Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book

“…Hilary Spurling inherited from an old aunt a little leather-bound manuscript volume, which in fact contained all the recipes of someone called Elinor Fettiplace, who wrote it out in 1604. And so Spurling turned it into a book with about 200 of the recipes, with her comments and the background and history of Elinor Fettiplace and her family. Fettiplace was the daughter of a man who lived at Sapperton in Gloucestershire, so she came from a good country house background. She married into the Fettiplace family who were Oxfordshire gentry. This book enables you to see the Elizabethans through their food in a very intriguing way, and she actually tried out a lot of the recipes herself. They’re not just recipes for eating – there are recipes for medicine, and recipes for scent: Elizabethans loved to put very intense smells into pots which you could open up and the smell would come out.….” (Reviewed by Mark Girouard in FiveBooks).



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/mark-girouard-on-art-and-culture-elizabethan-eng... ( )

Some recipes transcribed from a personal cookery manuscript, originally written down in 1604. Some commentary by the editor. Recipes are arranged seasonally. The biggest flaw is that some recipes were added at a later date and they are not always identified by the editor. A careful reading shows that "Chocolate Cream" was added in the 18th century and is not documentation for early use of chocolate in England.