[Sca-cooks] Ann Blencowe Recipe Book: was: Stuffed Grape Leaves

[Wanda Pease]

The recipe book is currently available from Provincial Press Books for
$21.00   for those who might be interested.   - Regina

 http://www.provincialpress.us/index.html
~*~
http://www.provincialpress.us/Books%20for%20the%20Trade.htm

The Receipt Book of

Mrs. Ann Blencowe


Anno Domine 1694

Introduction by George Saintsbury   ~   Preface by Leander W. Smith

With an Essay by Robert de Berardinis


        So accustomed are we to using the term ‘receipt book’ as a synonym
for ‘accounting ledger’ that we pass by those early tomes wherein the
homemakers of yesteryear wrote their instructions for the preparation of
food and the curing of ills. Such are the contents of this book.” So reads
the preface to this collectable volume. The manuscript on which the first
edition is based was compiled in the year 1694 in England’s Parliamentary
jurisdiction of Brackley. Mrs. Blencowe, née Anne Wallis, was born in 1657,
into a family of upper middle-class society.

       The compilation contains over eighty “Household Receipts.” Sack
Posset, Shaking Pudding, Pickled Walnuts, Flummery, Hashed Calves Head,
Hodge Podge, Sillabub, Rabbit Pie, and “Pickle Lila” {Piccalilli} are
samplings. Among some sixty entries in the section named “Phisical Receipts”
are: For the Green Sickness, For Shrunken Sinews, Drink for the Spleen, High
Spirited Pills, Blessed Pills, The King’s Evil – and Horse Dung Water, which
was prescribed for “women in labor
for Agues and feavers and distemper.”

      An essay on George Saintsbury, the renowned early twentieth-century
literary critic and connoisseur, who provided an introduction for the first
edition in 1925, details the man’s passion for fine wines. Comments by one
of today’s well-known experts on the world of wine are featured.

 Reprint.  77 pages, 8½ x 11. Wrappers. Item no. BL2. $21.00.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sca-cooks-bounces+wandap=hevanet.com at ansteorra.org
> [mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+wandap=hevanet.com at ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of
> Johnna Holloway
> Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 3:11 AM
> To: Cooks within the SCA
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Stuffed grape leaves
>
>
> To Make a Delma.
> Take the Lean meat of Loyn of mutton and as much beef Suet,
> shread it small as for force meat. Then put the smae quanity of
> Rice boyld tender, season it with sweet herbs, salt & pepper, & a
> little nutmeg; then mix it all together and brake in one or two
> eggs according to the quantity of your meat. Then take Cabbage
> or vine leaves and dip them in hot water, then role the meat in ye
> leaves about the bigness of a small Cucumber, and tye them with
> course thread, put them into a stewpan with gravey, put them over
>  a gentle fire cover'd. Let them stew till they be thoroughly done,
> then take them out and take off the thread, thicken the gravey
> the yolk of an egg and pour it over your meat.  page 29.
>
> The Receipt Book of Ann Blencowe. This is from the Adelphi Limited edition
> from 1925 which I own. The manuscript carries a date of 1694, but Ann was
> born in 1656 and married in 1675. I suspect that this was compiled for one
> of her daughters upon a marriage. The mss remained in the family and the
> 1925 edition
> is the first time that it was published. There was another edition done
> later, but
> it's not as nice as this one. Neither is very available.
>
> You guys lucked out--- We are leaving in an hour for the War. I just
> signed on to check mail.
>
> Johnnae llyn Lewis
>
> lilinah at earthlink.net wrote: snipped
>
> >> There is actually a recipe for stuffed vine leaves not long out of
> >> period
> >> (ie. 60 years or so) in the English corpus. Lady Ann Blencowe, IIRC,
> >> included them in her collection, headed 'To make a delma'. You can find
> >> this quoted in Elisabeth Ayrton's 'Cookery of England'.
> >
> > SNIP If you find Lady Ann's recipe, could you post it, please? I'm
> > certainly curious...
> > Anahita
> >
>
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