The collection contains a book holding both recipes and receipts, likely written by an Elvira Jane Hanna whose name is signed on many of the volume's pages. The recipes include Sweet Potato Waffles, Turtle Soup, Bacon Frase, Ginger Beer, Cottage Pudding, Panada, Arrow Root Jelly, Oyster Pie, and Election Cake. The receipts in the collection are medical, cataloguing purchases of tonics, cleaning methods, and hair restoratives. There are 49 written pages of recipes. Several pages have been excised and others damaged. The recipes are written on thin paper, and the author skips every other page to maintain legibility. The book was likely written in the mid nineteenth century.