Recipe book [manuscript], late 17th - early 18th century.
Items
Details
Title
Recipe book [manuscript], late 17th - early 18th century.
Created/published
England?, late 17th - early 18th century.
Description
1 volume (79 leaves) ; 20 cm
Associated name
Shirley, Dorothy, 1683-1721, associated name.
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Linked resources
Blog post about Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.681: "One page, four inscriptions, three households", The Collation (23 April 2019)
Genre/form
Manuscripts (documents)
Cookbooks.
Cookbooks.
Place of creation/publication
Great Britain -- England.
Item Details
Call number
V.a.681
Folger-specific note
Page with "A Powder for [th]e Green Sickness" marked with a pin. Acquired from Dean Byass, 2018-02-22, "Armory Athaneaum" catalog, item 7552. From dealer's description: "Lady Dorothy Shirley of Ferres was born 1683, the daughter of Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers and Elizabeth Washington. In 1700 she married John Cotes and they resided at his family's substantial residence, Woodcote Hall, Shrewsbury. They had twelve children. She died in 1721 (of exhaustion?) and Robert never remarried, dying in 1756. This manuscript, which retains its original binding, evokes an interesting picture her domestic life, including of course the family's diet and health concerns, their preferences, their trust and distrust in contemporary medicine, her social status and connections. It contains a wide variety of English recipes and remedies, together with some French recipes which were popular among the aristocracy. Lady Shirley also includes some quite unusual entries and despite her aristocratic status, she appears to have used it or at the very least to have witnessed and recorded her observations. It was commenced when she was just 10 years old and she appears to have continued to add to it throughout her lifetime, with the bulk of the manuscript apparently in her hand together with other contemporary and slightly later additions, e.g. To make my Lady Shirleys Cheese", requiring the chronologically specific, "12 Cowes milke at night" and "will not be ready to eate of 2 or 3 yeares. but It is very good at the years end." Instructions are frequently detailed and even indicative of personal experience, e.g. in the unusually titled, "To make a Fresh Cheese of the stroakings of a Cowe"she recommends you "season your Creame with the Rose-water ... then putt your curd into a Cheese fatt panne when you must runne it pretty warme or else it will not come..."; in her recipe for "Angelots"she notes, "you must have a care to preserve their colour or else your labbor is lost quite", or "if you put in a muske comfit or two it will give it a good savour", etc. Cooking times are rarely given and quite general, e.g. "sett it in the oven untill it be drie", implying experience as a cook.As is often the case in household books, it is written at both ends with no strict order. It has occasional internal groupings, e.g. creams and other puddings, meats recipes, remedies, but even these are frequently interrupted by entries relating to other sections. At the beginning, where there are several inscriptions, the pages are numbered; it then continues unnumbered at the opposite end. The earlier section, numbered to page 29, contains many standard English recipes, e.g. "Sauce for Hare"; "To dress a Carp with black Sauce"; "To stew a Calves head"; "To preserve Apricots"; "Quaking Pudding"; "To Rost a Rabbitt with oysters"; "To make Pease pottage"; "To stew Ox cheeks in an Oven"; "To make Rice Pancakes"; "Cowslip wine"; "To bake Venison or beef to keep all yeyear"; "Minced pyes of Neats tongues"; "To make Orange bisket"; "To make an Eele pye like a Lamprey"; "to pickle ripe Cowcumbers", etc.The opposite end contains approximately 79 pages, the majority apparently Lady Shirley's hand including, "Gillford bread"; "Rasbery wine"; "A Goosberry Cream"; "A fresh Cheese and Cream"; "A Codling Pye"; "To make Cheese Curd Cream"; "A Biskett Creame"; "To stew Artichoakes in Cream"; "To make a fool"; "To make Cheese called Angelots"; "To Fry Cheese-curds"; "To make Almond Posset"; "A Creame of Sillybub"; "To make a Goosberry fool"; "To Make a Morning milk cheese"; "To make perfum'd Cakes"; "To Bake Red Deer"; "To Candy Orange flowers"; "To Make yeOrange flower Cakes"; "To boyl Patridges; "Sauce for Robbetts - Truss like fowles"; "To marinate Flesh"; "To make a broath for a Capon"; "To dry Tongues, or Gammons of Bacon", etc.In keeping with her social strata both sections also include some French recipes e.g. "a shoulder of Mutton yeFrench way"; "A Receit for French Bread"; "To boyl Sheeps Tongues after the french fashion", etc. and others from the Continent, e.g. "The Spanish Cream or "To make Bolonia Sausages".Vegetables are rarely used, but ingredients are fairly varied for the period and there are some unusual discoveries including sweet chocolate biscuits, "To make jockolet biskit" spices include ginger, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, black pepper, etc. She eats a lot of cream and sugar, apparently even a recipe for "fresh Cheese"requires not only her usual "rose water & suger"but just to be sure it contains enough dairy produce, the recipes recommends you, "lay it in yordish & put creame to it". Elsewhere when cooking a Red Deer "fill it up with clarryfied buter... it will be ready to eat at Christmas".Rose water and sugar make frequent appearances sometimes in unlikely places e.g. "Dutch Cabbidge", "Take 5 gallons of new milk when it is streined, let it stand tow howies then scumm of the creame, & take yemilke & boyle it ... then loosen it about your pans sides with a knife, then wthyour fingers take up the creame & lay it in pieces... then take halfe a pound of the best loafe Sugar small pounded and seareed & then make your Cabbidge on a plat: begin wthyour smallest pieces first, & betwixt every laying of your leaves sprinkle Rose-water & stien some sugeer ... "even when cooking "Artichoaks"she recommends you "scrape on a little sugar and serve it hott". There is an unusual descriptive recipe running to two pages, "The Best Way of feeding Killing and Making Brawn"which, as its title promises, guides the through the stages of a "farm to plate" dish. It includes details all aspects of rearing, killing, and eating the pig, including of their special diet, where to pen them, cleaning, and the method of dispatching the poor animal "as soon as they are stuck you must let them get up and walk a bout yeplace bleeding till they faint and fall down dead..."followed by a description of the preparation and hanging and butchering, "with yehead upwards then bone him and Devide him onto 2 parts..."and ultimately the method of making brawn.Several of the recipes are commended, e.g. "this is yeBest way to make it", "Approved of as yeBest Medicine in yeWorld", "this is A Proved of by Me Lady Shirley", "yelonger tis keep't the better", "aproved by Dolores". With the exception of a few well-known recipes and panaceas e.g "The Countess of Kents Powder", the majority of recipes are not ascribed but appear to be from recipes circulated between family and friends. Where recipes are ascribed, these date from when she was an adult and demonstrate the web of exchange between aristocratic women of the late 17th-and early 18thcentury, e.g. "To make Summer Cream cheese Lady Lees way"or "theas Recpts/I\ had of Lady Digby" or again"To Make Birch Wine Lady Holts way".
Folger accession
270151