacquering, are written through the leaf 3r. A number of recipes for alcholic drinks follow through leaf 9r, including a rare recipe for mum, a strong wheat beer (leaf 6r). The recipes through leaf 19 mostly concern dessert creams, dessert cakes and biscuits, and fruit and flower preserving, although there are also recipes for large cakes, pickles, and puddings. The recipes for "An Almond-Silly-Bubb" and "An Allmond White Pott" (both leaf 12r) are uncommon, as is the second of three consecutive recipes for "Sugar Cakes" on leaf 14r, which outlines unusually large cakes (3 ounces each) formed individually with the hand rather than rolled with a pin, as was typical. The remainder of the book features a mix of recipes, including puddings, meat and fish dishes, meat pies, and still more fruit preserves near the end. The recipe for "Dutch Whafers"--waffles--on leaf 27r marks the book as likely of late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, when a fad for these cakes took hold among the English privileged.