Hannah M. Keen lived at 3312 Race Street in West Philadelphia. Most recipes in this manuscript cookbook are for breads, puddings, pies, and cakes, including a "West Phila. Cake" and "Railroad Cake." The source for a number of the recipes is "Widdifield's," presumably Widdifield's new cook book: or, Practical receipts for the housewife by Hannah Widdifield published in Philadelphia in 1856. Other recipes are attributed to relatives, for example, Lucy H. Keen, and to Mary McIlvain and R. B. McIlvain. A section of recipes, "Preparations for the Sick," includes "Chicken Broth," "Cocoa," "Tapioca Jelly," "Egg and Milk," "Egg and Wine," "Carrageen or Irish Moss Jelly," and "Wine Whey." Also three leaves of newspaper clippings of household remedies and recipes pasted in and a printed broadsheet for "Wisconsin and Gem Graham Cakes," in an advertisement for Truman & Shaw hardware dealers of Philadelpia. The final recipe is "An Excellent Cement for seams in the roofs of houses."
Binding: calf, spine lacking, covers detached, pages loose, some detached.; Title from f. 1r, title on front cover: "Cook Book." Title page dated "West Phila 1854." Last dated recipe in volume is 1882.; Written in several hands.; No pagination, 35 leaves blank; 4 leaves laid in manuscript.; Leaves soiled and stained but legible, some ink faded.
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