4 äggegulor 1 jungfru grädda 6 lod såcker ett hön ägg smör
What called for 4 egg yolks, 8 centiliters of cream, 80 grams of sugar and butter the size of a hen’s egg? With both the title and method missing, I assumed it to be some type of pastry, based on its surrounding recipes. Even after having studied some forty Swedish recipe collections from the eighteenth century, I was not used to this type of guesswork. I had seen both manuscript cookbooks carefully written as prestigious gifts as well as those assembled for personal use and filled with furious scribbles. But opening this archival folder, I was surprised by a thick bunch of sheets of various sizes and colors. Carefully picking up a small sheet, I was struck by not just its dark ink, but also the traces of how it had been folded and the clusters of small holes.
The two collections of the Esplunda archive (Riksarkivet Marieberg, Sweden) are attributed to the Swedish countesses Lovisa Ulrika Horn and her daughter-in-law Catharina Ulrika Heijkenskjöld, both of whom married into the Mörner family. They enjoyed a life close to the power of the Royal court, with a strong social network and considerable financial means. Both Horn’s and Heijkenskjöld’s collections survive as bunches of loose recipe sheets and a few sewn booklets – very different from the leather-bound volumes I had previously examined.
The collections show signs of having grown over time, through many hands and on whatever paper was available. Numerous hands had contributed to both collections, in penmanship styles ranging from the second half of the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Some recipes carried attribution from other countesses. The variety of paper sizes, colors and qualities suggested not just that recipes came from outside the household, but that they were sometimes written on whatever paper was at hand, including one sheet with a black border, revealing the paper’s past as a condolence letter. Most sheets showed clear signs of having been folded, sometimes to the point of tearing. The folded size is slightly larger than a modern business card.
Most small and mid-sized sheets were perforated with small holes. In the Horn collection, a few remaining pins suggested two reasons for the pin holes. One pin keeps two separate recipe sheets pinned together, binding a recipe for butter pretzels with brewing instructions. Another recipe, on clarifying tallow, shows how notes could be extended with an additional sheet when more space was needed for the instructions.
Some papers had been sewn into booklets with needle and thread, often organised around a theme, such as compotes and puddings or flavoured spirits. In Heijkenskjöld’s collection, one such booklet stood out by mostly featuring lists of ingredients with measurements, sometimes with a title – Mandeltorta, “Almond torte”, Bakelse, “Pastry”, and Buding, “Pudding” – but no instructions.
A few pages featured small, folded notes pinned to them, revealing additional ingredient lists and measurements but no instructions, title or method. The unknown pastry from the beginning of this article was one of them. Based on the many holes, these notes had been pinned, removed, and re-pinned repeatedly, suggesting active use or perhaps a favorite recipe. Instead of providing clear instructions, this type of note functioned as a prompt for someone who had the necessary skill and experience to make the recipe and only needed to be reminded of the proportions. What was worth writing down was only what could not be remembered.
In both collections, the pin functioned as a tool encouraging flexibility and mobility, a mobility hinted at by the folded size of the sheets. Small enough to fit into one of the pockets commonly used in eighteenth-century women’s dress, recipes could be transported between rooms, tucked away mid-task, or sent by post between friends and acquaintances. The pinning allowed its owner to organize groupings, with certain recipes clustered together for a season, a dinner, or a particular task, then detached and returned to the collection. The pin was the system’s adjustable element, making the collection physically editable in a way a bound book never could be. The folding and pinning suggested not a collection assembled for show or instruction, but one in constant, practical use by women who already knew what they were doing.
Isabelle Fredborg is a master’s student in ethnology at Umeå University, with a focus on eighteenth-century Swedish recipe manuscripts. She runs Project Henrika, which digitizes, transcribes, and publishes these manuscripts to make them accessible for research.
