his cookery-book illustrations

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Defining Good Food: Cookery-Book Illustrations

in England

T R OY B I C K H A M

The eighteenth century marked the advent of the modern domestic cookery

book in England. Unlike their predecessors, the new cookery books were

cheap and abundant and written not for a small cadre of elite professional

cooks but instead for domestic use by socially aspiring households. In con-

sequence, these books signalled the intersection of the routine of eating with

the hopes and anxieties of the burgeoning middling social ranks. Food and

eating changed substantially during the eighteenth century. The growth and

the stability of the empire ensured that former overseas luxuries, such

as coffee, tea and sugar, became commonplace; earlier changes in domestic

production secured greater variety and abundance of staples than ever; and

the consumer revolution emboldened the English to work longer and harder

to obtain little comforts, which included luxury and better quality foods.1 In

the face of such plenty and diversity, selection and presentation rather than

mere possession or abundance became essential to conveying messages of

taste, wealth and power. The language of cookery and eating, as Roland

Barthes has astutely described it, had suddenly become more complex for a

large swathe of English society.2

Cookbooks, like other texts in the self-help genre of print that exploded

during the eighteenth century, played the vital role of guide, helping men and

women to negotiate the entire gamut of the food experience from purchase

point to dinner-table presentation. These books were prescriptive to their core,

and their popularity helped to create national cookery and dining standards

at least for the middling and gentry households that used them.

This article describes how illustrations worked as key components of these

cookery books, visually reinforcing their prescriptive messages. As such,

they offer important insights into the nature of food preparation and con-

sumption. The illustrations, which abounded, can be divided into roughly

three groups: diagrams for table settings, portraits of the authors, and

kitchen scenes. Together they informed mistresses of how a proper kitchen

should function and how guests would expect the meal to appear no easy

task, considering the constant influx of new dishes and evolving table settings

and etiquette. Such things mattered, the cookery books and social com-

mentators argued again and again, because they ultimately reflected the

quality of the household and its mistress and master. The cookery books and

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVol.31 No.3 (2008)

2008 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.


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their illustrations thus created, and ultimately reflected, a set of public

expectations for the domestic rituals of household cookery and eating as well

as the extent to which food as fashion had become a business. Not

surprisingly, all of these images were idyllic. The table diagrams showed items

in perfect symmetry and proportion; the portraits were more brand images

than actual likenesses; and the kitchen scenes showed happiness and order.

But this was exactly what these books were peddling the simplification of

difficult tasks, the instillation of economy, and display of fashion that would

all ultimately impress others.

* * *

There were few places better suited to showing off ones status and wealth

than at the table. It was the height of refinement and civility. As the TheHypochondriack remarked in theLondon Magazinein January1779:

Amongst the arts by which civilization is marked, that of cookery, or the

preparation of victuals for the table, is one of the most conspicuous. [...] In the

most savage situation mankind devour their meat raw, and go naked; and from

this state of brutality there is an ascent by innumerable gradations to the

luxury and elegance of a company of ladies and gentlemen of high rank sitting

at a dinner in London or Paris.3

At every stage acquisition, preparation, presentation and consumption

food was malleable to the dictates of the English obsession with politeness.

The consumption of food in middling and elite households was often what

Lorna Weatherill has described as a front stage activity in which families

displayed their wealth and status in a quasi-public setting.4 Aside from the

food, which typically accounted for as much as half of the average house-

holds expenditure, a substantial portion of a familys material wealth was on

display at a meal cutlery, table decorations, plates and even the actual table

itself.Food was a part of fashion in the eighteenth century. The variations of cost,

availability and a range of choices enabled a connoisseurship that depended

as much upon knowledge as upon means, thus allowing for those sorts of

judgements of taste and breeding that made the hair-splitting distinctions

of groups and individuals within the sometimes amorphous ranks of the

English middling and gentry ranks. As John Trusler, an author of numerous

behaviour instruction manuals, remarked in his best-selling Honours of the

Table(1788),

Of all the graceful accomplishments and every branch of polite education, it

has long [been] admitted, that a gentleman and lady never shew themselves to

more advantage, than in acquitting themselves well in the honours of their

table; that is to say, in serving their guests and treating their friends agreeable to

their rank and situation in life.5

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His guide narrates each aspect of the meal in tedious detail so that the

