Kislak Center Recipe Books

About

The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania houses a wide variety of recipe books among its collections. These include culinary recipes, comprising food and drink; medicinal recipes, for both humans and animals; household recipes, for cleaning supplies, inks, and other materials used in a home setting; chemical and alchemical recipes; and industrial recipes. Some of these recipes include apothecary and alchemical symbols. The recipe books selected for this transcription project cover most of these types of recipes, providing an opportunity to test out various transcription challenges associated with this material.

Works

Start Transcribing

Arts and sciences; chemistry.

[England], 1777. Collection of recipes (numbered 1-253 with many errors) for alchemical and practical applications such as making candles, butter, varnish, many types of ink (including a recipe for "magic ink", p. 201), sealant for waterproofing shoes (p. 15), cement for mending broken china or...

Collaboration is restricted.

255 pages: 82% complete (8% indexed, 96% transcribed, 14% needs review)

Hannah M. Keen's receipt book, UPenn Ms. Codex 633

Hannah M. Keen lived at 3312 Race Street in West Philadelphia. Most recipes in this manuscript cookbook are for breads, puddings, pies, and cakes, including a "West Phila. Cake" and "Railroad Cake." The source for a number of the recipes is "Widdifield's," presumably Widdifield's new cook book:...

131 pages: 60% complete (59% indexed, 100% transcribed, 40% needs review)

Recipe book :; [manuscript].

[United States], 1800-1843. Comprised chiefly of culinary recipes from the middle Atlantic region of the United States with recipes for rock fish, shad, sturgeon, crabs, and oysters, as well as recipes for preparing wild ducks, meats, pickles, preserves, cakes and biscuits, keeklings, puddings,...

211 pages: 100% complete (2% indexed, 100% transcribed)

Recipe book, ca.1856, UPenn Ms. Coll. 392

UPenn Ms. Coll. 392. Comprises culinary recipes for puddings, custards, pies, dessert sauces, ice cream, cakes, cookies, beef, fish, chicken, pigeons, tripe, curing hams, and several for Theo Hook's punch. Several items laid in including menus for large events, one for a "Vestry Supper;" one is...

231 pages: 69% complete (70% indexed, 90% transcribed, 20% needs review)

[Recipe book], UPenn Ms. Codex 1038

UPenn Ms. Codex 1038. Collection of recipes for desserts, meats, preserves, "soops," and condiments, including Indian-influenced dishes such as curry and pickles. Some recipes are attributed, and Paxton, Baker, Ward, Pridham, Simeon, and Sayer are surnames that appear repeatedly. Included...

165 pages: 13% complete (12% indexed, 91% transcribed, 78% needs review)

[Recipe book]; [manuscript].; Receipt book

[England, 1780-1850] Begins with an 18th-century, undated section of medical recipes, primarily for horses and other animals, but with some remedies for worms in children, ague, heart burn, rheumatism, etc. (p. 1-26), with a listing of the contents of this section on f. i recto. Remainder of...

169 pages: 100% complete (12% indexed, 100% transcribed)

Incomplete Works

Subject Categories

People, Places

Transcription Conventions

Spelling: Maintain original spelling (including u/v, i/j, and ff). Long "s" should be replaced with a regular "s". Terminal long "i" characters are transcribed as "i" not "j".
Hyphenation: Preserve hyphens (including "=" characters) at the ends of lines.
Capitalization: Maintain original
Punctuation: Add modern periods, but don't add punctuation like commas and apostrophes.
Deletions: Deleted characters and words are tagged with "strike" and then displayed with the line through them.
Symbols: For apothecary and alchemical symbols, use these symbols followed by the meaning of the symbol in brackets: Rx [recipe]; ℈ [scruple]; ʒ [dram]; ʒs [half dram]; ℥ [ounce]; ℥s [half ounce]; ℔ [pound].
For roman numerals following symbols that indicate amount, i.e., j=1, ij=2, iij= 3, v=5, type arabic numeral in brackets following roman numeral: i [1], ii [2], iii [3], v [5].
Line Breaks: Hit return once after each line ends. Two returns indicate a new paragraph, which is usually indentation following the preceding sentence in the original. The times at the end of each entry should get their own paragraph, since the software does not support indentation in the transcriptions.
Illegible text: Indicate illegible readings in single square brackets: [Dr?]
A single newline indicates a line-break in the original document, and will not appear as a break in the text in some views or exports. Two newlines indicate a paragraph, and will appear as a paragraph break in all views.