Back in 2011 I did a translation from Elizabethan English to Modern English of a cookbook from 1575 and presented it at Caid’s Festival of the Rose (the once per reign arts festival for the Queen) in honor of HRM, now Her Grace Cassandra Zoe Paganel. At the time I said I would eventually get it online. I guess now is the time.

Project and Source Material

This is a translation of “A Proper newe boke of Cokery” from Early Modern English to Modem English. This is a mid to late 16 th Century manuscript. There are two online transcriptions. Daniel Meyers has one of the 1575 edition at his site www.medieva1cookerv.corn. Dr. Thomas Gloning has one of an earlier, estimated to be mid 1550s, at the University of Gissen site. I also have a copy of the facsimile of the 1575 edition that I received from Master Huen who hosts www.godecokery.com, from the markings it is a copy that belongs to the British Museum. I also received a copy of the 1545 edition from Master Huen and that one appears to belong to the Bibliotecha Hunteriana Clasciinesis.

Purpose and Scope of the Project

I wanted to make a period cookbook more accessible to people who are just starting to explore period cooking. This is a translation into Modern English only. I have modernized the terminology and names of ingredients and the flow of the ingredients. In the beginning sections I left both the period and modern ingredient names to show some of the differences.

I did not do any redactions or add any quantities that were not in the original manuscript. This was done purposefully so that people using the translation can make their own choices when they work out their redactions. Some recipes do have quantities listed and those did get modernized since they were part of the original recipe.

Differences and Challenges

Early Modern English had not yet standardized spelling so sometimes the same words are spelled differently within the same document. On the listing of items to be served in various courses the transcription shows brackets grouping items to be served with different sauces. On the transcriptions sometimes the sauces were only listed for one of the items.

The Book of Cookery.

Shoulder from a wild or tame boar is best from a fortnight before Michaelmas to Lent. (Please see the article titled correction on this page for issues with this translation of “Brawn”.) Beef and bacon are good all times of the year. Mutton is good at all times, but from Easter to MidSummer it is worst. A fat pig is always in season. A goose is worst in MidSummer moon (full moon or lunar month around midsummer) and best in stubble time (just after the harvest), but when they are young green geese then they are best. Veal is best in January and February, and good in all other times. Lamb and young kid are best between Christmas and Lent and good from Lent to Whitsuntide (the week starting the seventh Sunday after Easter). Kid is always good. Hens are good at all times but best from November to Lent. Fat capons are always in season. Peacocks are always good but when they are young and of a good stature they are as good as pheasants and so are young grouses. Cygnets are best between Halloween and Lent. Mallard is good from after a frost until Candlemas, so is a Teal and other wild fowl that swim. A woodcock is best from October to Lent, and so are all other birds such as Ousels (Blackbirds) and Thryesselles (Thrushes) , robins and similar birds. Herons, curlews, cranes, bitters, and bustards are always good but are best in winter. Pheasants, partridges and rayles (small birds) are always good but are best when taken with a hawk. Quails and larks are always in season. Coneys are always in season and so is a doe. A hare is always good but is best from October to Lent. A gelded deer whether he be fallow or red is always in season. A pollard is especially good in May, at MidSummer he is a buck and is very good until Holyrood (September 14) day before Michaelmas (September 29) so likewise is a stag but he is principal in May. A barren doe is best in winter. A pricket and a sorrel sister (young buck or doe in their third year) is always in season.  Chickens are always good and so are pigeons if they are young.

This is the Order of Serving Meats at the Table With Their Sauces on Flesh Days at Dinner.

The First Course.

Pottage or stewed broth. Boiled meat or stewed meat. Chickens and bacon.

Powdered beef.

Pies.

Goose.

Pig.

Roasted beef.

Roasted veal.

Custard.

The Second Course

Roasted lamb.

Roasted capons.

Roasted coneys.

Chickens.

Peahens.

Baked venison.

The First Service at Supper

Pottage or soup or stew (sewe).