youthful or inexperienced host might avoid awkwardness. Diners noticed

discrepancies. The dons of University College, Oxford wagered bottles of port

on whether or not cook had properly used calves feet to make his jellies. 6

Fanny Burney complained in detail in her diary in 1773that a hashed calfs

head was nothing of the sort unless it followed the criteria laid out by her

favourite and best-selling cookery book author, Hannah Glasse.7 The follies of

failed cookery even entered the humour of the day. A joke in the popularJoe

Millers Jests, begins with some gentlemen having a hare or supper. The

cook, the joke continues, had crammed the belly full of thyme, but had not

above half roasted the hare, the legs being almost raw; which one of the

company observing, said, There was too much thyme (time) in the belly, and

too little in the legs.8

Tea-drinking offers a useful vehicle for describing how these forces played

out. Tea had outsold coffee to become the unassailable king of the English hot

beverage trade by the 1740s, appearing in even the poorest households.9

Virtually all of the 62,000shops licensed to sell it by the end of the century

would have offered several types, some more than a dozen.10 Retailers liberal

use of credit, the division of products into ounce-sized portions, and the

postal system, ensured that even the rarest of teas were available even to

labouring households in remote regions.11 Awareness of the variety of types

was so common that it entered into puns in newspapers political com-

mentary. In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, when a group of colonists

protested British taxes by dumping tax-laden East India Company Tea into

Bostons harbour in 1773, the London-printed Saint Jamess Chronicle

remarked upon the military preparations making against the refractory

Bostonians, that they have refused to admit our Hyson and Congo, the

Government here have determined to try how they relish our Gunpowder

Tea.12 Once the ingredients had been secured there was still the service itself,

with a host of foreign and domestic porcelains and pottery from which to

choose. Then there was the process of preparing the tea. Claiming not to

support the prejudice itself, The New London Cookery and Complete Domestic

Guideremarked: It is asserted by some female connoisseurs in tea, and per-

haps it would be more difficult to disprove than to account for the fact, that

tea tastes much better from Indian than British china.13 Once the tea

had been selected, prepared and served, the setting became an arena of

social display and judgement. Addressed to Parents and Tutors and with

characters such as Miss Prattle and Master Thoughtful, such works as the

pocket-sized Tea-Table Dialogues offered instruction in the form moral tales

so that children might improve the Heart and correct the Manners.14

To help negotiate such mazes there was the modern cookery book that

emerged in the mid-eighteenth century and flourished thereafter. Printed

collections of recipes were not, of course, new in the eighteenth century; in

fact, they appeared soon after the advent of printing itself. The vast majority

of these earlier texts, however, were the works of court cooks aimed at the

Cookery-Book Illustrations in England 475



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professional cooks of the super elite. What appeared in the mid-eighteenth

century was more akin to the manuscript collections that had circulated

amongst middling women for centuries. Some books protested that they were

intended for the Use of all Ranks in general [...] either the Peer or the

Mechanic and that the recipes ingredients were within the Purchase of all

Ranks of people, but the books clearly appealed almost exclusively to the

middling ranks and the gentry.15 Although the bulk of the books consisted of

recipes, their primary purpose was that of domestic guide, and so they

included the sort of information of value to the middling housewife, who as a

result of geographic distance from helpful family advisors, or newly acquired

social status, lacked easy access to the information necessary for the smooth

running of her household. Some works also simultaneously addressed the

primary housekeeper, who in a more prosperous or bachelor household

might play a similar role. Thus, the cookery books included advice on how to

hire and use domestic help, household economy, mathematical tables for

estimating prices while shopping, and medicinal remedies for common

ailments. In terms of cooking, the expectation of all of these books was that

either the mistress would prepare the dishes herself or that her servants

would do so under her direction. Generally priced at two to six shillings, they

were affordable to their target audience. The genre was a tremendous success.

What started as a trickle of titles in the 1730s turned into an explosion by the

end of the century, with the best-selling works appearing in over a dozen

editions each and the genre as a whole selling over half a million copies by the

end of the century.16

The books themselves were consciously constructed as guides, presenting

themselves as promoting key traits that would appeal to middling and gentry

mistresses: ease of use, fashion and, most importantly, economy. This mes-

sage was evident from the outset, as titles cued readers on the books guiding

style with such words and phrases as ladys complete assistant and House-

wifes Companion. The titles also evoked expectations of economy and ease

with phrases such as the prudent housewife, plain and easy and easy and

familiar. Such pledges had undoubted appeal. After all, commentators noted,

cookery was not a casual pursuit; rather it was a complex art that required

precision and study. Francis Collingwood and John Woollams went so far as to

insist in the opening lines of the preface to their cookery book that Cookery is

become a Science.17 Even books written by professional cooks increasingly

presented themselves as lighthouses in treacherous and unfamiliar waters.

Such authors as William Gelleroy, the late Cook to her Grace the Duchess of

Argyle and now [...] the Lord Mayor of the City of London, included in his

title the whole art of cookery and pastery made easy and familiar and

concluded his preface with the hope that it will be useful to the notably less

grand readers of his book.18 The books also routinely promised buyers the

value that no other purchase would be necessary, with stock words and

phrases such as compleat and universal. Penelope Bradshaws, The Family

Jewel, and Compleat Housewifes Companion; Or, The Whole Art of Cookery Made

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Plain and Easy (1754) impressively managed to include almost all of these

desirables within a single title.

