Ivan Day

An extraordinary collection of Jacobean sweet dishes, confectionery and preserves. Murrell wrote another recipe book with a very similar title - A Daily Exercise for Ladies and Gentlewomen, published in 1617, but its content is completely different, but also very good.

A tiny collection of English Renaissance recipes - lovely tarts of damsons stewed in wine, gooseberries etc. Unfortunately, the cheese tart is made with the celebrated Banbury Cheese, now sadly extinct. One of the best insights into the cookery of Shakespeare's period.

This is an English translation of Menon's magisterial Soupers de la Cour. Recipes for some of the greatest French dishes from the period of Louis XVI, but in English.

Amazing high status recipes for confectionery and ices with spectacular chromolithograph illustrations.

An encyclopaedic collection of English recipes in two volumes, which started life as The Whole Duty of a Woman in 1737, but which cloned into the largest collection of recipes in 18th century Britain.

A two volume masterpiece of a cookery book. Wonderful recipes, insightful illustrations and revealing asides and comments on the lost practices of the English Georgian kitchen.

Completely unknown in Italy, Jarrin published this collection of confectionery, ice cream and preserve recipes in London in English. It has the earliest printed recipes for spongata, predating any of the Italian ones. A remarkable insight into the skills and equipment of the early confectioner.

The very first cookery book I ever bought at the age of 13. It not only hooked me on collecting antiquarian cookery books, but I also learnt to cook from this book. No living chef at the time I studied this work could have taught me as well as Mr Nott, one time cook to the Duke of Bolton.

Forget about Mrs Beeton, if you want a real insight into the amazing Anglo-French cookery of the Victorian period this eight volume set is the book for you. This is my first port of call if I want to find out about anything to do with cookery or ingredients. It is the Victorian equivalent of the Oxford Companion to Food, but on a much larger scale and with thousands of recipes and wonderful illustrations. This is my Desert Island choice.

Dubois, former chef de cuisine to Kaiser Wilhelm I, penned this remarkable book in English while he was hiding in London from the Franco-Prussian war. Unlike his other books, which are mainly aimed at high status professionals, this beautifully illustrated recipe collection is for the Victorian domestic cook who wanted to attempt the most fashionable French dishes of the period.