A salad.

A pigs petytoe. (feet or Trotters)

Sliced powdered beef.

Shoulder or breast of mutton.

Veal.

Lamb.

Custard.

The Second Course

Roasted capons.

Roasted coneys.

Roasted chickens.

Roasted pigeons.

Roasted larks.

Pigeon or Chicken pie.

Baked venison.

Tart.

The Service at Dinner

Meat and mustard

Capons, stewed or in a white broth

A pestle of venison served on a browes (meat stock poured over bread cubes)

A chine of beef and a boiled breast of mutton

Chewettes or pies of fine mutton

Three young geese in a dish with sorrel sauce; for a stubble goose, mustard and vinegar, after Halloween a swan with chadel sauce.

A pig.

A double rib of beef roasted, with pepper sauce and vinegar.

A loin or breast of veal with sauce.

Half a lamb or kid with oranges.

Two roasted capons with wine sauce and salt or ale and salt unless it is on sops.

Two pastries of fallow deer in a dish.

A custard.

A dish of leeches.

The Second Course

Jelly.

Peacocks with a wine and salt sauce.

Two coneys or six rabbits with mustard sauce and sugar.

Half a dozen chickens on sorrel sops.

Half a dozen pigeons.

To be served with a mustard and vinegar sauce.

Mallard.

Teyle (a small bird)

Guiles.

Stork.

To be served with a galantine sauce.

Heron.

Crane.

Curlew (a wading bird similar to a sandpiper or snipe)

Bittern.

Bustard.

Pheasant with water and salt sauce with sliced onions. Half a dozen woodcocks with mustard sauce and sugar.

Half a dozen partridges, half a dozen tayles (small birds), sauced as the pheasants. A dozen quails.

A dish of larks.

Two pastries of red deer in a dish.

Tart.

Gensbread (gingerbread).

Fritters.

Service for Fish Days

Butter.

A salad with hard boiled eggs.

Pottage of sand eels and lampreys.

With mustard sauce.

White herring.

Lynge. (Ling, Relative of cod)

Haburdyn (Harburden, salt cod).

Minced salted salmon, with mustard sauce, verjus and a little sugar.

With Vinegar Sauce

Powdered conger eel.

Shad with a vinegar sauce.

Mackerel

Whitings with sauce made from the liver and mustard.

Playce (Plaice, a type of flatfish), with sorrel sauce, wine and salt or verjus.

Thornback (a type of my with spines on the back), with a sauce from the liver, mustard, pepper and salt after it is braised.

Fresh cod with green sauce.

Base. (Bass)

Mullet.

Eels on sops.

Roche (small freshwater fish)  on sops.

Perch.

Pike in pike sauce.

Trout on sops.

Tench (freshwater fish similar to carp) in jelly or Jussell

Custard.

The Second Course.

Flounder or floex (fluke, a type of flatfish) in pike sauce.

With vinegar sauce

Fresh salmon.

Fresh conger eel.

Brette. (Brit aka Turbot)

Turbot.

Holybutte (Halibut).

Bream on sops.

Carp on sops.

Sole, or any other fish, fried. Roasted eels with sauce.

Roasted lampreys with drippings. Roasted porpoise with galantine sauce. Fresh sturgeon.

Creues. (Prawn or Shrimp)

Crab with vinegar sauce.

Shrimp

Baked Lamprey.

Cheese tart.

Figs, raisins.

Apples, pears.

Blanched almonds.

To Dress a Crab.

First cut off all of the legs and heads, and then take all the meat out of the shell, and clean the shell as much as possible. Put the meat into a dish with butter them on a chafing dish and add cinnamon, sugar and a little vinegar. When the meat is cooked and seasoned, put it back into the shell. Bruise the heads and set them upon the side of the dish and serve it.

To make a stewed broth for capons, mutton, beef, or for any hot meat, and also a broth for all manner of fresh fish.

