Not a medical text book
Not a medical textbook
Recipe books are difficult to categorise; they are not official medical textbooks, but they contain an extraordinary wealth of medical information. They also contain recipes for seasonal food preparation and preservation, household products, perfumes, cosmetics, pesticides, animal care and personal hygiene.
They rarely have an identified author or owner, and in many cases are unfinished, written and added to over many decades by different people. They come in all shapes and sizes, and their contents cross genders, professions and social classes. They could be owned by anyone, including housewives, local healers, medical professionals and the aristocracy.
The books that survive into the 21st century represent generations’ worth of knowledge that had previously been shared orally, but was now painstakingly hand recorded. These encyclopaedias for running an efficient household, also reveal the surprising literacy of women at this time.
Above all, the recipe books contain a holistic understanding of, and approach to, self-sufficiency, keeping healthy all year round, and staying alive.
MS512 urine wheel illustration
Highlights
MS506 A collection of medical and culinary receipts, 1650
Between a recipe for ‘collick’ and information about turkey ‘swet breds’ are instructions ‘To Make Ink’. It requires boiling together oak galls, stale beer, copper, and the widely imported ‘Gum Arabick’.
Like many common household items such as cleaning products, cosmetics, ointments and perfumes, ink could be made in the home using accessible ingredients. A quill pen could be made from a goose feather, and paper was used to line cake pans. All materials needed for writing were therefore available, even to people not usually expected to have literacy skills, including women and servants.
https://archive.org/details/ms-506
MS501 Book of medical recipes, 1650
The beautiful binding of this book is attributed to the book binders of Charles I. Paper and books were expensive luxuries in the 17th century, and this book was owned by Sir Edward Littleton, 1st Baron Littleton (1589–1645) showing that keeping medical information close to hand was a concern for everyone.
https://archive.org/details/ms-501-full
Further resources
Other recipe books mentioned in this section are:
MS447 Medical Miscellany, Mrs Knebbit, 1634
https://archive.org/details/ms-447-full/page/n27/mode/2up
MS512 A collection of medical recipes, 1524
https://archive.org/details/ms-512-full
Digitised copies of all our recipe books are available online via the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/rcplondonmanuscripts
Please be aware these books contain descriptions of animal cruelty.
