Description
This recipe book of approximately 57 pages is written at the front of a notebook of some 225 pages, much of which is blank. The book can be dated with fair precision, for an inscription at the front contains the date 1860 ("Mrs. Bastable July 6th /60") and a recipe for Pigeon Pie, written near the end of book (digital pages 61-2), contains the date 1873. The entire book appears to be in the sprawling but generally legible hand of the inscriber. A number of loose sheets of handwritten recipes are inserted in the pages, some written in hands other than the inscriber's.
The book contains diverse culinary recipes in no particular order, as well as a few sporadic medical recipes. There is an especially large selection of soup recipes, including an uncommon recipe for Anchovy Soup. A recipe for Corn Cakes (digital page 67) calls for "Indian meal," meaning cornmeal, an ingredient very rarely seen in recipe books of Victorian-era Great Britain. While the recipes in the book are characteristically English, the library believes that the book may have been compiled in Dublin, Ireland, based on a street address written on the inside back cover of the book.
Digital images of this book are available here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.30322934