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Dutch medicinal and culinary recipe book, begun ca. 1720 in a ca. 1700 album

[MEDICINE - RECIPES].
Recepten boek.
[The Netherlands], album [ca. 1700], written [ca. 1720] to 1758 or possibly later. Large agenda 8vo (20.5 x 12 cm). Manuscript in dark brown ink on laid paper, with 1 printed and 10 manuscript slips with recipes loosely inserted (late 18th & early 19th centuries). Recased ca. 1720 in its own original ca. 1700 blind-tooled parchment, with a large centrepiece on each board. pp. [15], 16, 23-188, 197-386, [387]-[412] (minus 16 scattered pp.), including integral paste-downs, and about 160 pp. blank except for the page number.
€ 2,650
A recipe book in Dutch probably written beginning around 1720 but with additions to at least 1758. Most of the recipes are medicinal, but about 15 written pages near the end, separated from the others by numerous blanks, contain culinary recipes. Among the medicinal recipes one also finds a few for ink, shoe polish and other things. The medicinal recipes include treatments for the plague, rabid dog bites, jaundice, worms, warts, scurvy, toothache, headache and many other ailments. Unusually, the complier cites about a dozen sources for the medicinal recipes. The culinary recipes include several kinds of pancakes, waffels and "poffertjes" (a popular Dutch treat like tiny puffy pancakes), tarts, cookies and other sweet treats.
A small number of leaves had been used for something else before the present text, but they were removed and the rest recased in the original binding to begin the present manuscript. The only remaining clue to this earlier text is in the index leaves at the end, where a small number entries at the heads of the pages are written in a different hand and in Latin, with references to leaf numbers that are no longer present. They are clearly religious/theological.
The manuscript as it now stands has minor marginal defects at the foot of about 40 leaves (not affecting the text) and occasional minor spots, but is still in good condition. The binding is slightly loose (due to the removed leaves) and the parchment shows a few wrinkles and small spots, but the tooling of the centrepiece is clear. A charming manuscript recipe book in Dutch, both medicinal and culinary.
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Autographs, documents & manuscripts  >  Manuscripts & Documents
Medicine & pharmacy  >  Gastronomy & Tobacco | Medicine & Pharmacy after 1700