https://doi.org/10.82486/sp.2025.11.632

04.11.2025

Reading Food History through Private Manuscript Collections of Recipes

Anamarija Lukić , Ivana Jurčević

Manuscript Collections of Cake and Sweet Pastry Recipes

As we all know, nothing brings back a place, time, or occasion more powerfully than a scent or taste. Eating a familiar home-cooked meal brings you back to your home, at least in the heart — as well as the stomach.[i]

Private manuscript collections of recipes can be found in many households even today. These are mostly compiled by women, just like they were more than one hundred years ago. Women supplement their own recipe collections by collecting recipes from their mothers, grandmothers or other women in the family. They usually started taking notes in their youth and filled the notebook for many years afterwards or for as long as they felt the need to prepare food, often throughout their whole lives. This means that handwritten collections of recipes, including cake recipes, tend to cover long time periods, typically around half a century.[ii]

Recipes for the collections are provided from many different sources: mainly from other women, friends and colleagues, relatives, sometimes from cookbooks, newspapers or specialised magazines. Recipe collections are individual and private records, almost intimate ones. They often contain notes evaluating a certain recipe, the name of the source or other notes. They also offer an insight into the gastronomic preferences of the author and their family and into the gastronomic everyday life of a person or a household,[iii] – albeit with some reservations: The recipe collections only partially present the gastronomic experience and accomplishments, while the other part simply remains a list of gastronomic plans or wishes that never completely come true. However, “[e]ven the idle housewives do not write down recipes that they cannot or will not taste.”[iv]

Handwritten recipe collections share a common pattern of content, structure and utterance, authorship (mainly female authorship) and connotation. This applies equally to the collections by today’s housewives and to those written 150 years ago. They have the same structure of content, the same purpose, are created in the same way and are therefore comparable – although, the newer they are the more they are mediated by media that did not exist before, such as television or the Internet.

Regarding their content, the collections that are to be examined in this article, are primarily made up of cake and sweet pastry recipes that the housewife considered interesting, tasty, appropriate and practicable in preparation. The preparation of these dishes required precise measurements and often a detailed description of the procedure, so the housewives carefully recorded the recipes in their notebooks. These collections were usually made up of recipes starting with a variety of old and inherited recipes by the previous generations and including modern recipes according to the lifestyle of housewives today, complementing the current trends and their social circle. The structure of the collection includes highlighted titles for each recipe and differences in detail for certain recipes. A recipe may contain just a list of ingredients, but also a detailed description of the preparation procedure with precise measures, mass, volume, temperature, duration, even caloric values. Recipes may be included into the collections in their original version with all the linguistic characteristics, measurements and other characteristics, depending on the source and utterance that differs from one recipe to another. Connotations related to manuscript collections of recipes refer to a document (notebook, manuscript) that we all have at home, to the home-made food with a familiar gastronomic surrounding to other details connected to the kitchen, whether referring to the manuscript itself as an object or to the contents of the recipe for cakes and sweet pastry prepared in one’s own kitchen at home.

The Subject Matter of Research, Methodology and Material

The usage of manuscript collections of recipes as historical documents is debated. Some historians consider this an area of secondary significance, whilst others try to avoid the difficulties when accessing and evaluating the sources. Collecting manuscripts that are entirely private and only in rare cases preserved poses an additional difficulty: “Private manuscript cook collections are rare and special finds, so decoding their origins poses interesting challenges.”[v]Manuscript collections are private collections and seldom preserved after the death of the author because other authors have their own recipe collections. The daughter shall, perhaps, keep the collection that she inherited from her mother but collections from previous generations – grandmothers, great grandmothers or members of prior generations – are quite rare. Even if they are preserved, such old collections represent a sentimental inheritance for the family that keeps them and not material that would be at the disposal of researchers. Gaining access to such material is more about luck than systematic search, although some families have given inherited manuscript collections of recipes to museums or archives in the original or as copies.

Determining the origin of a manuscript with its spatial frame and timeline is not that complicated. If the manuscript was preserved by a private person, this person usually possesses some memories and information about the author of the manuscript. One encounters a similar situation when the manuscript has been stored in an institution such as a museum or an archive, where the manuscript provider most likely handed over information about it. The next step in studying handwritten recipe collections is the analysis of content and language, comparing it to other manuscripts, printed cookbooks and literary contents (mainly autobiographical) that is congruent with the chronotope.

