Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

1860s-1870s

Description

This book is inscribed on the inside front cover: "Nancy G. Figgats Recipe Book Octr 9/60."  The book is not rigidly organized, but recipes of like kind are clustered in groups: breads, cakes, and puddings to digital page 16; meat and fish dishes, with an emphasis on beef, to digital page 25; Everton Toffee and kisses on digital page 26; more breads to digital page 34; and side dishes of diverse sorts to digital page 39. From this point on, there are gaps of multiple pages between the recipe clusters: three fancy cakes on digital page 44, then doughnuts and gingersnaps on digital page 51, then a run of recipes for drinks and vinegars on digital pages 57-62, then dessert sauces on digital pages 72-3, then more pudding and cakes on digital pages 78-92. An index, organized by subject headings, occupies pages 108-114. Following the index there are about five pages of recipes of various kinds. The bulk of the book, including the index, is in a single hand, which seems different from the hand of the inscriber. Several other hands have written recipes in the many blank spaces between recipe clusters, and some of these writers have added their recipes to the index.

The book is clearly of the American South. There is a recipe for a "Confederate" pudding sauce (digital page 11), another for "Lee Pudding" (digital page 90), and a number of recipes paraphrased from Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife (1824), including Souffle Biscuits (digital page 32). The book includes recipes for three classic southern cakes that emerged during the 1860s and 1870s: white layer cake, white fruitcake, and marble cake. There are actually two recipes for the white layer cake: "Snow Mountain Cake," digital page 44, which features multiple thin layers and is very tall, and "White Mountain Cake," digital page 91, which has fewer and thicker layers and looks more like a layer cake as made today. Quite possibly the recipes were written a decade or more apart. The book also includes several French-inflected fancy recipes that gained popularity in the 1860s and 70s, such as the "Rissoles" on digital page 25 and the "Ham in Disguise," on digital page 39, which is a sort of ham pate on toast, glazed with egg and browned with salamander or a hot shovel. Of particular interest are the recipes for "Dressing for Cold Slaw" and "French Slaw" on digital page 37. The first recipe outlines a dressing of egg and butter, cooked until thickened, an early version of the later boiled dressing. The second slaw is dressed with a sort of mayonnaise, making a more modern version of the salad. Also of interest is the recipe for a pickle for 100 pounds of beef (digital page 19).