Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1676-ca. 1689

Description

This receipt book is in a number of different hands. It includes dates of 1678, 1683, 1685, 1688, and 1689 on the inside front cover and first leaf, all in connection with monetary receipts, some for rent paid to Henry Pagett. The date [16]76 appears on leaves 11r and 12r in the back section of the book.

The front of the book comprises 54 leaves, some written on both sides and many blank. It contains medical recipes in a single handsome hand to leaf 16v, in several other hands to leaf 24r. After a series of blank leaves, culinary recipes, intermixed with a few medical recipes, are written on leaves 42r through 50r, about half of them in one hand, the remainder in several other hands. The culinary recipes include carp and oyster pies, preserved foods, fruit preserves, dessert cakes and biskets, dessert creams, and a number of fruit wines. A particularly interesting recipe is "To make delicate ffurmitie" (leaf 44v), which is essentially the dessert dish already known by the late seventeenth century as "barley cream." This recipe provides rare concrete evidence that medieval furmity, a wheat-berry pottage served with venison, was the predecessor of the later dessert cream. Also of interest is a cure for scurvy (leaf 20v), which references "A Cabbage net," presumably used to keep a whole head of cabbage intact when boiled.

The back of the book comprises 12 leaves (22 written pages) written from the inside back cover going toward the center of the notebook and upside-down in relation to the front. This section includes a mix of medical and culinary recipes, including a number of fruit and flower conserves, which had both culinary and medical uses. Of special interest are three inventories written on leaves 11r and 12r: "A note of what goods I have at the pool house made," dated "August the 28 = 76 ="; a list of "linnens" dated "August the last 76"; and an unheaded, undated list of tableware, in the same hand as the other two inventories. The tableware includes silver, cups, glasses, syllabub cups, and custard cups, among other items.  

Both the front and back of the book contain recipes that provide insights into the baking of the large fruited cakes typical in the period. The recipe "To Make a Cake" in the front of the book (leaf 43r) produces a very large cake (made with 2 gallons flour and 6 pounds currants) that is baked for an oddly short time--"almost an hour," the recipe says. Possibly, the fact that the cake is baked directly on the oven floor and is "but three fingers thick" explains the short baking time. The recipe "To make a pudding Cake" in the back of the book (leaf 13r) calls for the usual cake ingredients but in somewhat unusual proportions, with much more egg and somewhat more butter in ratio to flour than was typical. This, plus the fact that the cake is to be baked "but 3 quarters of an hour," may account for the pudding-like texture of the cake. It is noteworthy that a pudding-like texture was liked in cake--at least by some people of the day. Also of interest, the dough for this cake is set to "heave" (that is, proof) twice prior to baking. 

Leaf 33r in the front of the book contains a note dated February 7, 1843, written in a hand that does not appear anywhere else in the manuscript.