Manuscript Location

Winterthur Library, Manuscript Collection

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Pennsylvania

Date of Composition

mostly ca. 1830s, with a few additions ca. 1855

Description

Mary Elizabeth Hiester Muhlenberg Deininger (1806-1838) kept two small recipe books, both written in fascicles made by folding sheets of paper and then sewing the sheets together along the fold line. One volume, "Some Receipts for Cooking," is written in English, ca. 1830s. Mrs. Deininger wrote her name, Mary E. H. Deininger, several times at the bottom of the first page and the name of her husband, Jonathan E. Deininger, at the bottom of the second page.The recipes include liver, bologna, various puddings, apple butter, Sally Lunn buns, pea soup, hash, fastnachts, Welsh rabbit, and vegetable "mangoes." A few recipes are attributed to family members. The other recipe book, "Koch Buck [sic] fur Mary E. H. Deininger," is written mostly in German. Mrs. Deininger wrote her name on the front cover. Included are recipes for breads, puddings, tortes, and waffles. Towards the end of the volume are a couple of recipes written in English, including a recipe for Jenny Lind Suppe from the Saturday Post of Dec. 8, 1855. Several drawings are found on the next-to-the-last page: a pudding form and its cover, a spiral-shape item (the description of which is in German), a pole screen, and the plan for a garden in Frankfurt. It is not known who added the recipe of 1855, by which point Mrs. Deininger had died. 

These two recipe books are part of the library's collection of the papers of the distinguished Pennsylvania Muhlenberg family, which supported American liberty during the Revolutionary War and whose members included a number of Lutheran pastors. Mary Elizabeth Hiester Muhlenberg, a descendant of the family, was born 1806; her mother died giving birth to her. In 1834, Mary Elizabeth married Ehrgott Jonathan Deininger (1801-1881), who is listed as a farmer in a census. After their marriage, they visited Germany, where her husband had been born, before moving with his parents to Pennsylvania in 1819. They had a daughter who died, at age two, in 1837. Mrs. Deininger died the following year.