The material was separated neatly into categories listed on the table of

contents. Groupings varied but the books typically divided the recipes, which

usually numbered in the hundreds, into several dozen types of foods, such as

soups and fricassees, or into seasons. The recipes themselves consisted of

simple preparation narratives with ingredients listed within the text, and they

often concluded with serving directions. The language throughout was

step-by-step in its prescription and made few assumptions, as the first lines

of Martha Bradleys The British Housewife; Or, The Cook, Housekeepers, and

Gardiners Companion(1756) exemplify: We are to conduct the Cook and the

Housekeeper throughout the year, and we begin with the first month.19

* * *

The most common illustrations were diagrams of table layouts of dishes,

or bills of fare as most cookery books called them. Appearing regularly

by 1730s and a standard feature in the vast majority of cookery books

throughout the second half of the century, these illustrations could num-

ber over one hundred in a single book. Most, such as Sarah Harrisons

Devonshire-based book that first appeared in 1733 (Fig.1), started with just a

handful of layouts in early editions and then steadily added more over time

(by the1760s her book featured several dozen).

The diagrams differed substantially in quality from book to book. The

Manchester-based Elizabeth Raffald offered large, copper-plate pull-out dia-

grams in her Experienced English Housekeeper (first 1769), whereas others,

such as Ann Peckham, mapped out the diagrams in typeset, using numbers to

signify dish placement and a key at the bottom of the page explaining which

number meant which dish.20 Martha Bradley offered perhaps the most

detailed advice in The British Housewife by including simple images of the

foods themselves in the diagrams. Regardless of quality, all of the diagrams

had the same purpose: to instruct the user on selection and display of food for

meals and to bring together the taste of the palate with the taste of the visual.

As Martha Bradley remarked, To please the Palate is one Design of this

Branch of Study [art of cookery], and to please the Eye is the other.21

In what Stephen Mennell has described as the civilizing of the appetite,

selection, rather than abundance, had become the sign of status in the

eighteenth-century English meal.22 Thanks to changes in agriculture and

infrastructure, along with relative peace and prosperity, food was plentiful

throughout the period. Provincial urban centres joined Londons rapid pace

of growth to create massive, concentrated markets that entrepreneurs and

producers around the world raced to exploit. These networks brought items as

diverse as Devonshire cheese, Virginia tobacco and Barbadian sugar together

on the same table. Urban areas were not alone in these changing patterns of

consumption or consumer revolution, as it is most often described. Choice




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abounded at the tens of thousands of groceries operating throughout the

nation by mid-century. For instance, a consumer shopping in even the small

Cotswold town of Shipton-under-Wychwood would have had access to at

least half a dozen types of Chinese tea, three or more blends of Arabian and

West Indian coffees, and a host of spices and dried fruits.23 The cookery books

1. Bill of fare for the first course of a dinner in Sarah Harrison, The

House-Keepers Pocket-Book,and Compleat Family Cook,6th edn rev. (London:

printed for R. Ware,1757). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian

Library, University of Oxford; shelfmark781 f.187, p.110

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helped users to negotiate the changing fare with explanations of the various

ingredients, the dishes histories, and methods of preparation. They pro-

vided such fashionable new foreign dishes as curry the Indian way and New

England pancakes along with traditional English roasts and stews.

The bills of fare and their illustrations reflect the cookery books primary

aim to bring order to the confusion brought on by the diversity of choice and

the powerful desires of mistresses to be fashionable while remaining prudent.

They detailed how best to match the diverse dishes in order to produce a single

course that would both have the greatest appeal to guests and took advantage

of seasonal price fluctuations, qualities and ingredients. Most collections of

bills of fare divided according to season, course and meal. In hisThe English

Art of Cookery, Richard Briggs, for example, was typical in his offering

illustrations of the dinner bills of fare for two courses the usual number,

given that sweets and savouries typically appeared in the same setting during

this period for each month of the year.24 Charlotte Masons The Ladies

Assistantoffered the greatest number of settings with 140in her inaugural

edition alone, which she divided between season, meal and size of the party

dining.25 Others included layouts for special occasions, such as Martha

Bradleys impressive A Table for a Wedding Supper. A handful of cooks to the

good and the great offered bills of fare for nationally celebrated meals, such

as the feast which William Gelleroy orchestrated at Londons Guildhall for

the 1761 Lord Mayors Day.26 Clearly, he did not expect the feast to be repeated

at his readers homes. However, readers could nevertheless marvel at the

splendour of the occasion, and in this sense the settings reveal the cookery

books as tools of the imagination. Regardless of how dreary life might be in

the immediate environs of womans own kitchen, the cookery book could be

an imaginary gateway to lavish royal dinners and exotic cultures.