Compared to printed cookbooks that only reveal what is offered to housewives, manuscript collections present the housewives’ actual food choice. This way, the manuscript collections represent a nearly “realistic situation” in everyday gastronomic life, which includes not only the choice of food, but also its preparation, supply, presentation and storage. The manuscript collections of recipes provide information on the necessary supplies used often or just occasionally, the culinary skills of the housewife, how equipped her kitchen was, and the importance of preparing sweet pastry for her and the family. If several manuscripts form the basis of comparison, the popularity of certain recipes that can originate from the same period or through several generations may be reconstructed from them. The language and content structure provide insights on the origin of a recipe and on the housewife’s level of education as well as the linguistic characteristics used in her environment.

The Manuscript Koch Buch 1.8.7.3.[vi]

Although a recipe notebook is usually written by one author, in the manuscript collection of recipes called Koch Buch 1.8.7.3., originating from the town of Osijek (Esseg in German, Eszék in Hungarian), at least ten different housewives wrote down recipes, which is noticeable through the different styles of handwriting. The first notes were probably taken in 1873 because the same year is mentioned on the cover page, next to which an illegible name can be found. According to a legible name and surname of one of the authors (Emilie Šegec), it is to conclude that the collection must have been created in 1890 the latest, because that is the year in which she died.[vii] The collection consists of a worn-out notebook with hard cover, completely filled with recipes mainly for cakes and sweet pastry. It contains 154 pages. The collection was written in German, using kurrent style (Deutsche Kurrentschrift), but certain words are in Latin characters, such as personal names or the word “chocolate”. The recipes were written one after the other without any special order. The majority of the manuscript is legible, except for the margins, where some of the pages have been damaged. This collection of recipes provides an insight into the cooking traditions in several Osijek families from the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Their surnames indicate different ethnic origins – German and Croatian – and they all express themselves in non-formal German. The language in the social circles of Osijek at the time was mainly German, regardless of mother tongue or nationality.[viii]

On the following pages, this collection will be compared to two other recipe collections from a later generation of female inhabitants in Osijek, both of which were preserved by private persons. The collection is also compared to printed versions of cookbooks in German. It is evident that some recipes in Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. were copied word for word from printed cookbooks. Also, some recipes, copied from notebook to notebook have been modified, but the original source can still be recognised.[ix] In order to provide context to the notebooks, memoirs by two female writers from Osijek, in which they mention food, kitchen equipment and the privacy of the home, are also examined.

The Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. collection gathered different authors, women who knew each other and exchanged recipes, including a social circle of middle-class women. Although we do not know exactly which language(s) people spoke in certain households, it is evident that German was present everywhere, as first or second language. This is apparent in another manuscript collection of recipes, in Greta Schmidt’s notebook.[x] Recipes by this local housewife were recorded in two notebooks using Latin characters, the older one in German and the newer one in Croatian. The notebook in Croatian was written in neat handwriting and more clearly. It contains recipes translated into Croatian, with headlines in German. The recipes also contain explanations in German or using Germanisms. The collection contains recipes for cakes and sweet pastry, but also recipes for basic food, which points at this collection belonging to a young housewife, who had just started cooking without any assistance. Among the recipes in German, there are a few pages in Croatian, whereas among the recipes in Croatian, there is one page in German. This indicates that the recipes were shared, and that the housewife was bilingual, with German as her mother tongue. In the third manuscript recipe collection examined, Marija Kućar’s notebook,[xi] one encounters yet another situation: The notes by Marija Kućar consist of one notebook written in Croatian, which also included a few recipes in German written in Latin characters. Some recipes have German headlines, while other recipes have inversions. This is a case of literal translation from German to Croatian, where the translation does not convey the sense of the text and tells us that the original recipe was in German. All recipes in Croatian are full of Germanisms.

The manuscript collections of recipes reveal the usage of German or influence of the German language on Croatian language that could be heard in the privacy of a home, in the company of women, while doing the household chores or in social life. Less than one hundred years ago, strict and rigid norms and customs governed social life in European cultures. It was widely accepted that a woman’s place was in the home and that her task was to take care of the household and the family. This included food, clothing, supplies, hygiene, raising children and creating and maintaining the picture of her family to the outside world, including protecting the family’s reputation. The housewife contributed to the reputation of the family, among others, by preparing selected meals. By preparing and serving the food, especially cakes and sweet pastry, the housewife could stand out, win praise and create her own reputation among other housewives. Women at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century were also the first teachers of language for the next generation. The German language and its influence were easily transferred from one generation of housewives to another, through the female line.

