Cookery and medicinal recipes, ca. 1730
Holding Library Call No.
W.a.318Manuscript Cookbooks Survey Database ID#
548Place of Origin
EnglandDate of Composition
ca. 1730Description
The compiler of this volume was a daughter of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury--possibly Dorothy (1698 or 1699 - 1754), who married James Pennyman of Ormesby, Yorkshire (whose mother came from Beverly). The first section of the book contains 219 numbered culinary recipes on 81 numbered pages. The remaining pages of the book, numbered 1 through 80, contain medical recipes. Many of the sources of the recipes are given; a number of the medical recipes are attributed to well-known physicians.
The culinary recipes comprise a mix of savory and sweet dishes, with emphasis on the dishes of the two principal courses of dinner. Particularly well represented are recipes for fricassees (of pike, breast of veal, young lamb or chickens or rabbits, and of woodcocks), puddings, and pickles of meat, fish, and vegetables. The recipes are not rigidly organized, but some recipe types appear in clutches, particularly the puddings and pickles. Recipe #113 is an unusual and delicious-sounding "spinach toasts." Three recipes for modern seed cake made in the manner of pound cake (pages 5, 9, and 47) suggest that the book was written after 1720.