Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1730

Description

The compiler of this volume was a daughter of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury--possibly Dorothy (1698 or 1699 - 1754), who married James Pennyman of Ormesby, Yorkshire (whose mother came from Beverly). The first section of the book contains 219 numbered culinary recipes on 81 numbered pages. The remaining pages of the book, numbered 1 through 80, contain medical recipes. Many of the sources of the recipes are given; a number of the medical recipes are attributed to well-known physicians.

The culinary recipes comprise a mix of  savory and sweet dishes, with emphasis on the dishes of the two principal courses of dinner. Particularly well represented are recipes for fricassees (of pike, breast of veal, young lamb or chickens or rabbits, and of woodcocks), puddings, and pickles of meat, fish, and vegetables. The recipes are not rigidly organized, but some recipe types appear in clutches, particularly the puddings and pickles. Recipe #113 is an unusual and delicious-sounding "spinach toasts." Three recipes for modern seed cake made in the manner of pound cake (pages 5, 9, and 47) suggest that the book was written after 1720.