Although middle class families typically had at least one servant, most of the household chores were done manually, so all the women in the household – mothers, daughters, female servants – were included in doing them.[xii] Women spent most of their working hours preparing meals (breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, coffee and cakes, dinner).[xiii] The language used in the kitchen, words related to diet or cuisine made up a rich everyday vocabulary. This enabled the women to build a solid foundation and to preserve their verbal identity and that is what found place in the manuscript collection of recipes, which was later shared and copied. The level of literacy of the Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. collection’s authors is not high, and possibly their only regular writing activity was copying recipes. That is the reason why manuscript collections of recipes are even more valuable. They are a source from which we find out more about the language in the privacy of a home or a kitchen: the women were not as precautious while writing down recipes as they were when they wrote letters to someone. They wrote recipes for themselves, so no sophistication, special formulations or correct grammar were deemed necessary.[xiv]

A Domestic Kitchen as Described in the Manuscript Collections of Recipes

The fact that during the last century or more almost every household or housewife possessed a private manuscript collection of recipes for cakes and sweet pastry, shows us the importance of their preparation and consumption at home.[xv] Collections of recipes for cakes and sweet pastry can be considered as part of everyday gastronomic life not only in Osijek but also in the whole continental part of Croatia. The local writer Jagoda Truhelka, born in 1864, whose family belonged to the lower middle class, mentions how her brothers would sometimes “sneak into the kitchen, grab a piece of sugar, almond or walnut and then flee.”[xvi] Their kitchen always had sufficient supplies of sugar, almond and walnuts – the most common ingredients for cakes, according to collections mentioned here.Vilma Vukelić, a local writer born in 1879, also mentions the tastes and aromas of the ingredients for cakes and sweet pastry in her memoirs, which take her back to her childhood: “almonds, raisins, arancini,[xvii] lemon juice, cinnamon and vanilla,”[xviii] providing a more detailed list of the most common ingredients from the manuscript collections. The ingredients missing are hazelnuts, coffee and chocolate, which are usually included in such collections.

One of the basic ingredients for cakes in the Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. collection is fine flour or breadcrumbs from pastry made of fine flour. The second most used ingredient is sugar. Sugar was bought in larger pieces as sugarloaves, so the housewife had to smash them and sift them before usage. The third most popular ingredient is a larger number of eggs, processed separately, first the egg white, then the yolk, not only to ensure a better texture, but also to enable the dough to rise, as no baking powder or baking soda are usually mentioned. Among the different types of fat butter, sweet cream and sometimes sour cream are referred to in the recipes. Cooking oil was seldom used, whereas margarine, production of which began in 1870, is not mentioned at all. Different types of nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts were often used as fillings in larger amounts. The collection also mentions the usage of different seasonal fruit – apples, currants, apricots, raspberries, quinces, cherries, sour cherries and citrus fruit – but mainly as preserved fruit. For flavouring, usually lemon (rind and juice), raisins, cinnamon, clove, vanilla, rum, coffee and often chocolate, seldom caraway seed and anise are used.

It is evident from the recipe collections that the middle-class housewives from Osijek used a variety of groceries accessible to them, as well as the finest ingredients, which were used in abundance. The housewives also had to know certain culinary skills and techniques. Dough kneading belonged to the basic skills that every housewife needed to possess, as the procedure is not described in the recipes.[xix] The housewife also had to be familiar with the process of pasteurization (Dunst), mentioned in many recipes, but not described. The recipes, however, did prescribe the duration of mixing ingredients, which ranged from a quarter of an hour to an hour. A certain oven temperature was also prescribed, which means that the housewife knew how to control the fire. There were also details about storing food in cold places, in cooling cupboards (ice was produced in the local brewery or at the ice factory in Osijek). Beside the oven and the cooling cupboard, the housewife had to have an arsenal of baking tins and moulds, starting from the small fine moulds for sweet pastry (Muschkazonen; Quittenkäse) to open cake moulds or melon-shaped moulds (Melaunmodel), various measuring cups for volume and mass (because the recipes were written using old Viennese measures, some also using decimals and the metric system), a baking scale, different rollers for dough and other utensils. The sophisticated confectionery tools, the finest ingredients, the abundant recipes in notebooks and the complex and long procedures to prepare cakes and sweet pastry represent a high gastronomic culture of the Osijek households at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, a great love for sweets, and a form of local hedonism that Vilma Vukelić indeed recognizes in her memoirs: “One earns his money without a lot of effort and finds sumptuous food on his table everyday: baked and fried chicken, thin pieces of Danubian carp, ducks and geese, sausages and ham, rich and spiced cabbage rolls, dumplings, strudel and doughnuts, and after all this, fresh Šeper beer …”[xx]

