This manuscript is a handwritten near copy of a printed cookbook by Edward Kidder, a cookbook author and cooking teacher active in London between ca. 1720 and ca. 1734. Kidder gave his students blank notebooks bound with a printed title page from his cookbook. The students then copied his cookbook, nearly verbatim, into these notebooks. There are five similar Kidder manuscripts in this database, in five separate institutional collections. Four of these manuscripts can be viewed online. Additional information on these manuscripts can be found in the record of the Kidder manuscript at the University of Pennsylvania.
The printed title page of the UCLA Clark Library manuscript lists the locations where Kidder held cooking classes between 1721 and 1722 or 1723. It was copied by Ampillis Dewe Whitfeld, presumably one of Kidder’s students, who inscribed "Amphillis Whitfeld" on the front paste-down endpaper, and "Amphillis Dewe, Her Booke, 1721-1722" on the verso of front free endpaper. Most of the book is written in her neat, uniform hand, but there are several pages at the end of the volume and some recipes pasted on the front free endpaper that appear to be in a different hand.