Visual display was an essential component of these meals, and the

illustrated bills of fare provided further detailed instructions on the precise

placement of the dishes to help accomplish a pleasing effect. The best Dinner

in the World, Martha Bradley warned housewives across the nation, will

have an ill Aspect if the Dishes are not properly disposed on the Table.27 The

communicative power of the table was not an invention of the new style of

cookery book. Early manuscript collections of recipes of elite households

often include handwritten layouts for specific occasions. An anonymous one

from the1720s is typical in that it maps such meals as the Kings dinner at

Lord Ranelagh, but more telling is that it equally describes the settings of

dinners and feasts laid out for less notable guests. Such meals include tenants

dinners, meals for our Poor neighbors, Ordinary Trades People and The

best sort of Trades People.28 Carefully crafted with pyramids of sweet and

savoury pies on porcelain dishes, an array of meats and special treats that

sometimes included chocolate and oranges, these meals for lower social ranks

could at once display the wealth, taste and generosity of the hosts. The new

cookery books made these tools more accessible, and, in consequence, more

standardised and scrutinised.




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Cookery books regularly included visually stunning desserts, such as the

section of Felix Farleys best-selling The London Art of Cookery on Elegant

Ornaments for a Grand Entertainment, which featured such spectacles as a

giant sugar Chinese Temple and an edible Floating Desart Island that used

eryngo root to create village dwellings.29 But, greater attention to aesthetics

also increasingly accompanied more routine meals, and the cookery books

focused primarily on these. The vast quantities of genuine and imitation

Asian porcelain that appeared on even artisan tables during the eighteenth

century is testimony to the growing social importance of the more routine

meal. As Weatherill has noted in her extensive survey of probate inventories

from the half-century following 1675, Asian porcelain ownership rose from 4

to 80%, and ownership of cutlery rose from 8% to 64%.30 Most cookery books

included discussions of serving implements, noting which bowls and plates

suited particular dishes, and the bills of fare paid attention to how these

dishes appeared in concert, as well as the economy and fashion of the food

itself. As Martha Bradley explained in the introduction to her collection of

bills of fare, she considered not only what Kind [of provision] is in Season, but

what Parts or Joints are most handsome at the Table; in what Manner they

appear best, and with what Additions.31

* * *

Portraits of the author were the second most common type of illustrations in

cookery books. Although they are not to be found in every book, a rough

majority of titles included them. Portraits typically were busts of the authors

that appeared early in the work usually immediately after the title page, as

frontispieces and the subject almost invariably posed formally. These were

not action shots of the authors at work; they rarely did more than hold their

cookery books. The portraits served a number of functions, particularly in

their creation of an intimacy between the author and reader and in their

formation of commercial brand images. They thus ultimately reflected the role

of the books as business ventures as well as how aware producers were of their

potential market. After all, cookery books were among the most popular

non-fiction genres, with an annual market easily worth in excess of ten

thousand pounds by the end of the century. At least partly in consequence,

leading cookery titles received the backing of the same publishers who

produced the works of such notable authors as Daniel Defoe, Adam Smith and

Edward Gibbon.32 One of theArt of London Cookerys publishers, for example,

was James Scatcherd, whose authors included the explorer James Cook.

At the heart of the portraits purpose was the conveyance of intimacy. As

noted above, the nature of the cookery book was advisory, and it served to

replace or augment the wisdom that had traditionally been shared down the

generations by women either within the same family or a close community.

The explosion of the reinvented cookery book as a domestic guide did not

happen until changes in English society particularly the combination of the

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emergence of materially ambitious middling social ranks, politeness and

urbanisation strained traditional information networks for a larger number

of literate women.33 The kitchen and the dinner table, no matter how front-

stage and open to public scrutiny they had become, remained at the centre

of domestic life. These still functioned largely as intimate family occasions;

outsiders were invited. The selection of a cookery book was, in some ways, an

invitation to the author, whether as a guest or by employment, into the heart

of the home. A portrait put a likeable, familiar face to the printed advice an

elderly aunt-like sage, the young, friendly housewife, the dashing celebrity

male cook. Portrait captions, prefaces and title pages gave the portrait

character and credentials, such as decades of domestic service, the title of

Mrs and the claim to experienced housewife status, or qualifications as a

professional cook in well-known venues. All of this served to provide a

pathway for an imagined intimacy that was necessary for the mistress to

entrust such an important aspect of the household to someone else.

In many cases these portraits served as the visual face of a brand. The

relationship of cookery books with their purported authors was often tenuous

at the best of times. Although willingly lending his name to the title and selling

the book at his place of work, Felix Farley probably did not write much of the

cookbook that claimed him as its author; Mrs Cole, the author ofThe Ladys

Complete Guide; or Cookery in All Its Branches, probably did not exist; and, not

unlike other successful works of this kind Hannah Glasses book continued to

appear in new editions long after her death in fact, for seventy-three years

following her death in 1770!34 Cooks who worked in well-known venues traded

heavily on their public status, invariably noting their qualifications on the title

page and sometimes including a visual image of the venue.

