A cookery book with index, containing recipes for preserves, cakes, wines, and household remedies [manuscript], 1694

8 How to Make Queen Elizabeth's Excellent Cake Take a quarter of a peck of the finest flour you can get; a pint of cream; 2 egg yolks without the whites, well beaten; 3 quarters of a pound of butter gently melted and poured on the flour; 1 pint of good ale yeast, strained; and half a quarter of a pint of rose water with some musk or ambergirs dissolved in it. Season all these with a pennyworth of mace and cloves, a little nutmeg, all finely beaten, with a little salt; a pound and a half of the best currants, well picked and washed in warm water; a pound of the best raisins of the sun, stoned and shred small; half a pound of almonds, blanched and beaten very fine with a little rose water for fear of oiling; half a pound of find sugar, beaten small. First mingle, then knead all these things exceedingly well together, then let them lie a full hour in the dough, and when the oven is ready make up the cake. Let not the oven be too hot, shut not the mouth close but stir the cake not and then that it may bake all alike. Let it not stand a full hour in the oven. When you draw it, you must have ready some rosewater and fine white sugar beaten together in a porringer until it be very thick, then with a little brush or tuft wet the upper side of the cake all over and set it into the oven to dry. Observe thse directions in the mingling, kneading and baking.

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9 To Make a Seed Cake Take a pound and 3 quarters of fine flour, dried in the oven or before the fire. Rub into it a pound of sweet butter, knead it up with a quarter of a pint of rose water, the yolks of two eggs, half a pint of barm, [and] a little bit [of] ginger. Let it rise an hour, then work into it 1 lb of carraway comfits. The oven must not be too hot, an hour will bake it. It must be put into a round, tin pudding pan a quarter and a half over wanting an inch.

How to Make Cracknels Take one pound of flour and as much sugar, finely sieved, and 3 eggs (one white left out), a quarter of a pound of butter, 2 spoonfulls of coriander seeds steeped in vinegar and then dried before the fire and grosly beaten. Mix with the former ingredients, and so make it into a paste and then roll them very thin and run them about with a [geging?] iron. Bake them on papers, well floured, and when they are almost enough take them out and do them over with the yolk of an egg beaten with rosewater and dry them in the oven again, and so keep them near the fire.

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10 To Make Red Gingerbread Another Way Take 4 white loaves, let them be old so they will grate very small, dry the crust and beat them and put all the crumbs of bread together, setting them before the fire to dry. Then take a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon, 1/4 pound liquorice powder, 1/4 oz. of cloves, 1/4 oz. of nutmegs, 1/4 pound of best ginger, and 1/4 pound of red sandalwood. Beat and sieve all these spices very fine, and when you have done so mix them all together. Save a little cinnamon which you must keep for dusting your prints. Then take 1 quart of ale and a pound and a half of powdered sugar, and put them into an iron pott and set them over the fire until the sugar be dissolved. Then take it off and put in the aforementioned spices. Set it again upon the fire and keep stirring it sometimes until you can perceive it to boil. Then put in your bread by handfulls until it be all spent. Be sure you keep stirring it all the time you are putting in your bread. And when you have so done, stir it strongly together and so take it off the fire and have ready 1/2 gill of cinnamon water wherein 1/2 grain of musk has been infused, pour this upon it and stir it well together. So take it out of the pot as quick as you can and have ready a 1/4 lb of almonds being blanched, sliced, and bruised. And work the paste [?] so sprinkle them upon it so work it up well together, and cut it ito pieces as you please for size. So dust your prints with cinnamon and print it.

To Make Biscuits Take a pound of eggs, break the yolks one way and whites another. Beat the yolks very well, in the beating put in a little rosewater, then put to it a pound and a quarter of finely beaten and sieved sugar. Beat it again with your whisk very well, then beat the whites and as the froth rises put it to the rest, beating still till all the whites be beaten in. Then strew in 3 quarters of a pound fine flour well dried, beat all together very well. Drop them on paper thin[?] buttered; sift a little sugar upon them, so bake them. When they are baked take them off with a knife.