COOKERY & MEDICINE - IRELAND Manuscript notebook [late seventeenth/early eighteenth century]

COOKERY & MEDICINE - IRELAND Manuscript notebook bearing the ownership inscriptions 'Mrs Dorcas West/ Mrs Dorcas Price/ her book 1688/ Mrs Dorcas Price/ her book of Resets this year 17[0]...' and 'Madam Dorcas West/ her Booke Anno Domini 1681' on the front inside board, containing some 300 culinary and medicinal receipts, written in several hands, including 'For the scabb in sheep', 'The Princes Royalls cordiall water', 'To make Aquamerabilis', 'A plaster for ye worme' ('...nothing better for ye Wormes than to annoynt ye Childs navel and ye pitt of his stomack...'), 'Dockor Burgess his recept against ye Plague', 'for sore niples', 'A salve to heal any sore new or old', 'An excellent receipt against melancholy', 'A Cordiall Watter of Sir Walter Ralighleighs' ('...take a gallon of strawberrys & putt thme in a quarte of Aquivitae...'), 'The Salve of ye Red hill in Armenia', 'For ye Cancer' ('...This has cur'd 3 women of ye Cancer in their breasts that ye Author knows of...'), the culinary receipts reversed, 'To make red rose cakes', 'To make a cake Mrs Brices way', 'To make the cream of creames', 'To make white metheglin', 'To make very good sasages', 'To make an extraordnery great cake', 'To make a Chicken Pye for the winter', 'To boyle Plovers', 'My Lady Orrary's receipt to Pickell Melons', some attributed ('Lady Norton', 'Old Mrs Rider', 'sister Anne Wooleseley'), c.115 pages, additional 90 blank, dust-staining, marks, stains and small tears, edges frayed, some pages loose, some pages roughly excised, old repairs, original ruled calf, worn with loss, calf detached from front board and spine, 4to (198 x 150mm.) , [late seventeenth/early eighteenth century] Footnotes: 'MADAM DORCAS WEST/ HER BOOKE ANNO DOMINI 1681': AN IRISH RECEIPT BOOK WITH DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE. The owner of this receipt book can be identified as Dorcas Price, née West (c.1660-1741), wife of Major-General Nicholas Price (1665-1734) of Hollymount, Co. Down, Ireland. She was the fourth daughter of Captain Roger West of The Rock, Co. Wicklow. Major-General Price enjoyed a distinguished career in Charles I's army and became MP for Downpatrick 1692-3 and then Down 1695-1714. Through his mother's first marriage he was half-brother to The Lady Elizabeth Cromwell, who married the Rt Hon Edward Southwell MP, Principal Secretary of State for Ireland. He leased the Hollymount Demesne from 1695. Dorcas' mother-in-law Catherine Hamilton was the widow of Vere Essex Cromwell, 4th Earl of Ardglass and has passed down a medicinal remedy from her doctor included in our notebook ('receipt given to Katherine Countess of Ardglass Jan:27 1686'). The Prices held considerable tracts of land in County Down and the names of contributors to this book attest to their illustrious connections. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: • • Zero rated for VAT, no VAT will be added to the Hammer Price or the Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com