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COOK BOOKS
In the 2nd century B.C.
a Greek gourmet called ATHENAEUS produced a treatise on food & food
preparation, giving recipes for e.g. stuffed vine leaves and varieties of
cheesecakes. He makes reference to over 20 food writers as far back as 350 B.C.
A Roman called APICIUS (living in the reign of Tiberius AD14-37)
produced a cook book so prized that editions are still printed.
A master chef at the Court of Kublai Khan (1215-94) called HUOU printed
a collection of mainly soup recipes called ”The important things to know about
eating & drinking.
One of the earliest cook books in English was “The form of cury” (cury
was a term for cooked food) compiled in the 12th Century
These cookbooks were written by chefs and gourmets who had them privately
printed.
During the 18th & 19th centuries in England in middle class and
grand houses recipes were usually handwritten by the lady of the house. These books were often bound and would
contain, as well as recipes for food, advice on a variety of household matters
from “cures” for illnesses to how to get rid of pests.
However, in 1847 a French chef at the Reform Club in London, ALEXIS
SOYER, left his job to travel to Ireland, having decided that his services
would be “more useful to the million than confining them … to the wealthy
few”. There he visited cottages and the
homes of the middle classes and invented receipts ( an early word for recipes)
which could be cooked using a minimum of humble utensils at little
expense. He also designed a portable
kitchen on which during the Irish famine he cooked and delivered rations for
26,600 persons daily. In his book “A
Shilling Cookery for the People” displayed here he describes how this moveable
kitchen could be set up and used by an army on the move to provide fresh food
(enough to feed 1000 troops inside 2 hours).
MRS BEETON (1836-65) was the first person to publish recipes for a mass
readership. New editions of her “Book
of Household Management” are still published.
Although she took recipes from many sources, they were all rigorously
tested and adjusted. She included some
recipes for large numbers of people, but the majority of them were for 4-6
persons. She was also different from
earlier writers in that she was an amateur cook, the wife of a wealthy
publisher who published what became her “Book of Household Management” in one
of his monthly journals between 1859 and1860. For the first time she provided
housewives with accurate quantities and meticulous instructions and in her
short life (she died aged 28), and without the aid of television, she became
the most famous cookery writer of all time.
COLLINGWOOD, F & WOOLAMS, J. The universal cook. 1792.
A COLLECTION OF RECEIPTS. 1785.
WALL, A. Recipes. 1844.
WOOD, J. Recipes. 1856.
SOYER, A. A shilling cookery for the people. 1855.
MODEL COOKERY AND HOUSEKEEPING BOOK.
n.d.
dated – 20 July 2004