MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOK

Book of culinary receipts written in several late seventeenth and eighteenth century hands late seventeenth to mid eighteenth century

Footnotes

'THIS IS PROPER FOR A SECOND COURSE SIDE DISH OR MIDDLE DISH FOR SUPPER': an attractive mostly culinary recipe book, including a set of menus and decorative table plans suggesting how to serve the dishes à la française.

It was in the early eighteenth century that English cookery books began including table plans as well as 'bills of fare' in their pages, influenced possibly by seventeenth-century French writers such as François Massialot and Nicolas de Bonnefons. According to Fiona Lucraft in her paper 'The Fine Art of Eighteenth-Century Table Layouts' (The Meal: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2001, ed. Harlam Walker, p.167-73), the first English cookery book to depict how a table should be laid à la française seems to be Henry Howard's England's Newest Way of 1708. The popularity of this more formal table plan increased and by 1747, 'when Hannah Glasse declared in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy that she thought it an impertinence 'to direct a Lady how to set out her Table' she chose to stand out from the crowd of eighteenth-century cookery writers who clearly believed it was pertinent.' (Lucraft, p.165). The decorative borders in our book may also be a nod to Martha Bradley's The British Housewife of 1756 which included a 'decorative edging on the page which adds to the attractive design and seems very feminine in comparison to the strict linear arrangement of previous layouts' (Lacroft, p.171).

In our volume, as was common practice, there are two courses comprising savoury and sweet dishes on the table together, with three sizes of plates relating to the type of dish being served demonstrating symmetry and a clear hierarchy of recipes, the lesser ones being placed at the corners. Our first course has a centrepiece dish of "Beef Royall" surrounded by dishes such as a "Lamb Pye" and "Sheeps Tongues a la Mode", the second course comprising "Tartes and Custards", "Ducks and Geese", and "Hartichokes". A great pie or a sallamagundy could be a suitable addition, and our book contains a receipe for "A Salamgundy" comprising chicken, rabbit and veal ("...this is proper for a second course side dish or middle dish for supper..."). Several of our recipes helpfully indicate where they should be placed on the table ("a genteel side dish" or "serve it for a pretty side dish to your Ladyships Table") and how they should be presented to best effect ("Garnish with horse raddish, pickles barberries and shred lemon"), and are written in a clear, friendly style (in one recipe, for example, the writer apologises for repeating an instruction, saying "I forgott I told you before...").