"There is a James Doak who is recorded to have married a woman (Hannah Doak) in Marblehead, Massachusetts in the 1768. She died in 1775 (her gravestone can actually be viewed on the internet) and he re-married in 1778. However, there is no record of James Doak having been born or having died in Marblehead during this era. In addition, it is questionable to me whether much, if any, of this manuscript is in the hand of James Doak, but certainly it was owned by him in 1762. The manuscript leaves appear to be uniformly a type of British watermarked paper (see Gravell, Foreign Watermarks, pp. 95, #292).

The recipes contained in this cookery manuscript represent the preferred meat-heavy diet of the pre-Revolutionary War era (the date 1762 occurs several times in the mss). There are recipes for preparing beef, mutton and lamb, veal, pork (including a roasting and a baking pig), geese and "turkies," ducks, pheasants and partridges, larks, woodcocks and snipes, pigeons, venison, hares and rabbits, tripe, tongue, heads, and several sauces and "dressings." Surprisingly to me, there are only one or two recipes for cod. The methods of preparation include ragouts, fricassees, boiling, broiling, etc., and directions are given for these methods as well. There is comparatively little on fruits, grains, or vegetables, though artichokes, morels, rice & vermicelli, truffles, lemons, and oranges at least are mentioned, and spices are used freely. Somewhat disconcertingly, there is no mention of native American stapes such as corn, beans, or squash."