This foundational seventeenth-century culinary treatise documents the extensive repertoire of professional cookery through the lens of Robert May's fifty-five years of service to English nobility. The work opens with personal reflections on the lost era of grand hospitality, contrasting traditional English preparation with foreign, notably French, innovations. The manual then unfolds systematically across numerous sections, providing exhaustive instructions for boiling, roasting, baking, frying, and stewing all manner of flesh, poultry, game, and fish. It details complex recipes for pottages, bisks, olio podridas, and minces, alongside specific instructions for making sausages, puddings, hagses, and diverse stuffings or forcings.
Particular attention is paid to the elaborate presentation of festival dishes, such as pasteboard ships and stags discharging claret and concealing live animals for courtly entertainment. The text also outlines the precise arts of carving and sewing various meats and fish, accompanied by comprehensive seasonal bills of fare designed to guide the practitioner throughout the calendar year. Later sections provide practical instructions for creating pantry staples like vinegars and mustards, constructing elaborate sallets with pickled condiments, and preparing invalid diets and poultry feeds. The volume concludes with extensive methods for making sweet pastries, creams, and preserves, offering a complete picture of high-status English domestic economy and culinary craft before the disruptions of the civil wars.