Bundle half a handful each of rosemary and thyme, and put it in a pot of water, and let it boil. While it is boiling cut pieces of white bread and put them in a large bowl then pour scalding broth over the bread and when it is soaked through, strain it through a colander with a quantity of wine or good ale, so that it is not tart. Strain it into a pot and then add raisins and prunes, and them boil until the meat is cooked. If the broth is too sweet, put in more wine or else a little vinegar.

To Make Pies

Mince the mutton or beef finely and season it with pepper and salt, and a little

saffron for color. Add a good quantity of suet or marrow, a little vinegar, prunes, large raisins and dates, add broth made from powdered beef. Make the crust with flour, butter and egg yolks.

To Bake Venison

Generously season the meat with salt and pepper, and if it is lean then lard it with bacon.

To Roast Venison

While your venison is roasting make a sauce using vinegar, sugar, cinnamon and butter. Make sure the sauce is not too tart. Pour the sauce on the serving dish then put the venison on top of the sauce.

Chicken on Sops

Make a sorrel sauce and add cinnamon and sugar letting them boil together. Lay sops on a platter, our the sauce on the sops then lay the chicken on the sops.

A Pike Sauce for a Pike, Bream, Perch, Roche, Carp, Eels, Floykes (flukes) and All Manner of Brook Fish

Tie a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme with string. Put the bundle into a pot of water with parsley, salt and yeste (could be yeast could not find modern equivalent), and let them boil for a while. After it has boiled put in the fish and a good quantity of butter, and let everything boil together for a while until the sauce forms.

If you are going to broil any of the fish listed above, take the sauce for them, add butter, pepper and vinegar and boil it together. Then lay the broiled fish on the dish with the sauce. But for eels and fresh salmon nothing but pepper and vinegar over boiled. If you are going to fry the fish, take a few stems of parsley, after the fish is fried, and put the parsley into the frying pan, and let it fry in the butter then put it on the fried fish. Fry place, whiting and such other fish except eels, fresh salmon, conger, which should never be fried but baked, boiled, roasted or boiled

To Bake a Custard

 

Pre-bake the crust for the custard to harden it. Take a quart of cream and five or six egg yolks and beat them together, and put them into the cream, Then add sugar, small raisins and sliced dates, and put butter or marrow into the crust, on fish days put in butter.

The Following is a New Book of Cookery

To Make a Clear Jelly

Take two calves feet and a veal shoulder and put them in a pot with a gallon of water and a gallon of claret wine and set it on the fire to cook. After it has turned to jelly drain it and add cinnamon, ginger and sugar. Add a little sunflower for color as needed.

 

 

 

To Make a Dish of Snow

Beat together eight egg whites then add them to two quarts of sweet thick cream, a saucer full of rosewater and a dish of sugar. Then take a stick and clean it and split the end into four and use it to beat everything together and when it rises up put it in a colander then put an apple in the middle of it. Take a thick bunch of rosemary and put it in the middle of the serving platter, then put the snow on the rosemary and fill the platter. If you have wafers add them to the platter then serve.

To Fry Beans

After your beans are boiled put them into a frying with butter, add one or two diced onions and fry them until they are brown all over then add a little salt and serve.

To Make Pan Puffs

Make the filling like you would for vaute below. Make a fine pastry with ale, a little yeast, sugar, mane and saffron. Heat the mixture in a pan and add it to your flour with the yolk of a raw egg. In this manner make up your pastry.

To Make Blancmanger

Cut up a capon and parboil it until the meat separates from the bone. Dry the meat as much an possible in a clean cloth, then take a pair of forks and shred the meat as small as possible. Take a half gallon of milk, a half gallon of cream, half a pound of rye fiour and the shredded capon meat and put them all in a pan and mix them all together then put the pan on the fire. When the mixture begins to boil put half a pound of beaten sugar and saucer of rosewater and boil it until it thickens. Then put it in a serving dish to chill. When it is cold, slice and serve.

