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Old English Dishes: Cooking

In 1730 appeared "The Compleat Practical Cook, or A new System of the whole Art and Mystery of Cooking," a work with sixty curious copperplates of courses, written by Charles Carter, cook to the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Pontefract, and Lord Cornwallis. In the preface to his "City and Country Cook" the author says: "What I have published is almost the only book, one or two excepted, which of late years has come into the world, that has been the result of the author's own practice and experience; for though very few eminent practical Cooks have ever cared to publish what they knew of the art, yet they have been prevailed on, for a small premium from a Bookseller, to lend their names to performances in this art, unworthy their owning."

The titles of many of the early cook-books are not wanting in quaintness or directness, as the case may be, however devoid of practical worth their contents. $ Thus we find the following among a host of other English works relating to the subject:

The Good Husive's Handmaid, 1550.

The Householder's Philosophie, 1588.