Sharing Recipes

Regardless of their social status, wealth, degree of education, ethnic roots or age, the housewives had the habit of sharing recipes. That way, the recipes spread rapidly, the household menus became enriched through an ever-growing variety, and they also looked alike. The German language (the language of most printed cookbooks) and the bilingualism of the majority of Osijek residents whose mother tongue was Croatian or Serbian contributed to the culture of enjoying fine cakes and desserts, as they almost completely abolished the language barrier and opened the way for the unhindered circulation of recipes among housewives of different language groups. Recipe sharing is noticeable in Koch Buch 1.8.7.3., in Greta Schmidt’s collection and in Marija Kućar’s collection, too. Comparing Greta Schmidt’s notebook with Koch Buch 1.8.7.3., 19 recipes for cakes and sweet pastry matched,[xxi] whilst comparing Marija Kućar’s notebook, which is more modest, with Koch Buch 1.8.7.3, five recipes matched completely and two partially.[xxii] The collections by Marija Kućar and Greta Schmidt had only two matching recipes when compared to each other.[xxiii]

The networking of women as a pattern of behaviour and their interaction with one another, as well as the focus on women being in the kitchen, cooking, baking cakes and sweet pastry in order to boast and to receive praise all promoted recipe sharing, which became the main canal of receiving, preserving, spreading and enriching personal and familial gastronomic habits. “Knowing classic and new recipes contributed to the reputation of the house, whereas not only did the wives of clerks collect recipes, but the wives of officers, merchants and teachers, too.”[xxiv]

Differences in social status did not present an obstacle: another manuscript collection of recipes presents a recipe taken from the kitchen of an aristocratic court. This is a collection of over 400 recipes, mainly for cakes and sweet pastry from the court of the noble family Pejačević from Našice,[xxv] made by their servant who copied these recipes from the cook in the 1920s.[xxvi] By sharing and intermediating the recipes, common people could eat the same meals as one of the richest and most powerful families in Croatia, although maybe not that often. Even this collection mainly contains groceries that are identical to the groceries listed in the previous three collections. Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that cakes and sweet pastry from fine flour, sugar, eggs, cream and butter, complemented with walnuts, hazelnuts and especially almonds, coffee, chocolate, raisins, arancini, lemon, vanilla and cinnamon with some processed seasonal fruit, were important characteristics of home-made cooking and baking in the city of Osijek and beyond, as long as the recipes were shared from woman to woman and as far as the literacy of women extends back in history.

In the notebooks of housewives in Osijek today, you can find recipes from old manuscript collections.[xxvii] The fact that they were not grouped at the beginning of the notebook, but rather scattered among other, modern recipes, demonstrates that these recipes were indeed part of the collection because the housewives fancied them and not because they were inherited.[xxviii]

Conclusion

Researching the history of everyday life mainly includes researching the private sphere and when it comes to home and family, privacy is implied, not only for the historiographer, but also for those researched, because they did not use to peek over their neighbour’s fence to record for future generations what they observed. And yet, in one segment of life – nutrition –, they did just that, and even openly. The protagonists of this history are women, whose role was to take the full care of their family’s diet, from planning and procurement, to preparing, serving and storing food. Women were seemingly very interested in dishes prepared by other housewives – especially when it came to cakes – and did not hesitate to ask for a recipe, in order to copy it, use it and share it with others. This way, they designed their own collections of recipes, with the help of their contemporaries, which included relatives and neighbours. Their notes were also used by women of the next generation, who recorded their elementary culinary knowledge acquired at home from these notebooks: the notebooks of their mothers and grandmothers in their own handwritten collections of recipes. Each collection was used for about half a century, while large parts of their content were passed down to the next generation and are in use even today.

