A spread from the manuscript Handley recipe book sold by Bonhams for £7500.
Early recipe books can make for absorbing and, to modern readers, occasionally comic or puzzling reading, as demonstrated in three examples from recent sales.
Sold for £7500 by Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on March 21 was a 51pp recipe book which bears as the earliest of its ownership inscriptions the 1695 entries of a Hannah and Thomas Handley.