The Williamsburg Art of Cookery

Also titled The Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion: Being a Collection of Upwards of Five Hundred of the Most Ancient and Approved Recipes in Virginia Cookery

By Mrs. Helen Bullock, 4th edition, 1942

Published in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Original printing in 1742 by William Parks, and collected from a much larger book by Mrs. E. Smith in England. He omitted ingredients and materials not found in Virginia (hence the "Williamsburg" added to the title). But it also sounds like they added recipes from Williamsburg, either from locally sold cookbooks, or from the books in people's houses, used by the cooks of the house, and collected at estate sales and the like. 

It's like reading a book of magic spells. 

Unusual or surprising ingredients:

• "Some make this broth with a sheep's head instead of a leg of beef, and it is very good, but you must chop the head all to pieces."
• walnut ketchup p14, mushroom catsup 
• okra is mentioned in a gumbo recipe 
• curry powder too! 
• snail broth 
• Brunswick Stew starts w 2 squirrels cut up 
• Samphere (in a mutton cutlet) - it's a succulent, marsh samphere and rock samphere, which is also called sea fennel 
• Collops - sliced bacon 
• Squab pie works for robins too 
• BBQ squirrel 
• Morels! and they're explicit from "mushrooms"
• pickled oysters 
• there's a lot of oysters in this book
• cracklin bread (w cracklins) 
• "salad oil" 
• salsify is a root like a carrot but more limp and thinner and tan colored. Used to be very common but doesn't keep well, disappeared w locally grown food. 
• cornstarch (in 1800) 
• brown corn syrup (in a recipe from 1750-1850?) 
• celery vinegar 
• pickled nasturtiums
• sea wormwood 
• lavender relish??? 
• For seed cakes - "...Pounded cardamom, coriander, bene, and caraway were the old favorites" 
• Pork cake 
• Hartshorn jelly (a deer antler) 
• Orgeat - an almond milk drink 

Unusual or surprising processes or uses of ingredients:

• Beef broth for sick people - take a piece of lean beef and cut it cross and cross, and then pour on it scalding water and cover until cold. When you want it, heat the broth again and season it ("beef tea") 
• "settle w egg shells"(?) in both the catfish chowder and black eyed peas soup 
• pocket glue, pocket soup, veal glue; it lasts for months (this is the reason I bought the book) 
• A savory jelly - "the whites of two eggs beaten, and their shells..."(?) 
• Why is the butter always "rolled up in flour"? 
• the recipe for the reconstituted mega egg using bladders is crazy 
• (on measurements) "Put in a saucepan, over the fire, with enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan when melted" 
• (on measurements) butter the size of an egg and a gill of wine 
• for a fried trout, garnish w the leaves of strawberries, parsley, etc. 
• The first sentence of the Turtle Soup recipe: "Kill the turtle at daylight in summer, the night before in winter, and hang it up to bleed" (assuming the warm temp might spoil too fast?)
• a quick over means a hot-ass oven, also called a clear fire; they had no thermometers
• slow oven! 
• "Cold Slaw" recipe - the word is today "cole slaw" but it's Dutch kool-cabbage and sla-salad; but wait, this recipe comes from no joke Mrs. Cole, so it could also be called Cole's Slaw
• toss them up well with a silver fork
• "To have them in perfection ..." starts a sentence with 83 words and 4 semicolons 
• Pumpkin Fritters - "the pumpkin must be well boiled, left from dinner"(?) 
• "Having picked your spinach very clean, and washed it in 5 or 6 waters" 
• turnip tops must be boiled in lots of water; not enough and they taste bitter 
• why a silver knife? 
• wash the salt from a pound of butter? 
• pickled mangos - ... and so do every day for nine times together, and when they are cold, cover them with leather 
• Peaches in Brandy gets covered in lye at first 
• they're saying to use turmeric to collect scum from the top of boiling water for sweet watermelon pickle 
• Beautiful description of a party table - ... Veal that had sucked two well-fed cows. Lamb that was fattened in a house. Bacon well-fed on Indian corn ... 
• "Take a pot of coffee made in water" (what else do you make it in?) 
• "Boil it to the ninth degree"! 
• "Beat your yolk, half an hour at least" 
• Beat your almonds very find, and with rose water 
• Wine icing 
• The Lisbon Cake must be the longest recipe in the book 
• They use spinach and beets and cochineal to color their deserts, and if you can taste the spinach or the beets, you're happy just to look at it 
• Isinglass is collagen from dried fish bladders 
• Almonds, blanched and beaten, very fine in a little rose water 
• The recipe for Steeple Cream is the witch's brew - it contains to ounces of ivory, and some of hartshorn, which is shaved deer antler, and seems to act like baking powder (or baker's ammonia?) 
• Throwing Irish shade! "Irish potato pudding is made in the same manner, but is not so good" circa 1831 
• in the "whipt cream" they suggest perfuming with musk or "ambergrease" 
• a lot of milk in the alcohol recipes 
• "Add slowly, drop by drop, one pint of choice French brandy"
• Orange wine, with oranges and yeast 
• There's a recipe containing beer, milk and eggs, and to heat til just before boiling 
• So much sugar!
• one of the mince pies lasts 4 months