Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1666-ca. 1700

Description

Signed "Rebeckah Winche 1666," this book of approximately 100 pages (written on pages numbered to 207) appears to be in a single hand, albeit in different moods, suggesting that the book was compiled over a span of time. It includes an index to recipes on pages 3-5, sorted into the following categories: "distiled waters & Cordials," "Cordiall pouders & Electuarys perfumes," "Oyles & salues," "Cookery," "Preserues," "Sirups & conserues," "Waters & Cordialls," "Pouders." Most of the recipes listed under each heading are written consecutively in the book, but not all. For example, while the builk of the "cookery" recipes are written from pages 101 through 116, there are also clutches on pages 39-41 and 123-4, as well as a few cookery recipes elsewhere. There are four large gaps in the page numbering: 43-60, 81-100, 127-151, and 155-202. It appears that a few recipes on these pages have been entered in the index, but only a very few, suggesting that most of the pages were removed before the index was prepared, possibly because they were blank.

Dated the year after the Great Plague, the manuscript opens with Mrs. Hobby's "Aqua Mirabilis." Several other medicinal waters follow: "The Lady Hewet's Water" (page 2), "Plague Water" (page 3), "Sir Theador Mikerns Surfit Water" (page 3), "Snail Watter" (page 8), and "A Drinke for the Plague when it first Sees any one" (page 9). Both this section of the book and the recipes headed  "Waters & Cordialls" in the index contain several waters that were pleasant and were served at sweets banquets. Likewise, the recipes listed under the index headings "Preserues" and "Sirups & conserues" comprise a mix of medicinal preparations and sweet foods.

The cookery section includes a half dozen recipes for dessert cakes and biskets, two for dessert creams, and one each for fresh cheese and cheesecakes, all of which imply a strong interest in banqueting. However, there are an equal number of recipes for the principal courses of the meal, such as meat dishes, preserved foods, and puddings, including an uncommon recipe for "A Sheepes Head Puden" made with the meat of the head, boiled and shredded, plus bread, currants, eggs, and sugar, all wrapped in a sheep's caul and boiled in a cloth (page 102). Perhaps the most interesting recipe is "Chocolet" (page 123). This is not a recipe for the drink called chocolate, as is typical in recipe books, but for the chocolate with which the drink was made. The recipe covers roasting the "cacao nuts" in a frying pan, 'breaking' the nuts on a stone to remove the "husks," grinding the beans in a mortar, and then grinding them further with cinnamon, "Spanish pepper," sugar, and vanilla bean "till it looke like batter." The recipe continues: "when it is cold you may make it in to what forme you pleas . . . it is not fit to use tel it has bene 3 munths made."

The book includes records of births, baptisms, and marriages (pages 205-206), specifically those of Rebeckah Winche's daughters Judith (who married Sir Humphry Forster of Aldermaston) and Rebecca (who married Sir Thomas Lawley) and their children. The family records extend to 1705. Rebekah Winche died in 1713. 

Recipes for blackberry jelly and marmalade, written in a much later hand, appear on a small leaf laid in between pages 64 and 65.