Manuscript Location

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

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

likely ca. 1750-1775

Description

This general-purpose English cookbook is written in a single neat, attractive hand. It contains 52 pages of culinary recipes written on the rectos of the leaves, with spillover to the versos in the case of a few uncommonly lengthy recipes. Two medical recipes are written at the end of the volume. The book is organized in clutches of like recipes (that is, a run of pudding recipes, followed by a run of recipes for pies). Some recipe clutches, including preserves and potted foods, repeat. The book covers most of the favorite dishes of the mid-eighteenth century English privileged classes.

A number of recipes in the book appear in Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747 and by far the most influential cookbook of the second half of the eighteenth century in both Britain and the English-speaking North Atlantic. Since Hannah Glasse copied many of her recipes verbatim from other cookbook authors, and since subsequent cookbook authors copied extensively from Glasse, it is impossible say with certainty that Glasse was the source used by this book's author. However, this does seem plausible, as some of the copied recipes appear in this book in the same sequence in which they appear in Glasse, such as Baked Custards and Plain custards on leaf 10r and Apple Pye and Cherry Pye on leaf 12r.