“Courteous Ladies, etc. The first Edition of this—(cal it what you please) having received a kind entertainment from your Ladiships hands, for reasons best known to yourselves, notwithstanding the disorderly and confused jumbling together of things of different kinds, hath made me (who am not a little concerned therein) to bethink myself of some way, how to encourage and requite your Ladiships Pains and Patience (vertues, indeed, of absolute necessity in such brave employments; there being nothing excellent that is not withal difficult) in the profitable spending of your vacant minutes.” This labored and high-flying mode of address continues to the preface’s end.... “I shall thus leave you at liberty as Lovers in Gardens, to follow your own fancies. Take what you like, and delight in your choice, and leave what you list to him, whose labour is not lost if anything please.”
In turning the leaves of the book one comes upon such naïve discourse as this:
“To make the face white and fair.
“Wash thy face with Rosemary boiled in white wine, and thou shalt be fair; then take Erigan and stamp it, and take the juyce thereof, and put it all together and wash thy face therewith. Proved.”
It was undoubtedly the success of “The Ladies Cabinet” and its cousins german that led to the publication of a fourth edition in 1658 of another compilation, which, according to the preface, was to go “like the good Samaritane giving comfort to all it met.” The title was “The Queens Closet opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery, As they were presented unto the Queen By the most Experienced Persons of our times.... Transcribed from the true Copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books, by W. M. one of her late Servants.” It is curious to recall that this book was published during the Cromwell Protectorate—1658 is the year of the death of Oliver—and that the queen alluded to in the title—whose portrait, engraved by the elder William Faithorne, forms the frontispiece—was Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and at that time an exile in France.
During this century, which saw such publications as Rose’s “School for the Officers of the Mouth,” and “Nature Unembowelled,” a woman, Hannah Wolley, appears as author of “The Cook’s Guide.” All such compilations have enduring human value, but we actually gain quite as much of this oldest of arts from such records as those the indefatigable Pepys left in his Diary. At that time men of our race did not disdain a knowledge of cookery. Izaak Walton, “an excellent angler, and now with God,” dresses chub and trout in his meadow-sweet pages. Even Thomas Fuller, amid his solacing and delightful “Worthies,” thinks of the housewife, and gives a receipt for metheglin.
And a hundred years later Dr. Johnson’s friend, the Rev. Richard Warner, in his “Personal Recollections,” did not hesitate to expand upon what he thought the origin of mince pies. Warner’s Johnsonian weight in telling his fantasy recalls Goldsmith’s quip about the Doctor’s little fish talking like whales, and also Johnson’s criticism upon his own “too big words and too many of them.”
Warner wrote, “In the early ages of our country, when its present widely spread internal trade and retail business were yet in their infancy, and none of the modern facilities were afforded to the cook to supply herself ‘on the spur of the moment,’ ... it was the practice of all prudent housewives, to lay in, at the conclusion of every year (from some contiguous periodical fair), a stock sufficient for the ensuing annual consumption, of ... every sweet composition for the table—such as raisins, currants, citrons, and ‘spices of the best.’
“The ample cupboard ... within the wainscot of the dining parlour itself ... formed the safe depository of these precious stores.
“‘When merry Christmas-tide came round’ ... the goodly litter of the cupboard, thus various in kind and aspect, was carefully swept into one common receptacle; the mingled mass enveloped in pastry and enclosed within the duly heated oven, from whence ... perfect in form, colour, odour, flavour and temperament, it smoked, the glory of the hospitable Christmas board, hailed from every quarter by the honourable and imperishable denomination of the Mince-Pye.”