The way the collections have been designed for all this time is identical, so contemporary collections are easy to compare with those that belonged to previous generations. These are original, handwritten documents that testify first hand to the diet of so-called ordinary people, as well as to their material status and lifestyle: housewives, some of them clumsy in writing, did not record what they would not need, but what was truly useful to them, in regard to their material possibilities, the food supply in their city and the equipment in their own kitchens. And because of the way the collections were formed, by sharing recipes from housewife to housewife, they largely coincide in their content. This way, from a small number of manuscript collections of recipes we gain information about gastronomy, but also about the everyday life of a large number of families in the same area, such as, in our example, the town of Osijek.

The manuscript recipe collections compiled by the following persons were examined:

  1. Ana Muhar          
  2. Božena Vincetić
  3. Danica Nađ
  4. Gordana Pfeifer   
  5. Greta Schmidt (née Haladi-Dietz)
  6. Katarina Šipka     
  7. Katica Jurišić
  8. Magdalena Janc   
  9. Manuela Kozić    
  10. Margareta Kučak
  11. Marija Kućar
  12. Marija Lukić
  13. Marija Mihelić     
  14. Nikolina Janc
  15. Ružica Vukušić   
  16. Teodora Janić      
  17. Vera Erl   
  18. Vjekoslava Sudić
  19. Zora Weiss

Reading Food History through Private Manuscript Collections of Recipes

Abstract

Almost every household has its own handwritten collection of cake recipes. It expresses the gastronomic preferences of each household and informs about the private, domestic, family sphere of life. In this article, manuscript collections of recipes from the city of Osijek, Croatia, dating back to the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, are analysed and compared to collections of recipes of modern Osijek families. Questions about the remaining gastronomic preferences in Osijek households since the 19th century and their origins are also addressed.

[i] Eugene Newton Anderson: Everyone Eats. Understanding Food and Culture. New York, London 2005, p. 130.

[ii] These manuscript collections mostly contain recipes for fine pastries, in which one need to pay more attention to the correct amounts and depend therefore more on written recipes. Michaela Fenske: … nachhaltige Praktiken. Kochen im Fokus einer Anthropologie des Schreibens. In: Markus Tauschek (ed.): Handlungsmacht, Widerständigkeit und kulturelle Ordnungen. Potenziale kulturwissenschaftlichen Denkens, Münster, New York 2017, pp. 101–116, here: p. 104. There are almost no recipes for sourdough cakes in these collections. These were simple in terms of ingredients, and the success of their preparation depended on the skills of the cook, which could not be written down anyway, but had to be mastered.

[iii] The focus on sweets is not only due to personal preferences but shows that dishes that were made less frequently (e. g. for Christmas), were more likely to be written down than ones that were being prepared on a regular basis. Erika Karasek: Handgeschriebene Kochbücher. In: Sabine Verk (ed.): Geschmackssache. Kochbücher aus dem Museum für Volkskunde, Berlin 1995, pp. 128–135, here: p. 128.

[iv] Nives Rittig-Beljak: Švapski kulinarij – dodir tradicija u Hrvatskoj / Süddeutsches Culinarium – Begegnung von Kochtraditionen in Kroatien. Varaždin 2003, p. 45: “Čak i vrlo dokone domaćice ne ispisuju recepte koje ne žele ili ne mogu iskušati.”

[v] Darija Kuharić, Marina Vinaj, Ines Hocenski: Family Mosaic – a Private Collection of Manuscript Recipe Books. In: 5th International Scientific Symposium Economy of Eastern Croatia – Vision and Growth. 29 (2016) 2, pp. 61–69, here: p. 61.

[vi] State Archives in Osijek. HR-DAOS-482 FIRINGER, Box. 6, Brožan, Recipe Notebook. Dr. Kamilo Firinger (Daruvar, 1893–Osijek, 1984) was a distinguished citizen and also the founder of this archives; Emilie Šegec was an ancestor of his mother’s.

[vii] Stjepan Sršan, Vilim Matić: Zavičajnici grada Osijeka 1901–1946 [People Domiciled in the Town of Osijek 1901–1946]. Osijek 2003, pp. 777–788.

