Recipe and Home Remedy book

MS 100
Image
Recipe and Home Remedy book

Page from Recipe and Home remedy book outlining treatment for colds.

Collection area: Literature

Collection dates: circa 1787-1808

About this collection

Handwritten entries for home medicinal cures, food and alcoholic beverage recipes, and household hints. Some have acknowledgements to a certain newspaper or person; occasionally the date obtained is added, ranging from 1787-1808. Among the treatments are some for the plague, dropsy, whooping cough, scarlet fever, scurvy, rheumatism, jaundice, and colic. Instructions are given for preparing medicinal items such as tincture of bark, decoction of sarsaparilla, mustard whey, and lead salve. Food recipes include eel, mince pie, tea cakes, and loin of mutton. Variations of wine and mead recipes are given. Household recipes are conveyed for purposes such as cleaning mahogany, making green paint for outdoors, and getting wine stains out of white or yellow regimental leather breeches.

Bound in leather with a metal clasp, and inscribed with the word "Receipts."

Historical background

Writer and place not given, but probably compiled in southern England, based on the newspaper citations for formulas and the addresses to buy bottled remedies.

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