Manuscript Location

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections - Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England
India

Date of Composition

ca. 1840-1860

Description

Written in a small volume of 33 leaves, this collection includes culinary and practical recipes as well as notes and diagrams (in pencil) for calculating latitude. A few handwritten recipes and newspaper clippings have been pasted in to the volume, and five loose recipes were inserted. The compiler was probably a Englishman stationed in northeastern India in a military capacity.

The culinary recipes include drinks (ginger beer, milk punch, mint julep, lemonade, gin punch, lime water), sauces and condiments (mango preserve, mango chutney, sweet mango pickle, citron marmalade, walnut preserve), main dishes (quail, duck stew, insinuating curry, scalloped oysters, curry of chicken or rabbit, Bengal curry, pike, plaice), and sweets (mince pies, gingerbread, shortbread, custard, fruit-flavored water ices). Some recipes include measures used in Bengal (chittacks, hatties), and there are some notes on Hindustani words. A page of Spanish recipes (pollo con arroz, Spanish salad, and gazpacho) was copied from Richard Ford's Gatherings from Spain, first published in 1845.

Medical and practical recipes include a cure for distemper, a mixture for preserving leather, and instructions for chloroform, tooth powder, lavender water, and ink.