Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England ➔ Shropshire ➔ Selattyn

Date of Composition

culinary recipes ca. 1675-1700

Description

This book was begun by Dorothy Philips, circa 1616-1617, who wrote sermons in the front of the book, on leaves 1r through 22r and on leaves 107v through 117v, and who appears to be the author of at least some of the medical back section of the book, which is written from the back cover of the notebook going toward the center and upside down in relation to the first part. (Leaf 195v of the back section, headed "Receptes," and at least five subsequent pages appear to be in the same hand as the sermons.) Between leaves 27v and 41r of the front, in another hand, there are notes on various members of the Hanmer family of Selattyn, Salop, from 1588 to 1722, one of whom married a Dorothy Phillips, in 1652. 

Two or more writers other than Dorothy Phillips have added recipes in the front of the book on leaves 23r to 27r, leaves 68r to 72r, and leaves 124r to 126v. Most of the recipes are culinary except in the second clutch, which is mostly medical. Some of the recipes are written vertically on the page.   

The culinary recipes include preserved foods, a hashed calf's head, puddings, haggis, baked beef rump, a stew-like "pottage," rice cheesecakes, almond cheesecakes, "Pitty Patties to garnish" (small pastries with veal kidney and currants), forcemeat, "To make an Oriol" (probably meaning "olio," from the Spanish olla podrida, a sort of stew), a fricassee, and a collops dish. The recipes seem to be of the late seventeenth century, although the rice cheesecakes and "pitty patties" argue for a compilation date in the early eighteenth century.