By Elaine Leonge

It’s time to close the book. 12 hours have passed, our fingers are sore and our computers are fast running out of batteries. I’m delighted to say that we completed our task! We now have a TRIPLE-KEYED transcription of Rebeckah Winche’s lovely recipe book. More on that in coming days…

Over the past 12 hours, we’ve encountered a wide array of medicinal and culinary know-how and are now armed with instructions to pickle turnips, distill aqua mirabilis, make a water for sore eyes, bake a cheese cake and much much more. With our brains filled to the brim and sunset nearly upon us, we’re heading out for a round of celebratory beer.

Before we do that, EMROC members would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all those who joined us on this adventure. Being recipe lovers, we would also like to share with you two recipes which caught the eyes of the “Folger transcribers”.

Do let us know if you decide to try one of these at home! For now, good bye and good night.

A redy way to know the deseas called the Kings
evill
Take a grownd worme & lay itt alive to the place greved &
take a green docke leafe or 2 and lay them upon the worme
& bine them to the place at night when the patient goes to
bed & if it be the kings evill itt will turne to dust or poud
=er by the morning otherwise it will remayn dead in his owne
former forme as it was a live

A nother for the same deseas
Take a live toade & cut of one of her hinder legs
sewe it up in a pece of silke & hange it presently about the
neck of the party greeved. observe if it be a boy or man that
is greeved then a girl or  woman must kill the toade but if
a girle or woman be ill then a man must kill it
this hath cured many however if doth sertanly help the other
remydy or any other you shall apply to the sore (if any) to
worke the better efect & sooner cure.

To make pancakes
Take a pinte of creame 4 spoonfulls of fine
flower well fried 4 egges 3 quarters of a pound of
butter well clarefied season it wi th  salt & a little
nutmeg mixe it all very well together
there needs no butter to frie it, it is fat enough to
fry it self. thay must be very thin & in a small
frying pan.

Transcriptions courtesy of Breanne Weber, MA student University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Breanne won both the transcription sprints hosted at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Now you know whom to call when you need a seventeenth-century manuscript transcribed in a jiffy!

[The two recipes can be found in Folger MS v.b. 366, pages 63 and 80].