Recipe book

This manuscript cookery book, with leaves from a sixteenth-century Bible as endpapers, offers a collection of mid-eighteenth century recipes ranging from plague water to chocolate puffs. It contains 502 recipes arranged in 14 sections, with such titles as Wet Sweet Meats; Dry Sweet Meats; Creams and Cheeses; Possetts and Sillibubs; Puddings and Pyes; Soups and Made Dishes; To Pickell; and The Side Dishes. These sections contain recipes for preserves; syrups; biscuits; dried fruit; jellies; creams; wines; and cakes; as well as savory dishes such as calves’ foot pudding; hedgehog pudding; roast eel and lobsters; mutton; veal; shrimp; and chicken. These recipes are followed by a section titled Bills of Fare, which contains lists of exemplary first and second course dishes, accompanied by two bills of fare in illustrated form.