Manuscript Location

Folger Shakespeare Library, Manuscripts

Place of Origin

England

Date of Composition

begun 1626, culinary recipes mostly 1702-1712

Description

This cookbook of 76 leaves, a few written on both sides and many blank, is inscribed "Mary Baumfylde her booke June Anno 1626" on leaf 1r. However, the book is in many different hands, and only six recipes, written on leaves 3r through 7r, appear to be in the hand of the inscriber: "To make biskett," "To make almond cakes," "For a canker in the mouth," "To stop bleeding at the nose," "To make white hippocras," and "To make white leach." 

The recipes on leaves 8r, 9r, and 14r through 40r are primarily medical, interspersed with a few recipes for drinks and fruit preserving. The remaining recipes, written on leaves 41r through 60r, are predominantly culinary. The culinary recipes were likely compiled between 1702 and 1712, as these dates appear on leaf 41r and leaf 60r respectively. The recipes include sausages, biskets, cheesecakes, orange pudding, sauce for leg of veal or calf's head, sauce for fish, Scotch collops, sack posset, stewed mushrooms, cabbage pudding (cabbage rolls with meat stuffing), hartshorn jelly, brined pork, and carp stewed in red wine. The recipe "To dress a shoulder of mutton in blood," on leaf 48r, was rare after 1700.   

Beneath the original inscription the book is signed "Katherine Foster July 1707," who may have been related to the book's original owner, Mary Baumfylde. A Henry Foster, whose daughter was named Catherine, had married into the Bampfield family of Devon and Somerset before 1678. Katherine Foster is probably the same person who wrote verses on leaf 10r, which are signed "Catherine Thatcher Verses 1707 St. Mary @ Hill, Billingsgate [London]." She may also have written the verses on leaf 61v.  However, none of the recipes in book can be said with any certainty to be in her hand.