{"id":8509,"date":"2023-05-03T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=8509"},"modified":"2023-07-17T20:49:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T20:49:24","slug":"manuscript-cookbooks-more-than-handwritten-recipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/manuscript-cookbooks-more-than-handwritten-recipes\/","title":{"rendered":"Manuscript Cookbooks: More than Handwritten Recipes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mrs. Goodfellow’s Queen Cake Recipe. Source: Eliza Kane Recipe Book, New York circa 1847\u20131852, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first in a series focusing on cookbooks as more than just recipe books. Stay tuned for upcoming themes such as Historical Cookbooks, Regional Cookbooks, Chef\/Restaurant-focused Cookbooks, Celebrity Cookbooks, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you ever get the chance to look through manuscript cookbooks or other handwritten recipes from the past, please consider giving it a try. If you happen to be \u201cgifted\u201d one of these cookbooks or recipes by a family member, even better! \u201cBut I don\u2019t like to cook,\u201d you might say. No matter \u2013 these cookbooks and recipes are about more than cooking. They are slices of a person\u2019s life and era in time.<\/p>\n

I have been extremely lucky on both counts \u2013 I had the honor of going through a number of manuscript cookbooks while writing my first book<\/a>, Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America\u2019s First Cooking School<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> AND my mother gave me some recipe cards that belonged to her mother (my grandmother<\/a>). I feel like I struck gold! I even used some of these recipes to write The Gilded Age Cookbook<\/em><\/a>. I had to adapt the recipes for modern kitchens, but how fun and nostalgic to see the original recipes in her handwriting!<\/p>\n

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My grandmother’s Recipe for Lemon Sherbet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although manuscript cookbooks mostly<\/em> contain food recipes, they also often include tangential sections such as \u201cFood for Invalids,\u201d instructions for cleaning a number of household items and even etiquette advice. In centuries past, many of these books were passed on to other family members \u2013 daughters, granddaughters, nieces, etc. It was a way to keep this sort of knowledge in a family. Notes were often scribbled in the margins to outline where the recipe came from, cooking\/serving tips, who liked it, etc. This is extremely useful information for historians, as I learned firsthand.<\/p>\n

For example, the girls who attended Mrs. Goodfellow\u2019s early 1800\u2019s cooking school were instructed to come to class with notebooks. A few have survived, housed in historical libraries such as The Library Company of Philadelphia<\/a> and Historical Society of Pennsylvania.<\/a> These are really the first hard evidence of the kind of information that was being taught in cooking schools during this timeframe. The girls then took these recipes back to Charleston, Baltimore, Wilmington, or wherever they were from and passed them on to family and friends. As a result, Mrs. Goodfellow\u2019s recipes and methods steadily trickled into mainstream cookery and were adapted by cooks around the country.<\/p>\n

As an instructor, Mrs. Goodfellow liked to list ingredients first when dictating recipes to her students. Today, we take this for granted when reading a recipe, but it wasn\u2019t the norm in the early nineteenth century. Back then recipes were usually written out in paragraph form, which could be somewhat confusing and allow more room for error. But the recipes found in the manuscript cookbooks from Mrs. Goodfellow\u2019s were written down in this transcription manner, helping historians solidify the origin of this technique. And the fact that so many Philadelphia area nineteenth-century manuscript cookbooks contain Goodfellow recipes also provided concrete evidence of her extensive influence.<\/p>\n

So hold onto those family cookbooks and recipes \u2013 you never know when they might be worth something. At the very least, give some of them a try. Perfecting the recipe might take a few times to adapt the ingredients and measurements, but it is great fun to go through this process!<\/p>\n

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Eliza Leslie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Look here for further reading:<\/p>\n