Manuscript Location

New York Academy of Medicine, Rare Book Room

Place of Origin

England ➔ Warwickshire ➔ Sutton Coldfield

Date of Composition

1791-ca. 1825

Description

"May every earthly Happiness, fall to your, Lott," wrote Elizabeth Duncumb, the principal author of this manuscript, on the inside front cover of her notebook, and if this 189-page manuscript aptly reflects the cooking done in her household, she must have been a happy woman indeed. The recipes are varied in scope, refined in flavor and technique, liberal in their allowance of good things, and never fussy or pretentious. The manuscript seems to have been inaugurated with a clutch of recipes copied from some other source, perhaps a receipt book handed down in the writer's family. The manuscript was then expanded journal-fashion over a fairly lengthy span of time. About two-thirds of the approximately 425 culinary recipes are savory and one-third sweet, many of the former stews and pickled dishes, most of the latter dessert creams and jellies. A recipe for Stilton cheese and references to milking and to cows imply that the manuscript was compiled in a country place rather than a town household. Many of the recipes are attributed.

While there are many eighteenth-century recipes reminiscent of those outlined by E. Smith and Hannah Glasse in their printed cookbooks of 1727 and 1747 (stewed pigeons, potted mushrooms, flummery hedgehog, pikelets, and crumpets), there are also many that became fashionable in the nineteenth century, including two vegetable pies, a thatched house pie, "Oliver's Biscuits," dessert gelatin sponges, and filled kisses glossed under the term "meringues."  A cursory check reveals no verbatim overlaps with printed cookbook authors, but the literate style of the many of the recipes and the regularity of the spelling suggest that some of the recipes may have been copied or paraphrased from published sources.

The manuscript includes about 50 medical and household recipes. The medicinal receipts include treatments for worms, coughs, bruises, pain, burns, and other ailments.