The Cooks Paradise (Bonnefons trans.)
- Year
- 1654
- Era
- 17th century
- Origin
- France/England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- Vegetarian/Reform
The Cooks Paradise presents an English rendering of Nicolas de Bonnefons's mid-seventeenth-century French writings on garden produce and domestic cookery, championing dishes that allow the natural flavour of each vegetable, fruit, and herb to predominate. Among the earliest works to elevate kitchen-garden cookery as a refined culinary pursuit, it stands as a foundational text in the European tradition of vegetable-focused cuisine and influenced later reform and horticultural cookery writing.
Cooking from this book
Potage of Fresh Peas
Signature dishIf any single dish embodies Bonnefons's garden philosophy, it is his simple potage of young green peas. Famously, he insisted that a cabbage soup should taste entirely of cabbage and a pea soup entirely of peas, a startlingly modern plea for clarity of flavour. This humble pottage of just-picked peas, gently cooked to preserve their sweetness, became emblematic of his break from heavily spiced cookery and his celebration of the kitchen garden itself.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
