Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

ca. 1830-ca. 1845

Description

This cookbook is inscribed at the front: "Receipts Collected by W^m B. Wiggins / Hold fast that which is good." There is a tab index at the front, followed by 45 written pages and two blank pages at the end, numbered 1 through 47. The recipes are numbered consecutively #1 to #141 through page 42, where the numbering ends.

The first 15 pages of the book appear to be in the hand of the inscription. The remainder of the book is written in at least ten other hands; it is not clear if any of the hands recur. A number of recipes on pages 4 - 8 are closely paraphrased from Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife, first published in 1829. The recipes in the book as a whole are characteristic of the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

About 35 pages of recipes, seemingly bound together, are inserted between blank pages 46 and 47. Included are several cake recipes calling for "soda," which suggests that this recipe clutch was likely compiled after 1840.