The Accomplisht Cook (1660/85)

Considered A most beautiful piece of cookery literature’ by Elizabeth David, The Accomplisht Cook was first published in 1660. Robert May was cook to the aristocracy of Royalist England; born in the year of the Armada; trained by his own father, then by powerful patrons in Paris; before apprenticeship in London with the cook to the Star Chamber. In the course of a long life, working almost exclusively for fellow Catholics and Royalists, he absorbed all the most fashionable tendencies at large in the kitchens of England. ‘By its sheer size and comprehensive scope Robert May’s book eclipsed its predecessors,’ writes Alan Davidson in his foreword. Here is the most complete portrait of English cooking as it was when Charles II was restored to the throne, as well as before ‘the unhappy and cruel disturbances’ of the Civil War, in ‘those golden days of peace and hospitality,’ as the author puts it, ‘when you enjoyed your own.’

The Accomplisht Cook was first published in 1660 by Nathanial Brooke at the Angel in Cornhill. An improved second edition was published in 1665, and it was this text that Obadiah Blagrave at St Paul's published as the fifth edition in 1685. The present edition is a facsimilie of the fifth edition with a biographical introduction by Marcus Bell, revealing new facts about Robert May’s life, a foreword by Alan Davidson and a full glossary of contemporary terms.