Manuscript Recipe Book.
[Cook books] Porteus, Mary Ann (later Oakes). Manuscript: Medical and Culinary Receipts.
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: 1814–76.
4to.; 90 leaves of manuscript, all sides covered; original vellum over boards, stamped in blind; speckled
edges; worn.
Manuscript household book containing culinary and medical recipes, with the first leaf titled “Culinary
Receipts,” signed M. A. Porteus, and dated 5 September 1814. Porteus (1794–1876) was the eldest
daughter of the Reverend Robert Porteus, grandnephew of Dr. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London. In 1820
she married the lawyer Henry James Oakes, and they had four children. The family appears in records
associated with Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk; a portrait of Mary Ann taken in 1854 is now part of the
collections of the St. Edmundsbury Museum of West Suffolk. This recipe book is written back-to-back,
with the first 60 pages devoted to food and the last 30 to medical notes. Loosely inserted on personal
stationery are eight additional recipes.
Early culinary notes are carefully organised under headings such as “Puddings,” “Pyes, Cakes, Bread Etc.,”
“Cheeses, Custards, Jellies, Ice,” “Wines,” “Pickles Etc,” “Soups, Broths, Etc,” though later ones are added
to the book presumably in order of their collection, rather than being grouped under headings. Some
interesting recipes include mock turtle soup, a “floating island,” lemon cheese cake, French bread, orange
marmalade, cowslip wine, pickled cabbage, stewed oysters, fish sauce, lobster sauce, potted shrimps, calf’s
foot jelly, cheese fondu, numerous ice creams, jellies, and custards, lavender water, and a yeast recipe.
Most entries are concise, as is this one for lemon custard: “Take the juice of 3 lemons, with 4 oz of fine
sugar, heat a pint of cream scalding hot, pour it through a tea pot near a yard high – your lemon juice to be
out into a soup plate, and it is best made 10 or 12 hours before you use it.”
Medical recipes are not grouped under headings, but include treatments for a variety of ailments such as
coughs, colds, and sore throats (including one using spermaceti), stomach ulcers, wasp stings, lumbago,
tooth ache, burns, consumption, gout, nose bleeds, sprains, and nervous headache. She includes a cure for
cancer related by a Mrs. Shakely, “Boil 1/2 a lb of figs in new milk until it is a good deal thickened and
that the figs become tender, then split them and apply them as hot as you can bear to the part affected.
Whether it be broken or whole the part must be washed every time the poultice is changed, with some of
the milk – always change the poultice at least night and morning & drink 1/2 of the milk the figs are boiled
in twice a day, if the stomach will bear it… The last person I cured had had the cancer about ten years, and
her breast bled exceedingly – 12 lbs of figs cured her.” Also included are instructions for preparing bath
salts, teeth cleansers, bitters, cooling drinks, cold cream, and fixing chalk drawings. Loosely inserted is a
late Victorian or Edwardian color drawing of a serving maid with a tea tray.
(#4657613)
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