Manuscript Location

Winterthur Library, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Pennsylvania ➔ Reading

Date of Composition

ca. 1850-ca. 1890

Description

This library has attributed this cookbook to the family of Stauffer Stevenson, who is listed is the 1850 census as a 24-year-old carpenter living in Reading, Pennsylvania, with his wife Mary and their two young children, Sarah and John. This attribution is based on the fact that the book contains several pages of receipts for monies paid by Stauffer Stevenson in settling the estate of Peter Weinhold in 1858.

The book's primary focus is cakes, for which there are some seventy recipes. In addition, the book includes nine recipes for beer, mead, ginger pop, "bear," and other drinks, about a dozen recipes for pies, eight for custards and other desserts, and a few recipes for meat, pickles, and sauces. Some of the recipes were current in the 1850s or earlier, but most skew toward the last third of the century. Many of the cakes outlined in the book emerged after the Civil War, such as feather cake, ice cream cake, Taylor cake, walnut cake, coffee cake (with coffee in the batter), and chocolate cake. (There is also a recipe for chocolate icing.) Also, the book features eight recipes for lemon pie, a great favorite of American bakers in the 1880s and 1890s. All of the recipes are indexed in a database available at the library.