Handwritten cookery books are unparalleled documents of real use that describe how ingredients and techniques change over time. For Chef Fritz, these manuscripts and older printed books often provide a foundation for building modern recipes. His rendition of an 18th-century recipe for seed cake strewn with caraway seeds is based on a number of sources, some of which use candied seeds known as comfits.

The above copy of one of England’s best historical pastry books, The Complete Confectioner, is one of a dozen titles in Blank’s library that once belonged to American cookbook author and teacher James Beard.