One of the most popular celebrity chef works of the day was Farleys Art

of London Cookery, which enjoyed over a dozen editions in the two decades

following its first appearance in 1782. Farley was the principal cook at the

famous London Tavern, which in that year alone hosted such nationally

reported celebrations as the East India Company directors party for victories

over the Dutch in Asia at Batavia and Padang, and Admiral George Brydges

Rodneys festivities following his victory over the French West India fleet at

the Battle of the Saintes.35 The frontispiece includes both a portrait of Farley

(Fig.2) and the recognisable front of the tavern. Farleys portrait appeared at

the front of virtually every edition, and, although it changed to varying

degrees at least four times, he remained young and dapper. The portrait

caption and the title page invariably noted his association with the London

Tavern, although the image of the building itself appeared more sporadically

among the editions.

Sometimes the portraits were the victims of the success of the cookery

books in which they appeared. Especially in those works reprinted over several

decades or more, publishers often changed the portraits themselves, altering

such details as the clothing or hairstyle to make them seem more fashionable

and contemporary all with the undoubted intention of selling more books.




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No book was more guilty of this than Elizabeth Raffalds The Experienced

English Housekeeper, which first included a portrait of an elderly Raffald in the

eighth edition two years after her death in 1781. The next four editions,

which all purported to include new recipes and advice from the author,

carried versions of this portrait, but by 1803 the publishers had apparently

decided that youth was in fashion and replaced the elderly version of Raffald

with a beaming young one.

* * *

Although not as common as table diagrams or authors portraits, illustrated

scenes of cookery were sufficiently common to merit discussion here, not least

2. Frontispiece to John Farley,The London Art of Cookery, 10th edn (London:

Printed by C. Whittingham, 1801). The British Library. All Rights Reserved

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because they are among the few popularly printed illustrations of domestic life

which have come down to us. In keeping with the rest of the content of these

books, the cookery scenes were, of course, idyllic, and they offer far better

glimpses into what was prescribed and pursued ratherthanthe realities of food

preparation in a middling or elite household. The kitchens are faultlessly

organised and tidy and the figures neat and apparently content. Most,

unsurprisingly, show kitchens in which a cookery book features, either in the

form of the mistress or housekeeper consulting the open book as she prepares

the meal, or of the mistress copying out the recipe for a waiting servant. As

early as 1736, Nathan Bailey featured images of women churning butter,

making wine and cooking while reading his domestic dictionary.36 Cheap and

abundant, these books were not too precious to prevent their exposure to the

hazards of the eighteenth-century English kitchen. At a cost of a few shillings,

they were not necessarily disposable, but nor were they irreplaceable.

Although admittedly they offer only anecdotal evidence, such illustrations

suggest a broad culture of literacy among women by indicating an

expectation that higher ranking female servants could read.37 During the

second half of the century, newspapers regularly carried advertisements for

female cooks, and the cookery book authors themselves often professed an

expectation that servants would be reading their works. As Hannah Glasse

remarked in the preface of herArt of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, If I have

not wrote in the high, polite, Stile, I hope that I shall be forgiven; for my In-

tention is to instruct the lower Sort and therefore must treat them in their

own Way. The result, she promised, was that every Servant who can but read

will be capable of making a tolerable good Cook, and those who have the least

Notion of Cookery, cant miss of being very good ones.38

The regular presence of the head female of the house emphasised that even

ladies with a host of servants should maintain some role in food preparation

through the selection and presentation of the food.39 As Charlotte Mason

remarked in the preface of her very popular cookery book, the table reflected

the host: It is certain, that a woman never appears to greater advantage than

at the head of Well-Regulated table [...] a table may be so conducted as to be

the taste and management of the mistress.40 If not inclined to micromanage

the selection of the specific dishes, she could at least exercise her taste by

carefully choosing the most appropriate printed guide for her servants to

consult. As Glasse remarked in the conclusion to her preface: I shall say no

more, and only hope my Book will answer the Ends I intend it for; which is to

improve the Servants, and save the ladies a great deal of Trouble.41 The

acceptability of this practice is illustrated in the frontispiece of William

August Hendersons The Housekeepers Instructor; Or The Universal Family Cook

(Fig.3). According to its caption, the illustration depicts A Lady presenting

her servant with the UNIVERSAL FAMILY COOK who diffident of her own

knowledge has recourse to the Work for Information.

