Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

mostly ca. 1700-1740

Description

This book is in four principal sections, the first three paginated 1 through 38, 1 through 161, and 1 through 14, and the fourth comprising 32 unnumbered pages at the end, written upside down in relation to the front of the book. The recipes occur in the long middle section. The rest of the book contains other material. Two reports have been added from J. Ray’s Philosophical letters ... and J. Clayton’s account of Virginia. Also, extracts from books on different parts of the world such as Martinus a Baumgarten’s Peregrinatio, J. de Thévenot’s Relation d’un voyage au Levant. R. Wither’s A description of the grand signour’s seraglio, S. de la Loubère’s du royaume de Siam, [P.] Avril’s Travels into diverse parts of Europe and Asia, G.A. Borelli’s Historia ... incendii Aetnaei ... 1669, J. Morton’s Natural history of Northamptonshire, as well as from a manuscript of Sir Walter Raleigh’s "A discourse of the origin ... of war." At the end is a catalogue of books and manuscripts.

The middle section of the book containing the recipes is in two principal hands and two or more minor ones. It was written during the first half of the eighteenth century--recipes on pages 87 and 134 are dated 1730/1 and 1737 respectively--although there is a medical memorandum at the end, in a previously unseen hand, that bears the date 1882. The bulk of the recipes are medical, many ascribed to particular physicians, and a few prescribed for the Malets. There are also a few household recipes, including one on managing Guernsey lilies (page 50), with additional directions by Charles Hatton.

The culinary recipes are concentrated on pages 1 through 49 of the middle section but appear sporadically throughout. They particularly focus on meat and fish dishes, including hashed calf's head, Dutch beef, stewed carp, potted hare, and mutton collops. There is an extraordinarily rich recipe "To butter chickens" (essentially a fricasee, with a pint of thick cream and a half pound of butter to three chickens, page 31) and an unusual recipe "To Davenport Hens" (page 68), which entails stuffing four hens with a spiced forcemeat of the entrails, boiling them until almost done, and then browning them in butter. There are also recipes for fried cucumbers and stewed young peas, pickled walnuts and cucumbers, puddings, oyster sausages, tansy, cream cheese, fruit preserves, an unusual (and very rich) "Cream Pancakes" (page 96), and wines, mead, and punch. Some of the culinary recipes are attributed to members of the nobility and others to Mrs. Bamfyld's book of receipts.