Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

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This 1886 volume by William Carew Hazlitt is not itself a cookbook of usable recipes but a scholarly survey and bibliography of English cookery literature and dining customs from antiquity through the eighteenth century. Hazlitt, working as an antiquarian and bibliographer, traces how cooking practices, cookbooks, kitchens, and table manners evolved across centuries, drawing on manuscripts, household records, and printed cookery books such as the Form of Cury, Robert May's works, Hannah Wolley, E. Smith's Compleat Housewife, and Hannah Glasse's Art of Cookery. Long stretches quote or excerpt period recipes directly, giving the reader a taste of Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian cookery in its own words, alongside discussion of diet among different social classes, kitchen equipment, meal structures, and the slow spread of forks and plates. The book functions as a reader's guide to older cookbooks rather than a standalone kitchen manual. Modern readers interested in food history, the sociology of dining, or the bibliographic history of English cookery will find it a useful survey, though it demands patience with dense historical prose and antiquarian digressions. It closes with an alphabetical index covering the full range of topics discussed.

The book opens with an introductory historical survey (section 1) tracing food practices from ancient civilizations through early England. Sections 2 through 6 move chronologically through the history of English and Scottish cookery books, from medieval manuscripts and royal feasts to named printed works by authors such as Robert May, Hannah Wolley, E. Smith, Hannah Glasse, and later figures like Dr. Kitchener and Eliza Acton, with sections 4 and 5 pausing to reproduce substantial extracts of recipes from E. Smith's Compleat Housewife. Sections 6 and 7 turn to social and economic history, discussing the diet of yeomen and the poor, provision prices, bread, sugar, and beverages. Sections 7 and 8 examine kitchen design, utensils, staff hierarchies, and the shift from trenchers to plates and from two meals a day to more. Section 9 covers table etiquette, tavern dining, and closes with a full alphabetical index to the work.