ABSTRACT
The title is "Some problems in indexing Middle English recipes," but the author shall in fact be concerned only with medical recipes, of which in all conscience there are enough. His interest in Middle English medical recipes started from one of their own manuscripts in Aberdeen University Library, MS 258, a late fifteenth-century manuscript which contains only herbal and medical material. The author looks at more Middle English medical recipes than most people. If the fairly minor modifications to the draft instructions are made, it should be possible with little more effort than for other texts to identify collections likely to be standard and provide at least the sort of basis for further detailed investigation of relationships that the Index of Middle English Verse provides for lyrics. For verse, the original Brown and Robbins Index of Middle English Verse took a firm stand on 1500, though Robbins and Cutler took a more liberal line in the Supplement.
