Call Number:

Ms. Codex 2207

Repository:

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

Extent:

1 volume(s)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Recipe and mathematics exercise book, 1787-1804, Ms. Codex 2207, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1787-1804 (inclusive)

Form:

Codices (bound manuscripts)

Abstract:

This volume contains 18 culinary and medicinal recipes and several pages of mathematics exercises written and compiled by an unidentified creator between 1787 and 1804, likely in England.

Nothing is known about the creator of this volume which contains recipes and mathematics exercises.

The Christian Observer, which is the source of a recipe for a cure for gout in this volume, was a London-based evangelical periodical that circulated from 1802 to 1877. It was founded by William Hey and Zachary Macaulay.

A recipe for Daffy's Elixir is included in the volume. Daffy's Elixir, developed by clergyman Thomas Daffy of Redmile, Leicestershire in the mid-to-late 17th century, was originally a cure for stomach-related illness but was later seen as a "universal cure."

There are medicinal recipes in this volume attributed to English doctors Sir James Stonhouse (1716-1795) and John Quincy, MD (-1722). Stonhouse was a physician, cleric, hospital founder, and religious writer and Quincy was an apothecary and medical writer.

Sources:

The Christian Observer, 1802–77. Science in the nineteenth-century periodical. (n.d.). https://www.sciper.org/browse/CO_desc.html

Fleming, Lindsay. "Daffy's Elixir." Notes and Queries, vol. Volume CXCVIII, 1953, pp. 238-240, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/CXCVIII.jun.238

This volume contains 18 culinary and medicinal recipes and several pages of mathematics exercises written and compiled by an unidentified creator between 1787 and 1804, likely in England.

The volume is bound in contemporary vellum covers. It commences with recipes (p. 1-8), then there is a series of blank pages (p. 9-20) before it finishes with mathematics exercises (p. 24-36). Numerous pages in this volume were cut out but appear to have contained accounts from 1787-1788. The back pastedown also bears mostly illegible accounts from 1787.

The recipes include those for orange wine (p. 1), ginger wine (p. 2), Daffy's Elixir (p. 3), to give English spirits the flavor of French brandy (p. 4), table beer (p. 4), porter (p. 4), corns (p. 5), rheumatism (p. 5), ague (p. 5), gout (p. 5), bottled gooseberry (p. 6), an American recipe for rheumatism (p. 6), to prevent the generation of stone and gravel (p. 6), cure for asthma or bilious habits (p. 7), asthmatick disorder (p. 7), gooseberry wine (p. 7), Rheumatic pains (p. 7), and walnut catchup (p. 8).