On this page:
“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers”
Recipe Books
Research Themes Supported
Hull History Centre holds a small number of significant recipe books. Such records can aid research into:
- Development of Medicines
- Home Remedies
- Diseases and Ailments
- Weights and Measures
- Eating Habits
- Household Necessities
- Cookery Methods
- Common and Rare Ingredients
- Superstitions
- Inherited Knowledge
Typical Record Formats
Recipe books are found in various formats: bound volumes of single manuscript sheets; bundles of loose manuscript sheets; notebooks containing manuscript entries; printed and published books.
The following are common categories of information which feature in this record type:
- Lists of ingredients
- Methods for combing ingredients
- Processes required, such as boiling or baking
- Suggestions for use
- Recommended applications
- Source Guide Recipe Books List of key recipe books at HHC
Additional supporting material
The following secondary literature provides contextual background and useful further information when trying to understand and use this record type:
- Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (2016)
- Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge – Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England (2018)
- Michelle DiMeo, Sara Pennell, Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550-1800 (2013)
