Place of Origin

United States ➔ South Carolina ➔ Charleston

Date of Composition

1846

Description

This recipe book is part of the library's collection of the Middleton Family Papers. Eweretta (Barnewall) Middleton (1800-1882) was the second wife of Thomas Middleton (1797-1863), a Charleston, South Carolina, merchant. The couple had six children born between 1832 and 1843, three of whom lived into adulthood.

The book is inscribed: Mrs. T. Middleton November 22nd AD 1846. Written in a neat hand, the book includes both culinary and medical recipes. Among the book's many recipes for puddings, cakes, and desserts fashionable in mid-nineteenth century America, there is a remarkable recipe for Plum Cake that calls for twenty pounds each butter, sugar, flour, and raisins, forty pounds of currants, twelve pounds of citron, and "10 eggs to the pound," likely meaning 200 eggs. The cake must have been baked in multiple pans, possibly for a large wedding or possibly for an extensive series of evening entertainments. Some of the recipes are attributed. The book contains dates in the 1830s and 1840s.