Abstract

This article examines a puzzling question surrounding the 1664 recipe book, The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, an anonymous collection purporting to explain the Cromwells’ unfitness to govern by examining their favorite recipes. Scholars have viewed the text as satirizing Elizabeth as stingy in household management and low-class in taste. Yet why would an author opposed to the Cromwells offer the reader a work that invited them to recreate the Cromwellian dining experience for themselves? I argue that the collection draws on the early modern association of the kitchen with the manipulation of time, guiding readers to learn through creating its recipes how to avoid future temporal ruptures of the sort that its author viewed the Protectorate to be.

Keywords: women's writing, food history, recipe books, Cromwell, historiography, early modern literature

Take a pound and a half of Fresh Beef, all lean, take a pound and a quarter of Beef Suet, sliced both very small, then take a half penny stale Loaf and grate it, a handful of Sage, and a little Winter Savory, a little Time, shred these very small; take four Eggs, half a pint of Cream, a few Cloves, Nutmegs, Mace and Pepper finely beaten, mingle them altogether very well, with a little Salt, roll it all up together in a green Colwort Leafe, and then tye it up hard in a Linnen Cloth, garnish your Dish with grated bread, and serve it up with Mustard in Sawcers. (47)