[viii] Statistical data reveals a high level of bilingualism among those whose mother tongue was Croatian or Serbian: 66.94 % of Croatian speakers and 38.78 % of Serbian speakers indicated that they knew German. A Magyar szent korona országainak 1910. évi népszámlálása, ötödik rész [The 1910 Census of the Countries of the Holy Crown of Hungary. Fifth Part]. Budapest 1916, p. 148, p. 152, <https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/view/NEDA_1910_05/?pg=155&layout=s>, 4.3.2024.

[ix] “Eine besondern Mehlpseise mit Chauderau” from Maria Anna Neudecker: Die Bayerische Köchin in Böhmen. Ein Kochbuch. Achte, mit mehreren nüclichten Receptern vermehrte Auflage. München 1846, p. 382. The following recipe originates from the same book “Gefüllte Semeln mit Chadeoau” (p. 179). This recipe from Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. shows that it had been copied from someone’s notebook and not from a printed publication, because the author doesn’t know how to write Chaudeau; only the beginning of the recipe is the same, but the book mentions currant and the notebook apples; the version recorded in the notebook is shorter and modified. “Indianer Krapfen” from Rosalina Neumann: Die wirtschaftliche und geschickte Wiener Köchin (1873). Bremen 2011, p. 173; “Mandelbögen mürbe” from Die wahre Kochkunst, oder: neuestes, geprüftes und vollständiges Pesther Kochbuch von Josef Eggenberger. Pesth 1820, p. 357; “Erdäpfeln Puding mit Schinken” from Josephine Saint-Hilaire: Die wahre Kochkunst, oder: neuestes geprüftes und vollständiges Pesther Kochbuch. Sechste vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. Pesth 1835, p. 195; “Gutte Mehbögen” from Das kleine Linzer Kochbuch: worin eine Anzahl von mehr als 300 sehr guter und wohl geprükter Kochregeln von Fleisch und Fastenspeisen enthalten ist. Neueste Auflage. Linz 1841, p. 140; “Topfenfanzeln” from Die wirthschaftliche Wiener Köchin oder neuestes vollständiges Kochbuch, nach 45jährige eigener Erfahrung verfasst von Josepha Kraft. Dritte verbesserte und viel vermehrte Auflage, Wien 1845, p. 125; “Bisquittorte” from Anna Klara Messenbeck: Die Kunst eine geschickte Köchin und Haushälterin zu werden. Baier’sches Kochbuch, fünfte vielvermerhte und verbesserte Auflage. Augsburg, Regensburg (year of publication unknown, but between 1805 and 1823), pp. 485–486; “Mandelhobelschatten” from Die erfahrne Wiener Mehlspeisköchin: oder: erprobte Anweisungen zur Bereitung aller Arten von Dunst- und Germspeisen, so wie aller möglichen Gattungen Torten und feinen Bäckereien des In- und Auslandes, Verfasserin der bürgerlichen Küche. Wien 1839, p. 339. The recipe was copied with some modifications (e. g. Pomeranze – Pomorange; streichen – schmi(e)ren); “Quitten Sulz” from Eingerichtetes Kochbuch. Mehr als 400 Fastenspeisen aus dem 18. Jahrhundert samt einem Trenchier-Buch, Tübingen 1782, p. 111.

[x] Greta Schmidt, née Haladi-Dietz (1893, Daruvar–1981, Osijek), author. The notebooks belong to Antun Schmidt from Osijek, Greta Schmidt’s grandson.

[xi] Marija Kućar (1907, Varaždin–1980, Osijek); the notebook was obtained for research by Ivana Prpić, a distant relative of Marija Kućar’s.

[xii] Jagoda Truhelka: Zlatni danci II [Golden Days II]. Zagreb 1995, pp. 13–16, pp. 154–156.

[xiii] Kakovi su današnji muževi [What Today’s Husbands Are Like]. In: Hrvatski list (Osijek), 21st October 1923, p. 4. See also Truhelka: Zlatni danci, p. 96.

[xiv] One example where this is evident is the recipe “Feines Zukerwerk” from Elisabeth Stöckel: Die bürgerliche Küche, oder neuestes österreichisches Kochbuch für Bürgerfamilien aus der gebildeteren Mittelclasse. Vierte, vermehrte und verbesserte Aufflage. Wien 1837, p. 273. Although the recipe was copied word for word, the word “Zuker” was written instead of Zucker as in the book, the sentence starts with a small letter, and the nouns sometimes begin with a capital, sometimes with a small letter.

