Image: Albert Dorne · Public domain
The Ladies Cabinet Opened
- Year
- 1639
- Era
- 17th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English pre-1800
The Ladies Cabinet Opened, published anonymously in 1639, is a Caroline household manual gathering receipts for cookery, preserving, and physic alongside related domestic instruction. Issued during the reign of Charles I, it belongs to a flourishing genre of compact English compilations addressed to gentlewomen overseeing the still room and kitchen. Later expanded editions extended its reach, and the work remains a valuable witness to early Stuart domestic practice and medical knowledge.
Cooking from this book
Manus Christi
Signature dishA signature confection of The Ladies Cabinet Opened is Manus Christi, a lozenge of clarified sugar enriched with rosewater and often gilded with leaf gold. Half sweetmeat and half medicine, it was pressed upon invalids as a cordial restorative as much as offered at the banquet table. Its presence in this Caroline compilation neatly captures the book's blending of cookery, preserving and physic, where the still room and the sickbed were governed by the same skilled mistress.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
