THE COOKERY BOOK COLLECTION OF RUTH WATSON
Lot 51•
MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOK - LONDON Household recipe book, "Receipts In Cookery", titled in ink on front cover with ownership inscription beneath, "Sampson/ Lycett/ Citizen and/Leather Seller/ of London" and the date "5th December/ 1738", 5 December 1738
19 August 2020, 13:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £5,062.50 inc. premium
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MANUSCRIPT RECIPE BOOK - LONDON
Household recipe book, "Receipts In Cookery", titled in ink on front cover with ownership inscription beneath, "Sampson/ Lycett/ Citizen and/Leather Seller/ of London" and the date "5th December/ 1738", comprising over 500 cookery, cosmetic and medicinal receipts such as "Good Gravy", "Vermechelly Soop", "Hodge Podge", "Ox Tongues & Udders" ("Roast the udders first"), "Polognia Sausages", "Larks in Shells", "Plovers Capucine", "Lobster Loaves", "Eels Spitchcock'd", " "Cardoons with Cheese", "A Bean Tansy", "Fry'd Sellerye", "Sparrow Pye", "Curlews Potted", "a Lear for Pasties", "A Baked Bread Pudding", "To Pickle Broom Buds", "Barbadoes Water", "Dr. Butlers Cordial Water", "Dr. Stephen's Water", "Queen of Hungary Water", "English Wines and other Potables" including "Cock Ale" and "Dr Butler's Purging ale", "Mum" ("as it is Recorded in the Town House of Brunswick"), "To Make the Face Fair", "A Pomander", "To Make Hair Thick", "To Clear the Face after the Small Pox", "For a Consumption if not too Far Gone", "For Deafness and Noise in the Head", "For a Stroke or Contusion on the Eye", "An Excellent Ointment for the Gout", "For Hysterical Fits", "For Stinking Feet", "For the King's Evil", "To Cure ye Biting of a Mad Dog", and many others, 174 numbered pages (misnumbered from p.150), c.300 x 195mm., original vellum wrappers taken from an indenture, worn and stained, fragile pages frayed, with tears, browning and stains, remains of stitching, in a modern marbled quarter calf solander box, 5 December 1738
Footnotes
'THERE ARE SOME LITERAL MISTAKES WHICH YOU ARE DESIRED TO CORRECT AS THEY OCCUR TO YOU': An eighteenth century leather seller compiles useful household recipes for his family. Rather than being added to by various female members of a family over several years, or even generations, as is often the case with recipe books, this collection appears to have been put together at one time from several sources by a male compiler. The book ends with a postscript, presumably from the owner Sampson Lycett: "Finis/ I wrote this at my Leisure hours and if it is of any service to the Family, it will answer my Designe and think my time well bestow'd, the half of the paper is bad, and so Rotten I could scarse write, but if any of the Receipts are of any value... There are some Literal Mistakes which you are desired to Correct as they Occur to you". The tall format, the use of poor paper and the fact that mistakes were left uncorrected suggests that it may not have been the most practical of recipe books. The name Sampson Lycett 'late of Basinghall Street, Dealer' appears just four years later in the Gentleman's and London Magazine of 1742 as a declared bankrupt.
Additional information
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