Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1670

Description

This Restoration era English recipe book consists of an original book, carefully planned and written in a single handsome hand, and later additions in several hands written in random available spaces. The original book contains 57 pages of culinary recipes and 152 pages of medical and household recipes. The culinary recipes are written from the front of the volume, on the rectos of the leaves, and the medical and household recipes are written on the versos of the leaves, from the back of the volume and upside down in relation to the front. 

The culinary recipes in the book were apparently written in three separate tranches. The first tranche, which is by far the largest, is organized in the following sections: "Cookery," numbered leaves 1-27; "Cakes...Bisketts...Gellys...Presearving and Canding," leaves 28-32; "Bisketts," leaves 33-34; "Gellys" (both animal and fruit), leaves 35-36; and "Presearving and Canding," leaves 27-50. Then follows a page index that covers all of the recipes to leaf 50. 

The same writer subsequently added two smaller tranches of recipes. These are entered into two indexes that immediately follow the index to the first tranche: "The Table for the following receipts," which covers additional recipes on leaves 51-57; and "The Table for the Receipts receved from your Ladyship att Odstock," which covers still more recipes appearing on leaves 57-64. The last section of culinary recipes runs into medical and household recipes written on the versos of the leaves, indicating that the Odstock recipes were added to the book after the medical/household section was completed. (Odstock is a village In Wilshire, near the town of Salisbury, famed for its cathedral. This may be a clue as to where this book originated.)

It is rare to find a meticulously organized recipe book, written in a single, highly legible hand, that survives from this early period. This is an unusually valuable book for culinary researchers.