Physicians wrote the word at the top of the prescriptions, recording what the patient received, as in a formula for a medicinal preparation. However, other historical resources say it was the word “receipt” that pharmacists used. Culinary verbiage prior to the 1700s was receipt, so says the OED. It was not used in reference to cooking until 1716. The early 1700s saw the advent of “recipe,” but it didn’t supplant “receipt” until well into the twentieth century, as indicated by these three volumes: Tullie's Receipts: Nineteeth Century Plantation Plain Style Southern Cooking and Living Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the pages of Godey's Lady's Book, and Confederate Receipt Book, a Compilation of Over One Hundred Receipts, Adapted to the Times.Īmazingly, the usage of our modern word recipe for culinary-related purposes, is a mere three-hundred years old.Īccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, recipe became part of the English language in the 1400s and was used by physicians. (Though I guess they’re not just “cash” registers anymore are they.) Receipt is a statement of money or goods received: The strip of paper from a cash register given to me after I buy something at the market. In today’s vernacular, recipe refers to instructions and ingredients used for cooking purposes: The 3 x 5 card on which my great-aunt Laura wrote out instructions for her pie crust. As an author of historical fiction, I did some checking to find out which word I should be using for my stories set in the 1800s.īoth receipt and recipe are derivatives of the Latin word recipere, a verb meaning to take or receive.Ī well-used recipe from the author's collection. The first time I saw the word “receipt” used in a historical cooking reference, I thought I’d misread the word “recipe.”
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