Description
Matilda Fonda Van Rensselaer (1804-1863) was a daughter of Soloman and
Harriet “Arriet'' Van Rensselaer. When she was a young girl, she moved with her family to
Cherry Hill, the Van Rensselaer family mansion in Albany, New York, where she grew up with her many siblings. Matilda's older sister Elizabeth Van Rensselaer (1799-1835) married
Richard Van Rensselaer (1797-1880), their father's cousin, in 1826. After her sister's death, Matilda married Richard in 1837. Matilda and Richard did not have any children, but Matilda adopted her sister's one surviving daughter, Maria Elizabeth (1829-1865), as her own. Matilda lived most of her adult life at her husband's Albany homes. However, she retained close ties with her sister,
Harriet Maria Van Rensselaer Elmendorf (1816-1896), who lived at Cherry Hill with her family after 1852, by writing letters and by sharing receipt books containing family recipes and notes. Her adopted daughter continued this tradition until her own death in 1865, two years after Matilda's death.
This 80-page recipe book is inscribed M. F. Van Rensselaer 1837 and M E Van Rensselaer 1863 on the inside front cover, suggesting that the book was begun by Matilda in 1837 and then came into the possession of Matilda's adopted daughter, Maria Elizabeth, after Matilda's death in 1863. In fact, the book is written in a number of different hands, indicating that it was passed among various authors. One of these authors is likely to be Jane Sanders. At least some of the other authors are likely to have been still other Van Rensselaer family members. The first 27 digital pages appear to be in a single hand, perhaps that of Matilda Van Rensselaer. Thereafter, the hands change every two to four pages, with some apparent recurrences, and the book lurches forward in time. The date 1841 appears on digital page 28, the date 1863 on digital page 38. The date 1864 occurs on digital pages 65 and 68. There are also scattered earlier dates on these later pages, which are presumably the dates when the recipes were first collected, not the dates when the recipes were written in the book.
The book's recipes are mostly culinary and are almost entirely given over to sweets, above all cakes, tea cakes, and puddings. There are also some recipes for custards, dessert creams, dessert gelatins, and preserves. There are a number of recipes of Dutch provenance, including "Condale or Caudle" (digital page 8); hard waffles, meaning crisp wafers baked in a wafer iron; many recipes for oly cooks, the Dutch precursors of American doughnuts; and at least three recipes for "Puffard" (including one on digital page 54), which was a sort of fruited yeast-raised tea cake that gained widespread popularity throughout the Hudson Valley.
The latter pages of the books contain a number of pasted-in print clippings. Digital pages 80 to 83 comprise loose sheets that were originally inserted into the book.
Matilda Fonda Van Rensselaer kept a second recipe book, which appears to have been a collaboration between Matilda and Maria Elizabeth. See
Matilda Fonda Van Rensselaer's receipt book from 1832-1849.