To Make Pies of Green Apples

Take green apple and core them and clean them as you would a quince. Season the apples with cinnamon, ginger and sugar. Then put the apples in a crust. The crust is made by taking water, half a dish of butter and a little saffron that is set in a pot and heated then add flour and two egg whites. Form the crust then add the apples. Put half a dish of butter on the apples then put the top of the coffin on then bake.

To Bake Chickens in Like Pastry

Season your chicken with a little ginger and salt Put the seasoned chicken in a crust and add barberries, grapes or gooseberries and half a dish of butter. Close up the crust and bake it in the oven. Take six egg yolks and a dish of verjus and put them through a strainer into a bowl. Then take your baked chickens and put on the mixture of eggs and venue and serve hot.

 

To Bake Pigeons in Short Pastry Like You Would Baked Apples

Season your pigeons with pepper, saffron, cloves and mace, also season with verjus and salt. Put the pigeon in the pastry and close it up for baking. It will bake in half an hour. Then take them out of the oven, if you think they are dry then add a little verjus and butter before serving them.

To Make Vautes

Take a veal kidney and parboil it until it is tender. Then chop it into small pieces mix it with three or four egg yolks and season it with minced dates, small raisins, ginger, sugar, cinnamon, saffron and a little salt. Take a dozen eggs and beat them well and put them in a frying pan with butter and fly it as thin as a pancake. Then add your kidney mixture to it and fry it in the pan with sugar and ginger and then serve it.

To Make Peascods

Remove the marrow from marrow bones and cut it into two parts. Season the marrow with sugar, cinnamon, ginger and a little salt. Make a fine pastry as short and as thin as you can and fry them in sweet suet and sprinkle them with a little cinnamon and ginger and serve them at the table.

To Make Stock Fritters

Take the same stuffing you use to make a vaute and the same pastry as you would for peascods. You can either fry them or bake them.

To Stew Tripes

Put a pint of claret on the stove. Cut the tripe in to small pieces and put in a good quantity of cinnamon and ginger. Also add a sliced onion or two and let it all boil for half an hour and then serve them on sops.

To Make a Pie of Alowes

Take a leg of mutton and slice it thinly. For the stuffing take parsley, thyme, savory and chop them small and temper them with three or four hard-boiled egg yolks, small raisins and dates. Add mace and a little salt. Lay the slices of mutton out flat and add the stuffing. Then roll the slices around the stuffing.

Once this is done make your pie crust and lay all of the rolls inside. Season them with a little sugar, cinnamon, saffron and salt. Then top them with the yolks of three or four hard boiled eggs, cut up dates and small raisins. Close the pie and bake it.

To make a syrup for it take roasted bread, a little claret wine and strain them together and then add a little sugar, cinnamon and ginger. Put it on the pie and serve.

To Make a Short Pastry for Tarts

Mix fire flour with a cursey (could not find modern equivalent) of water, a dish of sweet butter, a little salmon and two egg yolks. Make it as thin and tender as you can.

To Make a Tart of Beans

Boil beans in clear water. When they are done take them out of the pot and drain them, then mash them in a mortar. Mix in four egg yolks, and milk curds. Season the mixture with sugar, half a dish of butter and a little cinnamon then bake it.

To Make a Tart of Gooseberries

Parboil gooseberries in white wine, claret or ale. Then boil them with a little white bread. After they are done force them through a strainer with six egg yolks, then season with sugar and half a dish of butter then bake.

To Make a Tart of Medlars

Smash rotten medlars in a mortar along with the yolks of four eggs. Then season them with sugar, cinnamon, and sweet butter. Bake until done.

To Make a Tart of Damsons

Boil damsons (a variety of plum) in wine, either red or a claret then add either    a dozen pears or white bread to thicken the plums. Mix with six egg yolks and sweet butter then bake it.

To Make a Tart of Borage Flowers

Parboil borage flowers until tender then mix them with the yolks of three or four eggs and sweet curds. Or you can take three or four apples and parboil them with the flowers them mix them with sweet butter and a little mace. Then bake and serve.