Henderson was one of the many professional cooks who designed his work

for domestic use, addressing both servants and housewives. The engraving




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was made especially for his cookery book. Hendersons frontispiece also re-

flects the status of men in English cooking practices. English women played a

greater role in food preparation in middling and elite households than their

European continental counterparts did, authoring far more cookery books

and serving as professional cooks in elite households at a much higher rate.42

This is not to suggest that cookery represented a separate or private sphere

for women. The public functions of the domestic meal in terms of its reflection

of household management, taste and status along with the shift towards

3. Frontispiece to William Augustus Henderson,The Housekeepers

Instructor; Or, Universal Family Cook,5th edn (London: W. & J. Stratford,1793). Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, University of

Oxford; shelfmark Johnson e.1918

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the visible shopping for food in markets and groceries severely eroded the

privacy of the meal.43 Men, of course, took an interest in domestic cookery,

but in comparison with the ranking women they typically played a decidedly

secondary role in middling and most elite homes. Thus, in Hendersons scene

a lady issues the instructions. Many professional cooks from elite public

venues and households were men, including Henderson, but when they

published their works they knowingly addressed a predominately female

audience and publicly counted their female fellow authors as peers. As with

other male cookery writers, when in 1797 Francis Collingwood and John

Woollams, Principal Cooks at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand,

unveiled the culinary secrets of the elite venue that would host the two

thousand guests at Charles James Foxs birthday party the following year,

they entitled their work city and country housekeeper and paid homage to

authors Hannah Glasse and Charlotte Mason.44

Once the food reached the table, however, mens knowledge, taste and skill

went on display. During the eighteenth century, meals became less formal,

with guests serving themselves and each other from dishes that either the

hosts or servants laid out on the table.45 Prescribed seating arrangements

continued to take account of social rank, but they also increasingly advocated

malefemalemale patterns in which the male assisted the females on either

side of him. This offered ice-breakers for conversation, and whether or not

a man could properly identify and serve the dish forced him to expose his

culinary knowledge and taste. In consequence, men who moved in polite

circles needed at least a rudimentary knowledge of cookery.

Carving, which in the illustration the young man practises with the aid

of Hendersons book, was the most public extension of a polite mans under-

standing of cookery, because the host was expected to perform the act without

assistance in full view of his guests. Women also carved, but the male host

was expected to perform the act while standing at his end of the table. Not

surprisingly, detailed guides regularly appeared in cookery books. The link

between carving and politeness is perhaps best demonstrated in John

TruslersThe Honours of the Table (1788), which mostly consists of a seventy-

page section on the art of carving. Packed with detailed diagrams for

carving everything from half a cows head boild to a cods head, the section

offers step-by-step instructions on how best to portion and serve the food.

Carving, Trusler explained, makes the male host the focus of the partys

attention and offers a key opportunity for him to demonstrate his skill,

physical grace and sensitivity. Appealing to his audiences sensibilities,

Trusler declares, We are always in pain for a man, who, instead of cutting up

a fowl genteely, is hacking for half an hour across a bone, greasing himself,

and bespattering the company with sauce.46 In consequence, Trusler

instructs on issues of deportment as well as which cuts should go to guests of

which rank, and he implores readers to share the instructions especially with

young people, because Experience will teach them, in time, but till they learn,

they will always appear ungraceful and awkward.47




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* * *

Creating a meal that suited the diverse expectations and met the scrutiny of

guests was a notoriously difficult task so much so that in his opening preface

for 1754 the editor of the London Magazine used it as a metaphor to explain thedifficulties he faced in his position. As we look upon ourselves in the Light of

a Cook to dress a Dinner for a numerous Company of all Ranks in Life, and

consequently of very different Tastes, we have sometimes been obliged to

descend to what may have been, perhaps, thought too vulgar or low by some

of our readers, he declared. But every one must see, he continued, that we

have dealt less in this Sort of Cookery than any of our Rivals; and accordingly

we find, that our Magazine is sought after chiefly by those refined Taste and

Judgment.48 The consumer revolution, the rise of politeness, the emergence

of the substantial but opaquely defined middling and gentry ranks all workedto make food a part of fashion, and so the acquisition, preparation and eating

of it became expressions of taste, social rank and wealth. For the mistress of

a prosperous or ambitious household this change of attitude undoubted

translated into intense anxiety. The style of cookery book that dominated

from the1730s onwards played the roles of teacher, advisor and companion

depending on what was needed. Packed with detailed explanations of all

things related to food, they guided housewives and their servants from the

point of purchasing the food all the way to serving it at the table. Illustrations

of bills of fare visually instructed the user in the later steps, detailing whichdishes combined well and how best to place them for a pleasing effect. They

reflect the extent to which cookery was an art that was as much visual as it

was gustatory.

