Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1720

Description

This cookbook of 177 pages contains 502 consecutively numbered recipes and approximately thirty bills of fare, all written in a single hand. The book includes the bookplate of "Martin of Ham, Ham Court." "Martin of Ham" may refer to John Martin II (1724-1794), the scion of a wealthy banking family and a Member of Parliament, who, in 1761, married Judith Bromley, heiress of Ham Court, located in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire. In 1772, Martin commissioned local architect Anthony Keck to build a new mansion on the estate, which became known as Ham Court. (The house was demolished in 1926.) It is unlikely that the cookbook was compiled at Ham Court, as the recipes appear to predate the construction of the house by at least two generations. But it may have been compiled within the Martin or Bromley families.

The recipes are organized in fourteen sections: Wet Sweetmeats; Dry Sweetmeats; Creams and Cheeses; Possetts and Sillibubs; Biskets and Jumballs; Cakes and Ginger Breads; Cordiall Waters and Syrups; Meade and Made Wines; Puddings and Pyes; To Dress Fish; Soups and Made Dishes; The Side Dishes; To Pot and Collar; The Pickells. The bills of fare succeed the recipes at the end of volume. There are six pages of modest the bills of fare, comprising two courses of four or five dishes each, followed by an illustrated bill of fare for a grand dinner, consisting of two courses of nine dishes each. There is no index.

Many of the recipes hearken back to the seventeenth century, including Pippin Leach (55), Kissing Cumffetts (57), chocolate from scratch, staring with the beans (88), Almond Leach (89), trifle meaning rennet custard (128), To Stew Carps, with a sauce using the blood of the fish (334), and Shoulder of Mutton in Blood (410). Also suggestive of the seventeenth century, the book's numerous recipes for large plum cakes and seed cakes are leavened by yeast rather than by beating, the more modern method that emerged after 1700. However, there are also many recipes that nudge the book forward into the early eighteenth century, such as Sago Pudding (272), Beef Pudding (277), the presence of separate recipes for "sweet" and "savory" chicken and lamb pies (299-303), several "alla dob" (a la daub) meat dishes in the section covering soups and made dishes, and Romkeyes (cheese toasts) among the side dishes.

Ginger Bread (180) ends with the following interesting remark: "And if you wold have It glassed have ready a Skillett of boyling water and Dip it [in as?] it come out of the oven and Set it in againe to dry but its quite out of fashion." An unusual recipe, outlined among the made dishes, is A Hogoo (or possibly A Hogee) This dish is a cabbage stuffed with a mutton forcemeat and then shaped to resemble "the Boddy of a Duck" and stuck with a boiled duck's head. It is firmly tied in a cloth to maintain its shape during cooking. Fried sausages, "a good dele of butter" (presumably melted, as sauce), and pickles are served with it.

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