Manuscript Location

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

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

mostly ca. 1723-1750, with additions ca. 1840

Description

This recipe book of approximately 150 written pages (with many blanks) is inscribed near the front "Eliz: Kendrick, Anno Domini 1723." There is a charming ink drawing of a bird adjacent to the inscription. The book is in two parts: a lengthy collection of recipes in the front of the book and a much briefer collection written from the back. Most of the recipes in both parts are culinary.

The composition of the front section of the book presents an interesting puzzle. The original author of this section, perhaps Eliz Kendrick, wrote roughly half of the recipes, mostly on the rectos of the leaves. Her recipes are organized in brief groupings, most consisting of just two or three recipes and a few of just one, as follows: wines; vinegars; fritters; tansies; several puddings; a posset; custards; fool, flummery, and cheesecake; dessert creams and a harts horn jelly; seed cakes; wafer biscuits and macaroons; a rich cake and an excellent cake; Tunbridge cakes; Bath Buns and Mrs. Turton's Light Cake; preserved meats; a crayfish soup and an oyster pie; oyster loaves; chicken dishes; a calf's head preparation; soused chickens; and pickled walnuts and ketchup. After a gap of 75 blank pages, there is a lengthy selection of preserves and confectionery on pages 197-215.

A number of other writers have written additional recipes in places left blank by the original author. Most of these added recipes conform to the categories set out by the original author. One of these additional writers attributes a recipe for a cake to a Mrs. Turton on page 47, as does the original author on page 45. The same additional writer attributes a recipe for fish sauce to a Miss Turton on page 80. The hands of the original author and this additional writer are very similar, leading one to suspect that they may have been blood relations. On page 194 yet another additional writer has written a recipe "To Preserve Cucumbers Miss Turtons way." Whether all of the individuals who added recipes to the front section of the book were in the original author's circle is not clear. However, all of the added recipes seem to be of the first half of the eighteenth century, except for the recipes appended at the very end of the front section of the book, on pages 216 to 230. These recipes are in a single hand and likely date from the mid-nineteenth century. 

Approximately 15 pages of additional recipes, mostly culinary, are written in one hand from the back of the book, upside down in relation to the front. These recipes include "Apple Charlotte Pudding," which first appears in print in 1807, and Bakewell Pudding, which emerged around 1840.