Image: Loudon · Public domain
The Ladies Companion
- Year
- 1654
- Era
- 17th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English pre-1800
The Ladies Companion, issued anonymously in 1654, is a Commonwealth-era English collection of cookery and household receipts aimed at the gentlewoman managing a domestic establishment. Appearing during the Interregnum, it belongs to a wave of mid-seventeenth-century printed receipt books that moved manuscript household knowledge into circulation, combining instructions for cookery, preserving, and physic in the compact, practical format characteristic of the period.
Cooking from this book
Tart of Warden Pears
Signature dishA signature of this Commonwealth-era household book is the warden pear tart, a deep, spiced confection coloured with a dark winey syrup and scented with cinnamon and ginger. Wardens were the hard cooking pears beloved of English kitchens, prized for holding their shape under long baking. The dish typifies the book's appeal to thrifty mid-century housewives, who valued sturdy fruit cookery that could carry a table through the lean months between autumn harvest and spring.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