Not surprisingly, the books were enormously successful. The leading

authors became household names, and the domination of the cookery-book

trade by works of this kind compelled even elite professional cooks, who had

previously written primarily for each other, to conform to the middling female

market. The illustrated kitchen scenes and portraits reflected and underlined

how these works contributed to the commercialisation of domestic life. Thekitchen scenes were idyllic and advertised the efficiency and economy for

which many middling women, who were faced with the constantly changing

fashion of cookery and public expectations to run an economical and tasteful

household, undoubtedly yearned. A cookery book gave the mistress the con-

fidence necessary to select dishes and direct servants; it ensured that the

ingredients would be in season, wastage would be avoided, dishes would be

prepared properly, and the result would look attractive on the table. The

portraits reflected how these books had brand identities not unlike modern

advertising icons whose persona is designed and altered to fit specific con-texts. These cookery books concocted, with both images and words, char-

acters that appealed to the market. Some were experienced women who had

spent decades in service; some were slightly more experienced housewives

ready to help a junior friend; still others were foppish professional cooks ready

486 TROY BICKHA M



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to spill the trade secrets of elite households and celebrated, and largely

unaffordable, public eateries. Captions and appearances evolved over the

editions. Even the authors death, if he or she ever existed or wrote the book

at all, could not stop the brand.

NOTES

1. See especially, James Walvin,Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste,1660-1800(New York, 1997); Troy Bickham, Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery andImperialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Past and Present 198 (2008), p.71-110; CaroleShammas, Food Expenditures and Economic Well-Being in Early Modern England, The Journalof Economic History 43 (1983), p.99-100; Jan de Vries, Between Purchasing Power and theWorld of Goods, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter(London, 1994), p.85-132; and Hans-Joachim Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750-1830(Oxford, 2000).

2. Roland Barthes, Toward a Psychology of Contemporary Food Consumption, in EuropeanDiet from Pre-Industrial to Modern Times, ed. Elbord Forster and Robert Forster (New York, 1975);see also his Ornamental Cookery, in Mythologies(Paris, 1957). The discussion has also beenshaped by Claude Levi-Strausss seminalThe Origin of Table Manners (New York,1978).

3. London Magazine, January1779, p.53.4. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760, 2nd edn

(London,1996), p.153-5. See also Sara Pennell, The Material Culture of Food in Early ModernEngland,1650-1750, Oxford University, DPhil Thesis, 1997.

5. John Trusler, The Honours of the Table, Or, The Rules for Behaviour during Meals (London,1788).

6. Oxford, University College, University College betting book, UC: 01/A1/2, Stapylton v.Davidson,19 June1809.

7. When complaining about the dish, Burney went so far as to note the page number ofGlasses Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. DArblay, Frances Burney, The Early Diary of FrancesBurney, 1768-1778, ed. Annie Raine Ellis, 2 vols (London, 1889), entry for 19 August 1773,i.244.

8. The Genuine Edition of Joe Millers Jests, new edn (London, s.n., 1790), joke No. 200,p.36.

9. S. D. Smith, Accounting for Taste: British Coffee Consumption in Historical Perspective,Journal of Interdisciplinary History27(1996), p.183-214; Walvin,Fruits of Empire, p.120; A. J. S.Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 1550-1780 (Cambridge, 1995),p.233-4.

10. Hoh-Cheung Mui and Lorna H. Mui,Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England(Kingston, London,1989), p.200and 179.

11. Helen Berry, Prudent Luxury: The Metropolitan Tastes of Judith Baker, DurhamGentlewoman, inWomen and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Rosemary Sweet andPenelope Lane (Aldershot, 2003), p.133-55; I discuss these networks in detail in Eating theEmpire.

12. Saint Jamess Chronicle,24 March1774.13. The New London Cookery and Complete Domestic Guide (London: G. Virtue,1827), p.629.14. Richard Johnson,The Tea-Table Dialogues(London: printed for T. Carnan, 1772).15. Felix Farley,The London Art of Cookery(London: J. Fielding,1783), p.v; William Augustus

Henderson, The Housekeepers Instructor; Or, Universal Family Cook, 5th edn (London: W. and J.Stratford, [1793?]), p.3.

16. Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Totnes, 2003), p.65. This work provides the most comprehensive study of

eighteenth-century British cookery books.17. Francis Collingwood and John Woollams, The Universal Cook, and City and Country

Housekeeper,2nd edn (London: printed by R. Noble, for J. Scatcherd, 1797).18. William Gelleroy, The London Cook, Or The Whole Art of Cookery Made Easy and Familiar

(London: S. Crowder & Co.,1762).19. Martha Bradley, The British Housewife; Or, The Cook, Housekeepers, and Gardiners

Companion(London: printed for S. Crowder and H. Woodgate, 1760).




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20. Ann Peckham, The Complete English Cook; Or, Prudent Housewife (Leeds: Printed by GriffithWright, 1767).

21. Bradley,The British Housewife, p.69.22. Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the

Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford,1985).

