Housekeeping and recipe book, titled "Receipt Book" in ink on front board, containing culinary and medicinal receipts in several hands, many acknowledging their source, including "To make the Alsom Wine; Lady Chandois's Receipt", "Mrs Willis's Receipt to make a green Agl that is good for sprains and bruises", "An oatmeal pudding... We make it with little better than new milk & do not put in the full quantity of butter", "To preserve a pumpkin, Lady Guildford", another from "Lord Kiladaire's cook", "To dress a calves head like Turtle, Lady Skipwith", "Spinnage Toasts", "Girdler's Seed Cake", "My little boys cake" and "To make the best sausages in the world", interspersed with medicinal recipes such as "Gout cordial", "Mrs Pyms Receipt to destroy bugs", one annotated "Mrs Madden's little boys life saved... he had all the worst simptoms"; plus some 29 pages of inventories dating from 1732 to 1793, pertaining to stocks of "kitching things taken by Simper at Woodberry" ("...10 hand candlesticks... 5 high candlesticks... 4 coffee pots 3 of them mine... 1 chocolate pot mine (the old one put in store rooms)... cheese toaster... shaving pot", pewter (for best "3 Large Dishes engrav'd with a large crest..."), and other items "for the use of servants...", including "3 Boyling pots... 5 spits... 1 lark spit... 1 pair of waffle tongs... 2 Drudging Box's... 1 pepper box... 1 coxcomb cutter..."; inventories and charts relating to household linen and weaving ("...2 Fine Bird's Eye Table Cloths... 4 small layovers very old... 6 long Huckaback Towels... 39 pillow cases..."), endpapers with notes of suppliers ("J Bruckner Shoe maker 32 King Street Portman Squ... Mrs Greenfull on Great Russell Street next door by the Boor Inn sells fans thred & tape etc... Glapes magnesia to be bought at Mr Davis's Bookseller in Piccadilly"), some entries inverted, other receipts stuck or pinned in, some loose, c.180 leaves [c.50 blank], some browning and spotting, worm holes affecting six leaves, contemporary stiff vellum, bowing and stained, 4to (230 x 180mm.), 1726 and later

Footnotes

'DAMASK COSTS 14 A SQUARE YD – NAPKINS 3D EACH... IT IS BETTER TO HAVE A TABLE CLOTH & NAPKINS WOVE AT THE SAME TIME AND THE PATTERN MUST BE THE SAME AS THE LOOM IS SET FOR': the daughter of the house practices good household economy.

Whilst there is no ownership inscription in this volume, it appears to have been in the possession of the daughter of a wealthy, well-connected family (one of the inventories is of her father's plate). Her receipts come from a plethora of illustrious names, Lady Skipwith, Lord Kildare and Lady Chandos, to name but three, and she manages the linen and plate for a house in the country, Woodberry, and in town at Henrietta Street. The culinary receipts are a mixture of the fanciful designed to impress ("To dress a calves head like a turtle") and the domestic ("My little boys cake"). In addition there are several pages of inventories in various hands ranging in date from 1726 to the end of the century, meticulous record keeping accounting for every item. Whilst the best linen was of the fine Irish sort, she oversaw the weaving, presumably locally, of everyday material, noting "Lockhit – Weaver – Donnington near Newbury – Berks – send the thread in March...". From these pages we also know the names of the family's servants and their favoured suppliers, notably a Mr Bruckner, shoe maker of 32 King Street, who advertised himself in the later years of the eighteenth century as fine shoe-maker to her Royal Highness the Princess Amelia but, according to the London Gazette succumbed to bankruptcy in 1807.

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MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOK Housekeeping and recipe book, titled "Receipt Book" in ink on front board, 1726 and later

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