Black Caps. 1747.

“Black Caps. Take out the cores, and cut into halves twelve large apples. Place them on a tin patty-pan as closely as they can lie, with the flat side downward. Squeeze a lemon into two spoonfuls of orange-flower water, and pour it over them. Shred some lemon-peel fine, and throw over them, and grate fine sugar over all. Set them in a quick oven, and half an hour will do them. Throw fine sugar all over the dish, when you send them to table.”

- From The London Art of Cookery. Author John Farley apparently lifted this recipe from Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery, first published in 1747. Other than some superficial changes in word order it is the same. Glasse, who revised the recipe slightly, most likely found it in The Whole Duty of A Woman, first published in 1737. Whole Duty is full of stolen recipes; its compiler most likely took this one from John Middleton’s Five Hundred New Recipes in Cookery (1734) and Middleton had apparently copied it from John Nott’s Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary (1726). An excellent example of the manner and prevalence of recipe stealing in the 18th century.


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