John Evelyn, Cook: The Manuscript Receipt Book of John Evelyn

by John Evelyn, Christopher Driver (Editor)

JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706) was a virtuoso, scholar and man of letters of Restoration England. His diary is required reading, his architectural and environmental treatises were prophetic, and his gardening was legendary. Among his manuscripts, now in the British Library, is a volume of receipts or recipes: for the stillroom, the sickroom and the kitchen. Those of cookery are printed here; in an edition that includes a full glossary, index of ingredients and biographical introduction. The recipes range wide over the repertoire of the seventeenth-century household; from liver puddings to excellent syllabubs. They include items picked up on his travels in Europe, as well as favourites given him by friends - such as that for gooseberry wine contributed by Sir Christopher Wren. The manuscript contains the recipes that Evelyn later printed in his book about salads, Acetaria. The recipes range over the repertoire of the 17th-century household and contain many recipes given to Evelyn by his friends. This fascinating collection includes instructions for ‘puffe-paste which requires the yeolkes of six eggs and the whites of four, some fine flowere, sweete butter in very thicke pieces as big as wallnuts which is rolled out seven tymes, every tyme putting in more butter.’

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.

Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time (he witnessed the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666). Over the years, Evelyn’s Diary has been over-shadowed by Pepys's chronicles of 17th-century life. Evelyn and Pepys corresponded frequently and much of this correspondence has been preserved.