This cookbook is compiled in notebook measuring 8 by 5 1/4 inches bound in red leather. Presumed to have been kept in Abingdon, Virginia, beginning around 1840, the book is in a number of different hands. It may have been owned at some point by Mary Gibson White Carpenter, for her name is written on the front cover. The first 87 pages are numbered and succeeded by 19 unnumbered pages.
The book includes a partial index at the front. Through page 73, the book is ordered and one hand predominates, though several recipes have been annotated in pencil in a different hand. Between pages 24 and 25 a letter has been sewn into the book that contains recipes for new cream cake, rice cake, soft ginger bread, and Perkins cake, along with a message to be remembered to family from Sarah E. G. After page 73, the order begins to break down and there is a greater variety of hands. There is a sewn-in portion of another letter between pages 84 and 85; an unnumbered page is sewn in upside down.
The recipes include: hot soda pudding, Transparent Pudding, Boiled English Plumb Pudding, Baltimore Cake, and Composition Cake, corn meal rusk [a rare recipe], calves head, bologna sausages, pickle walnuts, and oil mangoes.
To view the library catalog record, go to the institution homepage, follow the links to the library catalog search page, and enter the library title for this book in the search box. Scroll down to call number MSS 5:5 Un 3:5 to locate this manuscript.
