The Art of Cookery
Contributing Author
John Thacker [+–]
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Edited by
Ivan Day [+–]
Food historian
Ivan Day is a food historian with a special interest in re-creating the food of the past in period settings. His work has been exhibited in many major museums and he is the author of The Pleasures of the Table (with Peter Brown, 1998) and editor of Eat, Drink and be Merry (2000).
New paperback edition publishing March 2024
The Art of Cookery is the only book of its kind to have come out of an English religious community. It is also that very rare thing, a cookery book of the English 18th-century that has the author’s own recipes throughout; nothing seems to have been plagiarized or borrowed from other writers.
The Dean of Durham Cathedral, who employed the author, had a lavish grant for entertaining and his generous hospitality meant that his cook had to cater for all levels of society, from canons of the Cathedral with sophisticated tastes such as the gourmand Dr. Jacque Sterne, to tradesmen, poor widows, and those of even more modest status. Thacker’s book keeps many pre-Reformation recipes and thus shows the gradual transition in the Cathedral’s eating habits. This facsimilie is introduced by the well-known food historian Ivan Day who examines the recipes and reveals the remarkable tradition of ecclesiastical hospitality that survived at Durham for more than eight hundred years.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Food historian
Ivan Day is a food historian with a special interest in re-creating the food of the past in period settings. His work has been exhibited in many major museums and he is the author of The Pleasures of the Table (with Peter Brown, 1998) and editor of Eat, Drink and be Merry (2000).
Bibliography
Bibliography xxiv
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Notes
Notes xxvi
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Main Text
The Art of Cookery xxix
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Preface
Preface xxxi
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Index
Original Index xxxv
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Recipes
Recipes 1
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Menus
Menus 323
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
Glossary
Glossary 357
18th Century Cook
John Thacker was cook to the Dean of Durham Cathedral from 1739 until 1758. He also founded a cookery school in 1745.
