Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

begun 1786

Description

This book is inscribed "Anna Seward 1786" on the inside front cover. Although the library has not conclusively established that the book is in Seward's hand, a comparison of the book and Seward autograph letters available online strongly suggests that it is. Anna Seward (1742-1809) was an English Romantic poet and a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Hestor Piozzi. She lived in Bishop's Palace, Lichfield from age twelve to the end of her life, her family having moved there after her father took a position at Lichfield Cathedral. Although Seward's reputation rapidly declined after her death, interest in her work has been revived in recent years by feminist literary critics and gender scholars. 

The front of the book contains 36 pages of recipes, most of them culinary, and two indexes, on the thirty-third and thirty-fifth pages. The front recipes are numbered through recipe 34. The back of the book contains several pages of medical recipes, written from the end of the notebook going toward the center. The pagination is chaotic. According to the library, some pages are missing and several were misbound when the volume was repaired. There are many blank pages between the front and back. The paper has a watermark corresponding with number 205 in Edward Heawood's Watermarks, Monumenta Chartae Papyraceae, vol. I, Wilversum, Paper Publications Society, 1950, where it is dated 1776.

The culinary recipes are standard for the time. They include sophisticated meat and fish dishes such as sauced veal cutlets, stewed pigeons or chickens, stewed eels, and two calf's head preparations (a "collar" and a hash) as well as a recipe for forcemeat balls to serve with calf's head. (Seward's recipe for the balls appears virtually verbatim in another cookbook in the Lilly collection, where it is declared "famous.") Also included are a number of popular period puddings (orange, Dutch, New College, bread and butter, custard, and [sweet] potato); German puffs; mince pies ("My Mother's receipt for minc'd Pies," #21, calls for enormous quantities); potted meats; vegetable pickles; and fruit and flower wines. Many of the recipes bear cross outs or insertions, suggesting that they were actually made, and a few recipes are crossed out entirely, as though they proved unsatisfactory. Several dishes are outlined in two or three different recipes. Three recipes rate superlatives: "White Fish Sauce Best Ever Tasted" (#19), "White Pig Puddings best possible" (these are actually almond and bread puddings stuffed into pork casings; #29), and "Nottingham Orange Pudding best possible" (#32). Some of the recipes are attributed.