Call Number:

Ms. Codex 2146

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

1 volume (184 pages)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Walker family recipe book, 1837-1915, Ms. Codex 2146, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1837-1915 (inclusive)

Form:

Recipes and Cookbooks

Abstract:

This volume contains 229 culinary, household, and medicinal recipes created and compiled between 1837 and 1915 by E. and N. Walker of Belper, Derbyshire, England.

The Walker family was from Belper, Derbyshire, England.

Belper, Derbyshire, England was a mill town that saw significant growth during the Industrial Revolution. In the early-to-mid-18th century, Belper's population was around 500 people. By 1830, the population rose to 8,000 due in large part to the availability of work in Jedediah Strutt's mills and the existence of workers' housing. By 1792, the Strutt business had five mills, new rows of workers' housing, a chapel, and schooling for workers' children.

In 1820, Belper became the first place in the United Kingdom to have gas lighting. It also had a railway built by George Stevenson in 1838 and a hosiery business that employed hundreds of people. Bakewell pudding is an accidental creation, resulting from a mid-19th century misunderstanding in the kitchen of the White Horse Inn in Bakewell, England. The Inn's mistress, Mrs. Greaves, instructed the cook to make a strawberry tart, but the cook spread the ground almond and egg paste mixture over the top of the tart instead of mixing it into the pastry dough, resulting in what became Bakewell pudding.

Sources:

"Bakewell Pudding Shop: History." The Old Bakewell Pudding Shop, 2023, www.bakewellpuddingshop.co.uk/our-history.

"Origin and History." Love Belper, 2021, https://lovebelper.co.uk/discover/rich-history/.

This volume contains 203 culinary and 26 household and medicinal recipes created and compiled by E. and N. Walker from Belper, Derbyshire, England between 1837 and 1915. The volume is bound in quarter leather. The first portion of the volume contains culinary recipes written in two hands (p. 1-146). The first hand appears to significantly predate the second. The second portion of the volume contains household and medicinal recipes and was written almost entirely by the first hand (p. 173-184). There is a series of blank pages between the culinary and household and medicinal sections (p. 147-172).

Examples of recipes in this volume include buns for tea (p. 4), blackberry wine (p. 13), to pot salmon (p. 24), a dish of snow (p. 29), Buckingham pudding (p. 49), Damson cheese (p. 61), calves feet jelly (p. 71), coffee biscuits (p. 91), Bath buns (p. 95), Bakewell pudding (p. 111), Christmas pudding (p. 142), to take grease spots out of silk (p. 178), to destroy rats (p. 182), and for Rheumatic (p. 184).