To Make a Tart of Marigolds,  Primroses  or  couslips (cowslips, Primula veris)

Treat these flowers like you would borage and use the same seasonings.

To Make a Tart of Strawberries

Mix the strawberries with four egg yolks and some grated white bread. Season the mixture with sugar and sweet butter then bake.

To Make a Tart of Cherries

Do everything you would for a Tart of Damsons but don’t use any pears.

To Make a Tart of Spinach

Parboil spinach until tender then remove it from the pot and wring out the water. Then chop the spinach very small. Put it in a pan with sweet butter and season it. After it cools put it in the tart and bake it.

To Make a Tart of Cheese

Cut hard cheese into slices and soak them in water or milk for three hours. Then smash them in a mortar until they are in small pieces. Force them through a strainer with six egg yolks. Season the mixture with sugar and butter then bake.

To Make a Stew After the Guise of Beyond the Sea

Shop a mutton breast into pieces and put it in a pot with a half gallon each of water and wine. Skim any foam that comes to the surface. Add a dish of sliced onions and season with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace and salt. Stew them all together and serve over sops.

To Make Eggs in Moonshine

Boil together equal parts of rosewater and sugar. Add the yolks of 8 or 9 freshly laid eggs in separately and let them harden a little. Serve them after sprinkling a little cinnamon and sugar on them.

To Make Applemoyse

Roast or boil a dozen apples and then force them through a strainer with 3 or 4 egg yolks. As you are straining them, temper them with 3 or 4 spoonfuls of rose water then season the apples with sugar and half of a dish of sweet butter. Boil them in a chafing dish and serve them on a platter with biscuits or seasoned with cinnamon and ginger.

To Fry Tripes

Cut your tripe into small pieces and put them into a pan with 1 or 2 onions and a dish of sweet butter. Fry them until they are brown and put them in a chafing dish and sprinkle them with a little verjus and ginger before serving.

To Make a Tart of Prunes

Put prunes in a chafing dish with a little red wine and a manchet (fine, white) loaf and let them all boil together. Put everything through a strainer with four egg yolks and season it with sugar then bake it.

To Make a Covered Tart in the French Fashion

Beat together a pint of cream and ten egg yolks. Then add half a dish of sweet butter and sugar. Boil everything together until it is thick then cool it on a platter.

Make a couple cakes of fine pastry, lay your mixture in one and cover it with the other. Cut vent holes in the top and bake.

To Stew Capons in White Broth

Make a broth with 4 or 5 beef bones. When the bones are sodden remove them and strain the broth into another pot. Then put the capons into the pot whole with some rosemary. After they have boiled a while put in some whole mace wrapped in a white cloth, also add a handful or two of whole parsley and whole prunes. After removing the capons sprinkle them with a little verjus and salt. Then place them on sops and put the marrow bones around the capons with the marrow laid on top then serve.

For Gusset That May Be Another Pottage

Take capon broth and put it in a pot. Take 12 or 16 eggs and beat them together with a small white loaf that has been grated as small as possible. Mix everything together and add salt and a good quantity of saffron. Add thyme, savory, marjoram, and parsley small chopped to the broth.

When you are ready for dinner put the pot with the broth on the fire and let it boil a little then put in your eggs and stir it well so it will curdle less. The less it boils the more tender it will be. Serve it 2 or 3 slices to a dish.

To Make a White Broth

Put a neck of mutton in a pot of clear water on the fire. Clean off any scum that comes to the surface. Reduce the water by half. Take 2 ladle-fulls of the broth and put them on a platter. Roughly chop 2 handfuls of parsley and put it into boil with the mutton. Take a dozen eggs, the 2 ladle-lulls of broth and seme ve us so it will be tart and mix them all together with salt. Shortly before you go to dinner add all this to the mutton and stir it well so it will curdle less and serve it with sops.

