Manuscript Location

Winterthur Library, Quaker and Special Collections

Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

ca. 1840

Description

This volume contains recipes "copied for me by my brother," signed Lydia Grofton Jarvis. She may have been Lydia Grafton Jarvis, born circa 1807 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the daughter of Mary and George W. Grafton. She was married to Stephen Jarvis and died in Boston on March 7, 1891.

Although the volume is bound in marbled paper wrapped over an 1890 advertisement for a Boston linen store, the recipes are characteristic of the earlier years of the nineteenth century. They focus on cakes, little cakes, household bread, tea breads, puddings, custard and cream desserts, and preserves. Only two savory prepartions are outlined: baked cod and turtle soup. The book also contains instructions for making soap, cologne water, ink, and washing flannel. There is a "list of discheveled books - in barn - self education," which includes school journals, Osgood's Milestones, Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Rest, a chemistry book, Dwight's Theology, and a partial encyclopedia set. The recipes are indexed in a database available at this repository.