Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

The title "Approved Receipts, 1795" is embossed on the front cover of this 172-page English book, which contains 164 culinary recipes and fifty-one recipes for cures, household products, brewing, and winemaking. The recipes are organized under four headings, “Culinary,” “Confectionary,” “Physical,” and “Misc.” and are listed in a table of contents. The book contains at least two recipes copied from published eighteenth-century sources: “Lemon Pickle” appears in Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper, published in 1769, and “Perpetual Yeast” appears in John Knox’s 1787 A Tour Through the Highlands of Scotland.

The recipes include To Pickle Brown Mushrooms, To Pot Lobsters, Hambro' Pickles, New College Puddings, Furmenty, Brentford Roles, Damson Cheese, Oliver's Biscuits, A Very Good Seed Cake, Jaumonge [Jaune Mange], Fondu, To Make Macaroni,  Love Apple (Tomatum) Ketchup, Gooseberry Cakes, and Salt of Lemon. Many of the recipes are attributed. Among the contributors named are Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Cramond-Langly Law, Lady Chamoik, Dr. Eyre's coachman, Miss Gale, Lady Eyre, Mrs. Mapletoff, Mrs. Honble Peachy, Mrs. Rogers, Lord Warwick, and Colonel Worhtam.

The endpaper of the book indicates previous ownership: "This book belongs to Janet MacFarlane—a gift of [Carly] Lutes." Prior to that, the book belonged to Della Thompson Lutes (1872-1942), who is particularly remembered today for The Country Kitchen, stories based on her childhood in rural nineteenth-century Michigan. Lutes also edited several women’s-interest magazines, including Today’s Housewife (published by Geiger-Crist Co. of Cooperstown, New York) and Modern Priscilla.