Frederick Philip Stieff, son of the piano-making Baltimore family, was a celebrated amateur chef and a menu historian. He collected, mainly using hand-written family papers and the memories of aged cooks, old Maryland recipes. This volume provides cooking and mixing instructions which cover, in separate chapters, everything from oysters, a speciality of the counties bordering on the bay, to buckwheat and maple syrup, indigenous to western Maryland. It fills out the stories behind the recipes in accompanying headnotes: the recipe for Ellin North pudding was handed down to Ellin North, born in Baltimore in 1740 to her great grandson, Walter de Curzon Poultney. There are also appendices, such as that offering the menu for a traditional hunt breakfast at Elkridge.