Purchase, 2014 May.
[identification of item], Handwritten Cookbook Belonging to Mrs. Harmar of Tapton Park (Chesterfield, England), SPEC.RARE.MMS.0327, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University
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Processed by: Mackenzie Sommers, 2019 April; Finding aid written by: Mackenzie Sommers, 2019 April.
Recipes are a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of the ingredients required. They have been written for many centuries for food dishes, as well as cosmetics and medicinal cures, but the compilation of recipes into cookbooks and recipe books became popular in 17th century English homes when England’s literacy rate among women improved. The modern recipe book format was established in 1845 by Elizabeth Acton and her book for domestic cooks called
Tapton Park in Tapton, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England was a gentlemen's estate that was comprised of Tapton House, the surrounding woods, and a small village. As of 2019, Tapton Park has been split into three separate entities; the woods became a municipal park, the grounds of the house became the Tapton Park Innovation Centre, and the house itself became the Higher Education Campus for Chesterfield College.
The Handwritten Cookbook Belonging to Mrs. Hamar of Tapton Park (Chesterfield, England) is an English cookbook containing recipes for soups, entrees, baked goods, and pickled and preserved foods. There are also some loose leaf pieces of paper with recipes on them that were written in a different hand than the rest of the manuscript. There is a bookplate pasted on the inside of the front cover with the inscription "Mrs. Harmar, Ranfall, Tapton Park, 1880." The date of the manuscript is circa 1880.
Additional historic cookbooks can be found by searching the