Receipt book [manuscript], 1710-20.
1710
Items
Details
Title
Receipt book [manuscript], 1710-20.
Created/published
[England], [1710-20]
Description
1 item ; 32 x 19 cm
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. The "FAST ACC" number is a temporary call number. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Genre/form
Manuscripts (documents)
Cookbooks.
Cookbooks.
Item Details
Call number
FAST ACC 272179
Folger-specific note
Purchase made possible by The K. Frank and Joycelyn C. Austen Acquisitions Endowment. Ordered from Justin Croft Antiquarian Books D9544, 2021-01-01. Cat. "Highlights for Firsts", 2021, item #14. From dealer's description: "14. (HOUSEHOLD BOOK). [ROUS, Charlotte Maria Charlotte Maria (nee Whittaker), Countess STRADBROKE, owner. Recipes for wines, syrups, cordials and sweets with medical recipes. England, early eighteenth century, with later additions]. Small folio (317 × 190 mm), 107 completed pages, plus following blanks and a 3-page index at rear. Contemporary blindtooled sheep, spine with 5 raised bands. Rubbed, slightly more wear to extremities, greenish stain to upper margins of upper cover. Nineteenth century bookplate (Abraham Whittaker, Lyston House, Herefordshire), with additional ownership inscripton of Charlotte Maria, Countess Stradbroke. A VERY GOOD ENGLISH HOUSEHOLD RECIPE BOOK WITH 100 PAGES IN A SINGLE NEAT EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HAND (perhaps c. 1710-20) plus 7 pages completed later in Charlotte Maria Stradbroke’s mid-nineteenth century hand, plus numerous blanks at the rear in which some later recipes on smaller sheets are loosely inserted. THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 300 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENTRIES WHICH INCLUDE RECIPES FOR SOME 20 WINES (birch, cowslip, currant, elder, orange, quince, gooseberry etc) and other drinks (cider and metheglin), creams (almond, lemon, clotted etc), jellies, preserves (apricots, barberries, marmalade, bullace, cherries, ‘Duchess of Montagues Brandy Cherries’, damsons, walnuts etc), cakes and tarts, cordials (yellow, red, purple, rosa solis), waters (juniper, citron, poppy, gentian, ‘Stone Horse Dung Water’, ‘Usquabagh’ [a celtic aqua vita], snail water, ‘Lady Langham’s Plague Water’ and ‘Magisterial Treacle Water’. These preparations are followed by medical recipes: ‘For St Anthony’s Fire’, Tincture for Asthma’, ‘For the Bite of a Madd Dog’ (2 recipes), ‘For Bloody Flux’,’Burns and Scalds’, ‘Generall Meredith’s Bitter’, ‘For a Cough and Consumption’, ‘For a Cancer in the Breast’, ‘For Deafness’, ‘A Purging Diet Drink’, ‘To dry Eyebright’, ‘For the Face’, ‘To make one Fat’, ‘Green Sickness’, ‘For Gravell or Stones’, ‘Certain Ease in the Gout’, ‘Fryar’s Balsam’ and ‘Oyll of Adder’s Tongue’. Occasionally a source for a recipe is provided (usually among the medical entries), including: Mrs Duns, Mrs Anne Bowdler, Mrs Kates of Rotherways, Mrs Whiteley of Chester, Captain Clack, Dr. [Daubigny] Turberville of Sarum (see Pepys’ Diary), Dr Ridgeley and Dr Davies. Though anonymously compiled the book was evidently in the Whittaker family of Herefordshire in the eighteenth century, passing later via Charlotte Maria Whittaker (1769-1856) by marriage to the Stradbroke family — Charlotte Maria married Sir John Stradbroke (M.P. for Suffolk) in 1792. She made the 7 pages of additional manuscript entries describing the medical qualities of various plants: Stinking Ground Pine (’to be met with in the Physic Garden’), Euphrasia/Eybright, Piponis/Pepper, Chamoemoeli/Camomile, Fulegii/Penny-royal etc. These additions display detailed a botanical knowledge and interest. Several later recipes are loosely inserted."
Folger accession
272179