CONTEXT COOKBOOKS Flashcards
1
Q
What changed the fact that books were expensive and time-consuming to produce
A
invention of the
printing press in 1439 by
Johannes Gutenberg, Gutenberg’s invention was brought to England in 1476 by William Caxton
2
Q
Older cookbooks
A
These older cookbooks were written by men, for men- designed for court cooks, they were not widely accessible. in the middle of the sixteenth century, only approximately twenty percent of men could sign their own names, and only five percent of women. Low literacy rates and the expense of books meant that these first cookbooks were only accessible to a select few.
3
Q
Mid-century books
A
Many of these mid- century books, such as Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castel of Health (1539), were guides to good land husbandry and estate management which included recipes for food and medicines among other advice for men running an estate.
4
Q
The beginning of the seventeenth
century saw the development of
two distinct types of cookbooks.
A
«books of secrets” and practical guides for gentry and noblewomen
5
Q
«books of secrets”
A
written by men who were employed in royal or aristocratic households, these books claimed to reveal the secrets of the kitchens and stillrooms of the rich and famous. directed at an audience of noblewomen, those who aspired to move up the social ladder by imitating royalty or other nobility. These "secrets" acted as social capital, and the preparation of confections containing large amounts of expensive sugar and medicines which carried the seal of approval of the Queen or an important noblewoman gave the reader a means of proving their social status.
6
Q
Example of books of secret
A
Sir Hugh Plat's Delightes for Ladies (1600) is one example of this type of book-a collection of receipts for medicines and confectionary which were presented as the personal property of an individual of high status.
7
Q
The second type
of cookbook.
however, was less
aspirational than
the books of
secrets.
A
Books like Gervase Markham's The English Hus- wife (1615) were practical guides for gentry and noblewomen, covering all the tasks a woman needed to be able to manage in order to successfully run a household. Markham's compendium covers baking, brewing beer and ale, and dairying, as well as basic cookery, medicine, and the art of confectionary. Indeed, this type of book parallels a basic shift in gender.
8
Q
Second type of book showing shift in gender roles
A
roles in upper class households. Up until the middle of the sixteenth century, women were rarely employed as cooks or in positions of responsibility in the homes of the gentry or nobility--they served as nurses, laundresses, or personal servants, but rarely as cooks or housekeepers. After about 1550, women were increasingly employed as cooks and housekeepers, first in the homes of the gentry, and gradually in the homes of all but the most wealthy nobles. This shift is reflected in the cookbooks of the era, and only continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
9
Q
Women kept manuscript
cookbooks for many reasons:
A
as records for themselves, as a way of passing along their collected knowledge to their children, or to preserve their own links to their forebears. In the collections of recipes they curated, they added recipes gleaned from printed cookbooks. In placing knowledge gleaned from printed works alongside their own recipes, the keepers of manuscript cookbooks entered into the intellectual dialogue which surrounded food and cooking.
10
Q
The middle of the seventeenth
century was marked by
A
the turmoil and upheaval of the English Civil War, the Commonwealth and Interregnum, and the Restoration of the monarchy.
11
Q
The civil war
A
The war disrupted publications
of all kinds, including
cookbooks.
12
Q
What happened during Commonwealth and Interregnum
A
Counterintuitively, however, cookbooks which revealed the secrets of royals and aristocrats became more popular, rather than less, during the Commonwealth and Interregnum.
13
Q
Example of popularity during Interregnum
A
The Queen's Closet Opened (1655), by W.M., purported to reveal the secrets of Oueen Henrietta Maria (wife of Charles I), was published in the midst of Oliver Cromwell's reign as Lord Protector of England, and was so popular that it went through ten reprints before 1700. The political disillusionment with the monarchy was less visible in the cookbooks of the time; gaining social capital by imitating the rich and famous never truly went out of style.
14
Q
I’m 17th century what was having an effect on English cooks
A
a change in culinary tastes across the Channel was also having an effect on English cooks. In 1653, the first English translation of The French Cook was published in London.marks the beginning of a shift in French cuisine away from the heavier tastes of the Middle Ages to a lighter, more compartmentalized cuisine which separated sweet and savory flavors and depended, like modern French cuisine, on a set of basic skills as the building blocks of more complex dishes. The roux.
15
Q
These new styles and
tastes had a large impact on
English cooking, when?
A
particularly in the later seventeenth and eighteenth century, as the rich and fashionable followed the French, and the socially aspirant copied the rich and fashionable.
