Description

[005045] Smith, R.[obert] Court Cookery: Or, the Compleat English Cook. Containing the Choicest and Newest Receipts for Making Soops, Pottages, Friscasseys, Harshes, Farces, Ragoos, Cullises, Sauces, Forc’d-Meats and Souses; with Various Ways of Dressing Most Sorts of Flesh Etc. London: T. Wotton, 1723. First Edition. 8vo. Hardback. Good. [9], 2-112, [8], 1-82p, [14]. Modern panelled calf, raised bands, spine in six panels, title label to second panel, date in gilt to foot, remaining panels with central lozenge shaped tool in blind, covers with a Cambridge panel design by Period Binders, new endpapers

Externally very good. Internally the title is slightly chipped to edges and has been laid down, text is lightly foxed and browned with some staining, especially to edges, but never intolerable, a few corners lost but not affecting text

From the collection of the chef Antony Worrall Thompson, but without indicia of this

Divided into two parts, each with its own index, the first part relating to cookery, with the second to confectionary. Smith was a cook (under Mr. Lamb) for King William, but was critical of Lamb’s Royal Cookery, which had been published thirteen years previously, noting that “several of those Receipts, as they are now printed … were never made or practis’d by him; and other are extreme defective and imperfect, and made up of Ingredients unknown to him”

Bitting, page 440; Cagle 1001; Maclean, page 137; Oxford, pages 55-6