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The 'Book of Receipts'
This is the name of Jeanne's mother's or grandmother's recipe book. Molly described it to Michael Croucher as a stout book with small print and having sage green covers. The title's spelling tells us that it's an older recipe book but little else. Neither is it clear which recipes in the published version of the Diary come from this book and which from Anne Hughes herself. Being able to resolve at least this question might be a further help in locating Anne's time and place. Recalling that Jeanne's mother Sarah Mary Hanks once worked for a Thomas Clift, bookseller in Stow-on-the-Wold, we might be tempted to wonder if this recipe book was a present to her. If it was a second-hand book, it might account for its old fashioned nature, but this is just conjecture.
We have in fact proved that the book did exist. Frances came across one of the Diary's recipes on the side of a mug being offered as a prize in a raffle. She promptly located the supplier and bought all the recipe mugs in the set. Further enquires led to her enquiring of the pottery designer where he'd found the recipes. Apparently, he'd got them from a recipe book held in Hanley Reference Library near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, but this is as far as the trail has led her so far.
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