Another Broth with Longworts

Boil mutton in clear water and then add lettuce or spinach. If you want you can boil 2 or 3 chickens and add salt and verjus to taste. Serve with the meat under the leaves.

To Make a Frasye at Night

Take chicken heads, livers, giblets or gizzards, wings, feet and chop them into pieces half an inch long and boil them all together. When the broth is almost boiled away chop a little parsley and add it to the pot with verjus and half a dish of butter. Let it boil, and when it is tart enough serve it forth.

To Make Shoes (1545 ed) or Sewes (1575 ed)

Boil a beef rump for 1 or 2 hours and then add a great quantity of cabbage then boil together for 3 hours. Then add a couple stock doves, teals, pheasants, partridges or other wild fowl. Let everything boil together, then season with salt and serve them forth.

To Make Porraye

Boil a capon or hen in a pot with either beef or mutton to sweeten the broth. Boil them all together until they are tender then remove the capon or hen. Remove the bones from the meat and smash them in a mortar with 2 pounds of blanched almonds. Mix this with the booth until it is properly thick. Put everything into a small pot and season it with a little sugar, sandalwood, cloves, mace and small raisins then bring it back to a boil then serve on sops.

To Stew Bones or Bristle of Beef

Stew beef bristle until tender, about 6 hours, until there is no broth left. Make separate bundles of rosemary and mace in clean linen cloths. Boil it all together. Then wring the juices out of the rosemary and mace onto the meat and add a little salt and serve.

For to Stew Mutton

Boil a neck and breast of mutton together to make a strong broth. Remove the scum that comes to the top. When it has boiled a while take part of the broth and put it in another pot. Add a pound of raisins to the broth in the second pot and boil until the raisins are tender. Then mix a little bread with the broth. Then chop thyme, savory and parsley with other small herbs and put them in with the mutton. Then add the raisins along with whole prunes, cloves, mace, pepper, saffron and a little salt. If you desire you may stew a chicken or sparrows or other little birds as well.

To Stew Steaks of Mutton

Cut a leg of mutton into small slices and put it in a chafing dish, then add a half gallon of ale then clean off the scum the rises to the top. Add 7 or 8 onions that have been sliced thinly. After they have boiled an hour add a dish of sweet butter and then let them boil until tender then add a little salt and pepper.

For To Make Pears in Conserve

First make the syrup in this way: Take a quart of good red wine and put a pint of clarified honey and a pound or a half of sugar and stir all thosetogether over a fire until the seethe and then set it aside to cool. This syrup is good for many things and will keep for a year or two.

Peel the pears but don’t core them and seethe them in good red wine so they become well soaked and tender and that the wine is almost soaked into them. Drain the pears through a cloth or a strainer into a vessel and add the syrup to them until the vessel is almost full. Add powdered canel, cinnamon, ginger and other spices.

Then put them in a box if you will and make your syrup for the quantity you will be working with up to 20 pears more or less.

Bibliography

Print Sources

A Prober Boke of Newe Cokery. London: William Howe 1575

Lorwin, Madge, Dining with William Shakespear, New York: Atheneum, 1976

Markham, Gervase, and Michael R. Best, The English Housewife, McGill Queens Univ Press, 1995

Plat, Sir Hugh, Delights for Ladies, London: Crosby, Lockwood & Sons LTD, 1948

Renfrow, Cindy, Take a Thousand Eggs or More, 2nd Ed Vols 1&2 1997

Online Sources

Harris, Mark, Stefan’s Florilegium, www.florilegium.org

Matterer, James, Gode Cookery, www.godecookery.com

Myers, Daniel, Medieval Cookery, www.medievalcookery.com

Lexicon of Early Modern English, University of Toronto, http://leme.library.utotonto.ca/

Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, www.oed.com

Dr. Thomas Gloning, A Proper Newe Boke of Cookery, University of Giessen, www.uni-giessen.de/gloning/tx/bookecok.htm