Commonplacing Kitchen-Physic: Anonymous Additions to an Early Modern Manuscript Book of “experemental receipts”
By Sam Mohite, The Morgan Library & Museum
Fig. 1: Title Page, Amy Gregg, A choice collection of experemental receipts for pickling, cookery, &c., autograph manuscript, [1784]. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, gift of Mrs. F. Trubee Davison, 1978; MA 3339.
Nestled among the multitude of early modern manuscripts at The Morgan Library & Museum is MA 3339, an intriguing recipe book titled “A choice collection of experemental receipts”. The manuscript is dated to around 1784 and the first page of the book tells us that the indexed recipes within were written and transcribed for Mrs. Amy Gregg Gent. The pages that follow are the Tables and Index, giving a page number for each unique receipt – a formerly fashionable word for recipe – and categorizing them into three sections: Pickling, Cookery, and Preserving.
Fig. 2: The first few pages of MA 3339 are comprised of “The Table” which serves as an index of the included recipes and where to find them.
Perhaps this manuscript was a copy of a printed book, or a selection by Mrs. Amy Gregg herself. Though sources remain unknown, the initially transcribed recipes comprising the first 120 pages are predominantly culinary in nature and written in the same swirling hand. However, after page 120, the manuscript hand changes completely; the size diminishes, the swirls straighten, the letters slant. The images below show two similar cough remedies written in the vastly differing hands. Recipes written in this second hand are nearly all medicinal. It was not uncommon for Early Modern manuscript recipe books to contain medicinal recipes, but what’s fascinating about this object is its shift in identity from culinary recipe book for reference to medicinal notebook for collecting and creating knowledge. The anonymous additions have the character of a commonplace book: the author’s impulse to compile and organize information results in a curated, annotated assemblage of recipes from various sources.
Fig. 3: Recipes for cough remedies; the left image is written in the original transcriber’s hand while the second shows the anonymous hand that fills the manuscript after page 120.
Robust recent scholarship has shown how the incorporation of medicinal distillation into manuscript cookbooks complicates early notions of the Early Modern kitchen, particularly regarding women’s experimentation (Allen 2016, Wall 2016, Harvard 2020). Because women of the time were denied access to academies or universities to pursue any formal scientific endeavors, experimentation took place within the home. Archer asserts that “the stillroom and the manuscript recipe book served as two of the most important sites of female creativity in early modern England”, labeling these forms of domestic work as “kitchen-physic” and “ladies chemistry” (Allen 2016, 94). What evidence of the knowledge base constituting “kitchen-physic” can be gleaned from examining the “experemental” nature of this manuscript? Much could be said regarding the abundance of recipes that fall within what one would expect to find in a cookbook of this time – “To Pickle Wallnuts”, “To Make Carret Pudding” – but this essay engages with those that fall outside these expectations to concentrate on commonplacing and experimentation. In line with current scholarship, I investigate a few of the medicinal additions in this “choice collection of experemental receipts” as examples of both the knowledge requirements and the knowledge production of the early modern kitchen.
Fig. 4: An example page illustrating the assortment of recipes later added: “A Cure for the Ague”, “To Catch Bats”, and “To Make Cold Cream not so good as Mrs. Joseph”
Many of the medicinal recipes are cryptic or lacking detail, indicating that an immense tacit knowledge base was a prerequisite for use. The recipe “To Pickle a Ham” commands, “After soaking the ham for enough hours in water, make the brine.” Most instances of boiling instruction are similarly terse: “boyl well”, “boil enough”, “boiled till the strength is all out.” Even when quantities are provided, it’s clear one must have culinary know-how, access to and understanding of uncommon ingredients, and strong proficiency with what we would now regard as scientific equipment to fulfill these instructions. Furthermore, the medicinal recipes reference each other or another type of medicine more generally: a fever remedy titled “A Cure for the Ague” (visible in the image above) concludes with “an emetic should be taken before this electuary is given.” Nowhere in this short recipe does it define emetic or electuary. It is assumed that the user of this recipe is well-versed in the classifications of household medicines and would know this means a vomit-inducer should be given before this sugared medicinal substance. Sentences like “Make as strong as you judge proper for the patient” epitomize the expertise and authority involved in mixing, distilling, and disseminating these treatments.
