


Lot 8•
COOKERY Manuscript culinary and medicinal recipe book, containing some 320 receipts written in several hands, eighteenth century
15 September 2021, 13:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £4,462.50 inc. premium
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COOKERY
Manuscript culinary and medicinal recipe book, containing some 320 receipts written in several hands, many with donor identified, including "To make little fryed Puddings", "To pickle Pidgeons", "To make Oyster Sasages", "To make Chesecakes of Custard Meat", "To hash a Carp", "To make a very good Spanish Butter", "To pickle broom buds" ("...hang up close covered a good hight from ye fire..."), "To Dry Hams like Westphalia", "To dress sham Turtle, very good", "Soup for poor people", with c.109 medicinal receipts reversed, including "To be taken 6 weeks before a Lying in", "Mrs Bakers bitter Draught", "Mrs Ritches receipt to make palsie water", "Histerik Water", "To make the Old Countess of Darby's Red Cordial Powder for feavours agues measles small pox, gripes and looseness", "For the Stone or Gravel" ("...take the Pestle of a deer, dry it..."), "Lady Northampton's Receipt for the Wind", with indices, 170pp, dust-staining and other marks, edges frayed, contemporary green vellum, worn, 4to (235 x 184mm.), eighteenth century
Footnotes
A note entitled "A Family Treasure" and dated 1956 inserted in the volume gives an indication of provenance: "This book of recipes & prescriptions was evidently handed down to the Ewens of Dedham 1780? It was obviously compiled by the Northamptons, Comptons & Greenes & via the Marlingford Norfolk connection to Mr Ewen... Mrs S. Mellish was responsible for many of the receipts... perhaps a housekeeper... No. 50 tells of an ointment made from kidney mutton & yellow moss 'which the sun breeds & grows close on the Tiles of a House'...".