The “Women’s Recipe Book” is a manuscript recipe book originating in nineteenth century England, and is comprised of 153 pages: 127 pages in the actual book, with 26 small pages, flyers and cards inserted in the front of the book. Some recipes are dated, but a majority are not, with the earliest being 1822, and the latest 1886. The recipes inside appear to have been compiled by a singular owner, although there is evidence of use after this period of time. While the original location of the recipe book itself is not noted in the handwritten text, some recipes are written on various repurposed inserts, one of which is an order sheet for “Pictures On Private View”, which lists the prices of each picture in British pounds. Hence, the recipe book likely was first written in England.
Each and every recipe is handwritten, a majority of which are in the same hand, presumably that of the woman who owned the recipe book, with others being written by contributing women who are friends, family members, and neighbors of the original owner, who is unnamed in the recipe book. However, even when written in the majority hand, the recipes are often listed alongside the name of the original contributor: “Mrs. Penney” contributes a pudding recipe, and others such as “E. Browne”, “P. Wauleill”, “Mrs. Vernon”, “Miss Wood”, and “Mrs. Fryer” offer recipes for everything from milk jelly to a scrub for copper. The woman who owned it clearly left each recipe tried and tested: she sometimes has crossed out specific instructions and inserting her own alternatives, or added new notes later on about how the recipe might would work better in a specific way, and more than once she has simply commented “good”, “great”, or even “(ditto)” in the margins of ones she found useful, with underlining on certain comments one or two times for emphasis.
Although the recipe book seems to come from England, it is not entirely British in its culture. Recipes come from all over the world: one is an “American Pie” recipe that calls for lemon, another a French “Charlotte Russe” cake recipe that was quite popular in Western Europe and even the United States at the time, and more than one Spanish recipe is written in this book, including one for Spanish Ham. One recipe is marked as "African". Instructions for puddings, pickling, and preserving make up a substantial portion of the book. However, not only are there recipes for cooking, baking, and the feeding of large groups, but also recipes that functioned as home remedies, with cures for everything from a cough to rheumatism to cholera being carefully noted. Another feature is the inclusion of recipes for making cleaning or household supplies. It is clear that this recipe book is not just a 'cookbook', but a diverse and thorough, if handwritten, guide to managing a household in all its aspects. While we do not know the details of whom contributed to this recipe book, we can still note that it is a product of a women’s community effort. As the recipes had been added and maintained for over sixty years, this text was clearly a long and useful effort of the woman’s dedication to not just cooking, but the care of a family.
While the latest recipe is dated 1886, the book appears to have been in use for years afterwards, either by the original owner or by whoever eventually inherited or found the manuscript text. A newspaper clipping found within the manuscript book, apparently used as a bookmark, is identifiable as being published sometime during or after 1924, and uses language and pricing indicating British origin. Since many of the recipes are undated, it is impossible to know when, indeed, the work was 'done'- or rather, when it left the hands of the contributors and found its way into those of book sellers. However, for at least 40 or so years after the latest dated recipe, the book was still in use and read by women who used the manuscript as a reference for recipes. We can only speculate at this usage, but it might have been descendants of the original author(s).
In order to interpret this work, we, by necessity, focused less on the identities of the women who created this manuscript and more on the recipes themselves. Unfortunately, the main author of the recipe book never wrote her own name in the text, even though there is some limited insight into her network. Due to the anonymity of the women, we ran into some difficulty in trying to locate the race and class status of these unknown women. In this absence, we chose to select recipes we thought were representative of the different themes we noted were present in the recipes themselves; this allowed us to focus more deeply on the themes of the text, such as socioeconomic class and gender roles, and how they correlate to the recipes and formation of the text. In doing so, we can further understand the communities of women in nineteenth century England and how cookbooks were formed and interpreted in these communities. The following excerpts from the recipe book text are ones that demonstrate these interlocking themes.
More broadly, we see this manuscript recipe book expanding on our idea of feminist recovery. Historically, texts like this manuscript recipe book have not been given the same attention as other types of rhetorical or literary texts. Being a handwritten and not published text, there are some who would devalue this work as literature. However, through our entry for this recipe book, or rather, “cookbook,” we are making the case of cookbooks being a form of literature that worthy of study. By analyzing and interpreting texts that seem to be noncanonical, we are expanding the idea of what feminist recovery might look like.
To navigate our entry, we have two main paths: Recipe Selections and Contextualizing the Recipe Book. The Recipe Selections path will guide you through the following selected recipes that we chose to highlight in our entry: "Plum Cake," "Ladies Delight," "To Make Black Medicine," and "Cure for a Cough." With each recipe, you will see the original manuscript along with our transcription of each recipe for clarification. Each recipe has notes and paths associated in order to further explore different aspects of the recipe that we found interesting and valuable to the reader. The second main path in our entry, Contextualizing the Recipe Book, will go into our analysis of the some main themes that were manifesting in this recipe book: Women's Cookbooks, Victorian Era Cooking, Victorian Home Remedies, and Cosmopolitanism, National Identity, and Crossing National Lines.