Fig. 5: A multi-page medicinal recipe narrating “A Remedy for Worms”
It was not only the use of stills and equipment that defined activity in the early modern kitchen to be experimental, but also the methodologies with which recipes were approached. Harvard notes that “Preservation is ‘experimental’ both through its reliance on keen observation, and through the trying and testing of recipes” (2020, 24). Recipes like “To Make Snail Water” and “To make red Cordiall for the gout from Mr. Coulston” immediately follow recipes “To make Milk Punch,” with a corresponding list of dates and quantities made. The inclusion of clearly named sources and personal annotations give this manuscript the character of a commonplace book. A recipe for “Cold Cream Mrs. Frampton’s” has been annotated with a “very good” following the title, but another one for a similar salve notes “not so good as Mrs. Joseph”. At the end of the entry for “Paste for the Hands” is a note that “Mrs. Mastyn puts rather more Camphine than the two ounces”. Clearly these recipes are tried enough for a judgment to be made, indicating use of the scientific method of hypothesizing, testing, and forming conclusions. Some recipes like one “To preserve Apricots in Brandy” have even been deemed entirely unsuitable, indicated by a dark ink line of redaction.
As Wall argues in her publication Recipes for Thought, food preservation and household medicine required proficiency in “botanical, herbal, medicinal, anatomical, and chemical knowledges” (2016, 211). Women in the domestic sphere used many of the same techniques and equipment as their male counterparts within the Royal Academy and formalized academic settings, often in parallel experimentation. The matrix of knowledge systems, skills, and sociability required of and fostered by the women of the early modern kitchen is undeniable when closely examining these manuscript recipe books and the ways they were used. The second half of MA 3339 is written in a hand unknown, but what is known with certainty is that whoever had possession of this manuscript must have also possessed extensive knowledge across many disciplines, the desire to experiment, and the compulsion to contribute to an actively growing body of science. The role of recipe books and commonplace books in studies of this period cannot be understated; it is within these domestic documentations where matrices of knowledge become manifest, illustrating the complex abilities and activities of early modern women within the kitchen.
Bibliography
Allen, Katherine. “Hobby and Craft: Distilling Household Medicine in Eighteenth-Century England.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11, no. 1 (September 1, 2016): 90–114. https://doi.org/10.1353/emw.2016.0045.
Amy Gregg, A choice collection of experemental receipts for pickling, cookery, &c., autograph manuscript, [1784]. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, gift of Mrs. F. Trubee Davison, 1978; MA 3339.
Gelbart, Nina Rattner. “Adjusting the Lens: Locating Early Modern Women of Science.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11, no. 1 (September 1, 2016): 116–27. https://doi.org/10.1353/emw.2016.0046.
Havard, Lucy J. “‘Preserve or Perish’: Food Preservation Practices in the Early Modern Kitchen.” Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 74, no. 1 (July 10, 2019): 5–33. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2019.0004.
Wall, Wendy. Recipes for thought: Knowledge and taste in the early modern english kitchen. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
About the Author
Sam Mohite (she/her) is the Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow at The Morgan Library & Museum. After studying astrophysics and art history at Rutgers University, she then worked at Rutgers assisting undergraduate courses on gender and technology studies while completing her Master of Information (MI). In her current position at the Morgan, across the Printed Books and Literary and Historical Manuscripts curatorial departments and the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room, Sam works on research and scholarship, collection stewardship, and exhibition development. Her current research pursues critical mixed race studies and implementing decolonial and feminist frameworks in the heritage sector.