Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

1830s-1840s

Description

This English recipe book of approximately 90 written pages is in a single hand except for digital pages 51-54, which were written by another individual. The predominant hand, while attractive, is unusually slanted and is written with a very fine nib, making it difficult to read. The recipes contain sporadic dates in the 1830s through digital page 61, and dates in the 1840s from digital page 67 to the end. A quick perusal of the book finds several recipes closely paraphrased from Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery, first published in England in 1807 and republished in numerous editions, both in England and the United States, into the 1860s. But the book is not a mere rehash of Rundell. The recipes draw on a range of period culinary sensibilities. A few entries, all in the predominant hand, are written in French, including a recipe for Gateau de Savoie, a classic French sponge cake (digital page 26), instructions for cultivating roses throughout the year (digital page 30), and several medical recipes.

The recipes are about two-thirds culinary, and one-third household and medical, all entered randomly. The culinary recipes are wide-ranging. They included meat and fish dishes (a ham cure, a trout dish cooked in wine, a meatloaf titled "Dutch Dish," a veal pie. lobster salad); various puddings, including a fancy French Cabinet Pudding; cheese dishes ("Fondu," "Ramekins"); tomato sauce and vinegar; and a number of dessert creams and jellies, including an unusual recipe for a "Rice Trifle" contributed by the second author. There are also recipes for tea cakes that, in modern terms, straddle the fence between crackers and cookies. Two of these are paraphrased from Rundell: "Little White Cakes" (digital page 14) and the fascinating "Flat Cakes that will Keep Long in House Good" (digital page 19), which really beg to be tried. Among the more interesting recipes is "Soda Cake" (digital page 66). When this recipe was written, around 1840, chemical leavening was a new-fangled and controversial idea in England. Evidently, the sophisticated author of this book was willing to try it. No other recipes in the book, though, have it.

The back of the book contains a "List of Plate in Use 1838" and some sewing instructions.