[Sca-cooks] cherry//MW's Booke

[johnna holloway]

Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, with introduction
and extensive commentary by noted food historian Karen
Hess is a transcription of two books of recipes that
date back to Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The originals
came into the possession of Martha Washington through
her first marriage to Daniel Custis and then passed from
Martha to her granddaughter Nelly Custis. (It's obvious
that Martha Washington was the most important name to
be attached to the manuscript, so it bears her name.)
"A Booke of Cookery contains 205 recipes, while "The
Booke of Sweetmeates" contains 326. Hess believes that
the recipes were recopied in the 1650's by possibly Lady
Berkeley or even possibly Lady Berkeley's mother from an
earlier family collection, the evidence for this being that
the recipes here are in the same hand and there are indications
that they were copied from beginning to end as one project.
What survives is not a collection compiled by different hands, nor
is an accretive collection added to over several generations.
What remains is a one time project whereby someone neatly wrote
down from start to finish the surviving document. The
recipes themselves come from or are similar to works
published dated as early as 1608 and even earlier. Thus, it is a great
17th century source and very much akin to the Elinor Fettiplace mss.
Hess reproduces the original recipe and then adds sometimes
as two or three pages of commentary on terms, history, use, etc.
The work also contains a great bibliography and is fully indexed.
Published originally in 1981. Still in print for 22.00 usd.

Lady Johnnae llyn Lewis
Johnna Holloway

Volker Bach wrote:
>
> johnna holloway schrieb:
> >
> > The Tudor-Jacobean "A Booke of Sweetmeats" which is included
> > as part of Martha Washington's Booke of Cookerie has a recipe
> > for "To Make Cherry Wine" on pages 378-379. That would date
> > cherry wine prior to Digby.
>
> This may be enough to being me before HUAC, but
> what exactly is Martha Washington's booke of
> Cookerie? I always assumed it was some kind of
> manuscript published by patriotic homemakers. Now
> it contains 200-year-old recipe collections?
>
> puzzled
>
> Giano
>
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