Manuscript Location

University of Iowa Main Library, Special Collections, Szathmary Culinary Archive

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

ca. 1800-1850

Description

This manuscript is in two parts. The first part comprises a cookbook that begins on the first page of the notebook, which is numbered 43, and ends on page 166. However, an index to this cookbook, which appears at the back of the notebook, contains entries for pages 1 through 42, which evidently have been removed. This cookbook is written in a single hand or two similar hands through page 140, when several other hands appear. The recipes are predominantly culinary, with some medical and household recipes mixed in. The recipes are not ordered in any way, suggesting that they may have been entered as received, perhaps over a span of years. Typical of the first half of the nineteenth century, the recipes are carefully composed and fairly detailed. The second part of the manuscript comprises approximately 92 additional pages of recipes, mostly culinary, which are written following the first cookbook. These recipes are written in multiple hands, in no particular order, and are of the same general period as those in the first part of the manuscript. Of particular interest is a list of boiling and roasting times for a variety of meats and vegetables that appears toward the end of the section. A roasting time of 20 minutes is specified for a whole chicken. This may indicate a taste for underdone chicken (known to have been current at the time), or the small size of period chickens relative to chickens today, or both.