Image: Joseph William Rubidge · CC BY 4.0
The Cook's Oracle
- Year
- 1817
- Era
- 19th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English 19th C
The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, first issued in 1817, marks an early attempt to bring scientific precision to English domestic cookery, with carefully tested receipts and exact measurements at a time when most cookbooks relied on vague guidance. Hugely popular, it ran through numerous editions on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the nineteenth century, though the original 1817 printing remains decidedly scarce.
Cooking from this book
Portable Soup (Concentrated Essence of Meat)
Kitchiner praises portable soup as an early convenience food, prized by travellers, sailors and invalids before the age of bouillon cubes. The brief note he gives here is essentially a reconstitution instruction rather than a full recipe, reflecting his enthusiasm for precise, weighed culinary 'prescriptions'.
This concentrated Essence of Meat will be found a great acquisition to the comfort of the army, the navy, the traveller, and the invalid. By dissolving half an ounce of it in half a pint of hot water, you have in a few minutes half a pint of good Broth for three halfpence.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
De la Groute (Coronation Plum Porridge)
Kitchiner records this curious feudal coronation dish, a medieval water-gruel enriched with plums, presented to the English monarch by the Lord of the Manor of Addington as a tenure obligation dating back to the Domesday Book. It was still ceremonially served at George IV's coronation in 1820.
Robert Argyllon holdeth one carucate of land in Addington in the county of Surrey, by the service of making one mess in an earthen pot in the kitchen of our Lord the King, on the day of his coronation, called De la Groute, i.e. a kind of plum-porridge, or water-gruel with plums in it. This dish is still served up at the royal table at coronations, by the Lord of the said manor of Addington.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