23. Accounts of Ann Gromm, grocer, Oxfordshire Record Office, OA/B/118.24. Richard Briggs, The English Art of Cookery, According to the Present Practice; Being a

Complete Guide to All Housekeepers(London: Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788).25. Charlotte Mason, The Ladies Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her Table, 5th edn

(London: printed for J. Walter,1786).26. William Gelleroy,The London Cook (1762).27. Bradley,The British Housewife, p.69.28. Mss Cookery Book, Bills of fare for everyday, Huntington Library, San Marino, California,

HM58283(unfoliated).29. Felix Farley, The Art of London Cookery, 7th edn (London: J. Scatcherd & J. Whitaker, 1792),

p.373-4.30. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture, p.25-8. See also Maxine Berg, Luxury

and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain(Oxford,2005), esp. ch.2-4.31. Bradley,The British Housewife, p.16.32. Leading London publishers included the Longmans, John Almon, William Strahan and R.

Baldwin.33. The literature on these social changes is extensive. For two of the classic works that have

especially shaped the ideas in this article, see Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People:England1727-1783 (Oxford, 1992); Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, eds., The Birthof a Consumer Society (London, 1982). On the changing relationships between women and printduring this period, see n.37below.

34. There has been some debate over how much Farley wrote himself: much of it appears tohave been compiled by Richard Johnson (apparently without complaint from Farley), from othercookery books.This was a fairly common practice, albeit not to the degree followed by Farley and

Johnson. See Fiona Lucraft, The London Art of Plagiarism: Part1, Petits propos culinaires 42(1992); and Peter Targett, Johnson or Farley, Petits propos culinaires 58 (1998). The LondonTavern appears to have endorsed the publication, as it was advertised as being sold on thepremises. On Cole and Glasse, see Lehmann, The British Housewife, p.141and 108-11.

35. For references of famous guests, see Ruddimans Weekly Mercury [Edinburgh], 13November 1782and theDerby Mercury,28 November1782.

36. Nathan Bailey, Dictionarium domesticum, Being a New and Compleat Houshold Dictionary.For the Use both of City and Country(London: C. Hitch,1736).

37. On servants reading see, Jan Fergus, Provincial Servants Reading in the Late EighteenthCentury, inThe Practice and Representation of Reading in England, ed. James Raven, Helen Smalland Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge, 1996), p.202-25. On womens reading, see especially NaomiTadmor, In the even my wife read to me: Women, Reading and Household Life in the

Eighteenth Century, in Practice and Representation of Reading, ed. Raven, Small and Tadmor,p.162-74; Jan Fergus, Women, Class, and Growth of Magazine Readership in the Provinces,1746-1780 Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 16 (1986), p.41-53. See also Kathryn Shevelow,Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical(London, 1989);Alison Adburgham,Women in Print: Writing Women and Womens Magazines from the Restorationto the Accession of Victoria (London,1972), ch.7.

38. Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, 5th edn (London: sold at Mrs.Ashburns China Shop,1755), p.ii.

39. For an informative description the managerial role of gentry, see Amanda Vickery, TheGentlemans Daughter: Womens Lives in Georgian England(New Haven, CT, London,1998), ch.4(on their management of food acquisition, preparation and presentation specifically, see p.135-8and152-3).

40. Preface to Charlotte Mason,The Ladies Assistant,5th edn (1786).41. Hannah Glasse,The Art of Cookery, p.iv.42. Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture 1500-1800, trans. Allan

Cameron (New Haven, CT, London, 2002), p.161-2.43. During the second half of the century public consumption of specific foods increasingly

became associated with moral and political sentiments. This is most evident with advent of

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consumer boycotts, such as American colonists association of tea with British tyranny inthe early1770s and British associations of sugar with African slavery at the turn of the cent-ury. See especially, T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics ShapedAmerican Independence(New York, Oxford,2004), ch.6; and Timothy Morton, Blood Sugar, inRomanticism and Colonialism, ed. Timothy Fulford and Peter Kitson (Cambridge, 1998), p.187-

206.44. Collingwood and Woollams. The Universal Cook; Edwina Ehrman, The Eighteenth

Century, inLondon Eats Out: 500 Years of Capital Dining(London,1999), p.53.45. Lehmann,British Housewife, p.336-45; Trusler,Honours of the Table, p.6.46. Trusler,Honours of the Table, p.24.47. Trusler,Honours of the Table, p.2.48. London Magazine, January1754, p.2.

Troy Bickham is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He is particularlyinterested in the cultural history of the British Atlantic world. He has published articles in Past& Present,Eighteenth-Century Studiesand theWilliam and Mary Quarterly, and he is the authorof Savages within the Empire: Representations of American Indians in Eighteenth-Century Britain

(Oxford University Press,2005) andMaking Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen throughthe British Press (Northern Illinois University Press, forthcoming 2008). His current projectinvestigates the development of a national imperial culture in Britain during the eighteenthcentury, particularly in terms of how Britons who stayed at home experienced and imagined theempire.



his cookery-book illustrations

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