English Manuscript Recipe Book

This circa 1730 English manuscript recipe book includes approximately 300 cooking, medicinal, and domestic recipes or receipts. The volume features colorful watercolor illustrations and a vellum binding. The entries, in various hands, are written in a calligraphic style. The volume appears to have been produced as a copy and may have been a gift to Mary Baker as opposed to having been created by her.

Receipts include cookery recipes for meat, fowl, vegetables, desserts, and beverages including “plumb” cake, rice pudding, pickle cucumbers, and currant wine. Medicinal entries concern such ailments as the sting of an adder, small pox, and salves for various conditions. Additional household recipes include two for ink and a leaden “plaister.”