NATURE 53 
THURSDAY, 
a MARCH EQ, TOT: 
AN ELIZABETHAN COOKERY-BOOK. 
A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye. Edited by 
Catherine F. Frere. Pp. :clxiv+i24. (Cam- 
bridge. Heifer .and Sons, Ltd.,: 1913.) | Price 
7S. 6d: net. 
HETHER cookery-books should rank as 
¥ literature is a question upon’ which 
opinions may well differ. Charles Lamb, we fear, 
‘would have stigmatised the majority of them as 
among the books which are no books. But what- 
ever exceptions he might have been induced to 
make, one of them would certainly have been Miss 
Frere’s work. And this because of his reverence 
for things ancient and of good repute. It would 
have quickened his instincts as a bibliograph, and 
he would have chuckled over the evidence of the 
playful imagination, delicate wit, and subtle 
humour with which the editor has embellished the 
setting of her antique and historic jewel. He 
would have appreciated, too, the element of 
comedy in the fact that although Miss Frere, as 
she frankly confesses, has never had the oppor- 
tunity of acquiring the art of cookery, she should 
yet have been fated to edit no fewer than four 
books on the subject. 
The origin of the present work may be told in 
a few words. The good and learned Matthew 
Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 to 
1575, and a former Master of Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge, from which he had been 
ejected during Queen Mary’s reign, presented a 
great collection of valuable manuscripts, as well 
as many printed books, to his old College and to 
the University Library, concerning which Dr. 
Berne, the then Vice-Chancellor, wrote of “the 
singular beauty that the comely order of Your 
Grace’s books doth bring to the University 
Library, to the great delectation of the Eye of 
Every man that Shall Enter into the Said 
Library.”” Among the ‘printed books given to the 
College is a little volume bound in vellum, in 
which, wedged in between political and learned 
tracts, is a black-letter octavo of twenty-seven 
Paces, entitled “A Proper :Newe .Booke © of 
Cokerye.” This, with the approval of the Master 
and Fellows, Miss Frere has caused to be re- 
printed, furnishing it with an admirable intro- 
duction, many excellent annotations, and a useful 
glossary-index. 
The original Cambridge edition is dateless, but 
was probably published during Parker’s tenure 
of the See of Canterbury. According to Hazlitt, 
the book was often reprinted before 1546, and 
in fact, a recension of the ‘Book of 
NOs 2216.-VOL. 02] 
was, 
Cookery ” of 1500, of which there was a reprint 
by John Byddell about 1530. This was often 
reproduced, with modifications, and under various 
names, down to 1650, much of it being embodied 
in the household books of those days, as, for 
example, in Thomas Dawson’s “Good Huswife’s 
Jewell,” of 1596. 
Of the original author nothing is known, not 
even his, or her, name; but one may surmise that 
the compilation was in all probability the work of 
a monk, to whom the occupation, we may take it, 
would not be uncongenial. Authoresses, especi- 
ally of works on cookery, were not plentiful in 
those days. Even the classical work of Mrs. 
Glasse, a book of a much later date, was, accord- 
ing to Boswell, written by a mere man, Dr. Hill. 
As we turn over the leaves of the “Proper 
Newe Booke,” with its quaint recipes, couched in 
the ‘corrupted phonetic” of the golden age of 
English prose, we gather, as our author says, 
‘a little rushlight illumination on the culinary 
mysteries of the once busy kitchens, roofless and 
empty to-day, and on the hospitalities, feasting, 
and revels of the now silent dining halls of long 
ago.” 
Matthew Parker was a large-minded man, who, 
living in spacious times, did things in a spacious 
way. Although an abstemious man himself, and 
not overburdened with the temporalities of his 
see, he exercised an almost boundless hospitality, 
both at Canterbury and at Lambeth, and we can 
well imagine that Mistress Margaret Harlestone, 
his devoted wife, who, ‘‘for her husband’s credit,” 
says Strype, “had all things handsome about her 
—ordering her housekeeping so nobly and splen- 
didly that all things answered that venerable 
dignity,’ must have been sorely exercised at times 
‘to avoid the shame of her Lord’s table,” especi- 
ally when, as occasionally happened, his Royal 
Mistress, in one of her many Progresses, inti- 
mated her intention of dining with him, together 
with the whole of her Privy Council. We fancy 
at such a time there must have been much search- 
ing through the scanty pages of the “Proper 
Newe Booke.”’ 
But to the general reader of to-day, perhaps, the 
most enlightening, as well as the most interesting 
portion of Miss Frere’s book is her introduction, 
in which she conjures up a vivid picture of 
“the gay company that rejoiced and feasted, 
the fighters and revellers, the grave statesmen, 
prelates, and lawyers, the admirals, bold sea 
captains, knights, and ladies, the great lords and 
princes” that revolved, as about a sun, around 
their imperious Queen, every inch a Tudor, who 
combined all the strength of will and masterfulness 
vomanly 
