Manuscript Recipe book, compiled by Ann and John Marston,. This item is unavailable.Manuscript Recipe book, compiled by Ann and John Marston,

legible manuscript recipe book in a couple of hands, with some extra leaves inserted, ff. [50], 4to (170 x 221 mm), stab sewn, using two old prints as wrappers (one dated 1779), rather browned and frayed but holding, inside cover with inscription: 'Ann Marston Cookery / Book February 25th 1784 / John Marston', good. Eighteenth-century manuscript recipe book, encased within a couple of contemporary prints, compiled by likely husband and wife (or mother and son) Ann and John Marston. Their recipes include 'to make Alamode beef', cheese cakes, hunters pudding, wines, all manner of sauces and pickles, flavoured vinegars, mead, 'a compound of pears', and household substances and remedies mixed in with the food, such as the ingenious: 'method of preparing a cheap substitute for oil paint as durable as that prepared from oil and free from any bad smells'. This is a version of casein, or cheese paint, made by 'bruising' curds on a grinding stone, adding lime, and using expeditiously before the mixture dries. Colour may be added, and egg white used as a varnish.…