Description
This fascinating volume of 180 numbered pages contains two distinct books. The first 115 pages of the volume, all of which appear to be written in the same hand (albeit in different moods), comprise a book of farm management. Pages 2 through 68 are given over to three lengthy essays: "The Breeding, Rearing, and Management of Fowls," "Management of the Dairy" (with instructions for making butter and various cheeses), and " Of Feeding Cows." Most of the remainder of this section of the volume contains recipes, the majority of which would have been practical only on a farm with door cooking facilities: "Portable Soup" made with three large legs of veal and one of beef; cures for ham and bacon; black puddings; "Black Cherry Brandy" made with eight pounds of fruit; various herb and flower waters requiring a peck of leaves or flowers; and a bread recipe calling for two or three bushels of flour and a pound a salt. All of this section is manifestly copied from printed sources, and all of these sources appear to be English. This is indicated both by the language of the material and by the many characteristically English recipes: Stilton cheese, imitation Cheshire cheese, ham "the Yorkshire way," "New England Hams" (a typical English designation for American ham cures), black puddings, bologna sausage, and Oxford sausages. It is true that many English books were available in the United States in the nineteenth century, some of them imports and some American reprints. But it seems unlikely that an American farmer would go to the trouble of copying 115 pages of farming instructions geared to English procedures and to the English climate. More plausibly, this section of the volume was compiled in England, probably around the turn of the nineteenth century, as this sentence from a discussion of "Potato Culture" (page 106) suggests: "It is a fact . . . that the potatoes this year (viz 1799) are wet. . . .
The remainder of the volume is written in a dozen or more different hands, some of which are recurring, indicating that this section of the volume was a collaborative project of some sort. This part of the volume, too, appears to have been compiled on a farm (or in a farming community), for it includes two monthly planting schedules (pages 136-140 and 147-148). Most of the remainder of this section is given over to recipes, about one third of which are culinary and the rest household and medical. The culinary recipes include cornbread, doughnuts, cup cake, and election cake, all of which are American and date from early 1840s at the latest.
The title that the library has assigned to this volume is apparently based on two items inserted in the volume: a program from Marietta College, dated 1844, and the calling card of Mrs. Ebenezer Zane.
A PDF of the digital images of this book is available
here. Click on "Manuscript recipe book (Including agricultural and household Information), possibly compiled in or near Marietta, Ohio by Mrs. Ebenezer Zane."