THIRTY

[CULINARY MANUSCRIPT] Early 19th century culinary manuscript

[Circa 1800]. Slim quarto (210 x 175 x 10 mm). 55 text pages on 28 leaves. Numbered to p30. Lacking pp5-6 in paginated section, two stubs before unnumbered section. Modern half calf, marbled boards, some staining and marking to text. Watermark: Britannia seated in an oval, surmounted by a crown, I Furness & Co.

¶ The anonymous compiler of this Georgian manuscript cookbook appears to have been comfortably off, but not wealthy. The 100-plus recipes cover dishes featuring meat, fish, cakes and puddings, but although there are many attributions, using these to establish our scribes’ identities or location proves decidedly difficult.

The book’s creator clearly had no interest in presentation or even rationalization, and no index or other finding system. Neither is there an overall order to the manuscript: “Dutch Flummery”, for example, is paired incongruously with “Pickled Fish” on p16, and “Damsen Cheese” accompanies “To Hash a Calves Head” on p19. There are no dates, but hand varies a little, so we assume it was compiled over a period of several years.

Some sections or recipes are, however, arranged together. “To make Curry” (“take a Chicken or Rabbit scin’d fricasse it rub every piece all over with Curry Powder” add a “strong Veal gravy” and “stew gently” (p10)) is complemented on the facing page by instructions “To Boil Rice for the Curry” (for the familiar 10-minute cooking time, after which the rice is “Covered up for Half an Hour and not uncovered till sent to Table” (p11)). Likewise, the recipe for “Oyster Sausages” offered by “Dor Hunter” conveniently occupies the same page as a method “To feed Oysters” (p[39]).

A larger exception to the unstructured nature of the book is a group of over 20 recipes (pp18-29) which all originated from a “Mrs Rasher”. These have been entered in together, so were likely copied in from her recipe book. She mainly supplies recipes for cakes and puddings, including several types of “Cheese” (“Damsen”, “Lemon”, “Citron), a couple of flummeries (“Italian” and “Duch”) and puddings (“Orange Puding”, “Baked Apple Puding). Conspicuously savoury among this group is a recipe for “India Pickle” which, once you have prepared “Ginger”, “garlick”, “Pennywoth”, “Turmereck”, “Vinegar” and other ingredients, veers from the particular to the general: “put in the following things the Inside of Cabage Cut in quarters Appels Cucumbers or any thing you please” (p27).

The enigmatic “H H” provides several recipes, including “Calves Feet Jelly” (p[38]), “Stewd Eel” (considered “Excellent” (p [33])), and “Risoles” which, “if wanted particular nice”, one should “cover with Bread Crumbs twise and be sure not to put in two much gravy as you Cannot work them into nice shapes if you do” (p[38]). Other attributed recipes include “To Preserve Cucumbers Mrs Edwd Evenes” (p[48]), “Mrs Davises Receipt to Preserve Mellons” (p[49]) and “French Bread Mrs Moleneaux” (p[53]). The mononymic “Simpson” (perhaps a servant?) has recipes for “Giblet Soup Simpson” (p[40]), “Risoles” (p[55), and “Sorrell Sawse”, also judged “Excellent”. The most specific name reference is a “Mrs Brooke at the Revd . Mr Dowsings North Balsham” (p17), (who also have a recipe for “Calves Feet Jelly”), but despite their names and location, the Reverend Dowsing of Balsham and Mrs Brooke prove surprisingly elusive.

£650 Ref: 8116

BELL, Thomas (active 1593-1610). The vvoefull crie of Rome. Containing a defiance to popery. With Thomas Bells second challenge to all fauorites of that Romish faction. Succinctly comprehending much variety of matter, full of honest recreation, and very profitable and expedient for all sorts of people: but especially for all simply seduced Papists.

London: Printed by T[homas] C[reede] for William Welby, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Grayhound, 1605. Only edition.

Quarto. Pagination [6], 77, [1], p. text complete, lacking the first and final blanks. [STC (2nd ed.), 1833].

¶ Thomas Bell exemplifies a certain breed of fervent Roman Catholic who, after recanting, begins to express an equally devoted and vociferous hostility to “Popish Tyrannie”. The Yorkshire-born Bell embraced Catholicism in 1570 and was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped to the Continent, where he studied at Douai College and the English College at Rome. After taking Catholic orders, he took part in a mission to England in 1582, becoming “one of the most energetic, daring, and influential priests working in the north of England, first in Yorkshire and later in Lancashire” (ODNB). A decade later, having made enemies of both Protestants and many of his fellow Catholics, Bell gave himself up to the authorities, turned ‘hassock pigeon’ by providing details of the mission and its networks, and embarked on a series of anti-Catholic publications, the most famous of which was The Anatomie of Popish Tyrannie (1603).

In similar vein, The vvoefull crie of Rome (1605) includes chapter titles such as “Of the way and meanes, by which the Popes attained their vsurped primacie”, “Of the Popes bloody tyranny”, and “Of the abhomination of popish proceeding” give one a flavour of Bell’s rhetoric.

A scarce book, ESTC locates 8 copies in the UK, and 6 copies in the USA.

CULPEPER, Nicholas (1616-1654). Pharmacopoeia Londinensis: or The London dispensatory further adorned by the studies and collections of the fellows, now living of the said colledg.

London: printed by Peter Cole, printer and book-seller, at the sign of the Printing-press in Cornhil, near the Royal Exchange, 1659. Octavo. Pagination [28], 107, [1], 191-341, [5], 343-377, [33], p. Complete with the vertical half-title. [Wing, C7530]. Full calf, recently rebacked, text a little dust soiled, occasionally close trimmed at head touching running title.

¶ This seminal book brought an end to the Royal College of Physicians’ effective monopoly on medical knowledge, which they had guarded by publishing their Pharmacopoeia in Latin, making it inaccessible to the general population.

As the RCP themselves explain on their website: “The authority of the Pharmacopoeia and of the College itself was dealt a blow in 1649 when Nicholas Culpeper published an English translation of the book, under the title The London dispensatory. Not only did Culpeper’s book render the Latin names of substances and methods of preparation into a language spoken by more of the population, Culpeper also included descriptions of the uses of the different preparations, omitted from the physicians’ book.”

Thus, The London dispensatory became a complete handbook of medical self-help for the lay reader, shot through with Culpeper’s continuing criticisms of the self of the college physicians, whom he had already classed with priests and lawyers: ‘The one deceives men in matters belonging to their soul, the other in matters belonging to their bodies, and the third in matter belonging to their estates’ (A Physicall Directory, 1649, ‘To the reader’).

Culpeper’s English physitian was printed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1708; “it and the translated Pharmacopoeia, printed in 1720, were the first medical books published in North America.” (ODNB).

£500 Ref: 8105