[xv] Concerning the period covered by the Koch Buch 1.8.7.3. Collection (the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century), it refers to literate women, but in Osijek at the beginning of the 20th century, 27 % of women and 17 % of men were illiterate. Jelena Červenjak, Zlata Živaković-Kerže: Modernizacijska kretanja i položaj žena u gradu Osijeku na prijelazu 19. u 20. stoljeće [Modernization Processes and the Position of Women in the Town of Osijek at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries]. In: Scrinia Slavonica 14 (2014), pp. 129–141, here: p. 138.

[xvi] Truhelka: Zlatni danci, p. 12.

[xvii] The word “arancini” comes from Italian and in Croatian cuisine denotes candied orange peel.

[xviii] Vilma Vukelić: Tragovi prošlosti. Memoari [Traces of the Past. Memoirs]. Zagreb 2003, p. 152: “[…] bademi, grožđice, arancini, limunov sok, cimet i vanilija”.

[xix] Dinko Župan: Dobre kućanice. Obrazovanje djevojaka u Slavoniji tijekom druge polovice 19. stoljeća [Good Housewives. The Education of Young Women in Slavonia during the Second Half of the 19th Century]. In: Scrinia Slavonica, 9 (2009), pp. 232–256, here: p. 235.

[xx] Vukelić: Tragovi prošlosti, pp. 97–98: “Čovjek zarađuje svoj novac bez velika truda i na stolu svakodnevno nalazi birana jela: pečene i pržene piliće, tuste dunavske šarane, patke i guske, kobasice i šunke, bogato punjene i začinjene sarme, okruglice, savijače i pokladnice, a nakon svega još i svježe otočeno Šeperovo pivo…” Kajetan Šeper founded a beer brewery in Osijek in 1856, and the locally brewed beer bore his name.

[xxi] Pork fat scones, Chocolate cake, Vanilla crescent rolls, Lemon koch, Russian cake, Linzer dough, Bishop’s bread, Chestnut cake, Russian pie, Rahm Strudel, Apple pie, Walnut cake, Chocolate cake, Muškaconi, Biscuit roll, Doboš cake, Weichsel Kuchen, Hazelnut cakes and Walnut bar.

[xxii] Doboš cake, Mandel bogen and Linzer cakes were adopted with slight modifications, whilst the recipes for the Lemon cake and the Crème café were partly adopted. The lemon cake (Koch Buch 1.8.7.3.) was upgraded with cream in Marija Kućar’s collection. The crème café by Marija Kućar is part of the adopted recipe for “Bisquittorte mit Kaffeekrem”.

[xxiii] Damen kaprizne; Alva torta (Kućar) – Alva šnite (Schmidt).

[xxiv] Nives Rittig-Beljak: Dijalog hrvatskih i austrijskih tiskanih kuharica [Dialogue between Croatian and Austrian Printed Cookbooks]. In: Nives Rittig-Beljak (ed.): Prvi i drugi međunarodni seminar Zajednice Nijemaca u Hrvatskoj 2001/2002. Zbornik radova [First and Second International Seminar of the Society of German in Croatia. A Collection]. Zagreb, Varaždin 2001, pp. 101–114, here: p. 110: “Poznavanje klasičnih i novih recepata pridonosio je ugledu kuće, a u skupljanju recepata osim činovničkih žena sudjelovale su i žene časnika, trgovaca, prosvjetara.”

[xxv] The Pejačević family (the baron Josip II. Pejačević or Našice branch) was the richest family in Croatia and beyond and resided on its property in Našice.

[xxvi] Recipes from the Pejačević Castle in Našice (copy of the manuscript). Heritage Museum in Našice.

[xxvii] In order to compare the old manuscript collections, 17 manuscript collections of modern local housewives were analysed. Lukić, Anamarija. Brekalo, Miljenko: “Die ideale Aufgabe der Hausfrau” – bilješke s receptima kao izvor za istraživanje osječke gastronomske tradicije [“Die ideale Aufgabe der Hausfrau” – Recipe Notebooks as a Source for Researching Osijek’s Gastronomic Tradition]. In: Godišnjak Njemačke zajednice / DG Jahrbuch 25 (2018), pp. 49–66.

[xxviii] Collections of recipes are usually created in a chronological order and are constantly updated based on the preferences of the author. An old recipe can be completely new for an individual author, and she, as such, writes it in her collection using the next empty space.