In the days of Queen Elizabeth the first step to a practical knowledge of cookery according to Gervase Markham (The English Hus-wife, 1615) was ‘to have knowledge of all sorts of herbs belonging unto the kitchen; whether they be for the pot, for sallets, for sauces, for servings, or for any other seasoning, or adorning, which skill of knowledge of herbs, she [the English housewife] must get by her own true labour and experience.’
Although Markham is frequently referred to as the first hack-writer in reality he wrote chiefly from his own experience. He was a country gentleman, belonged to a well-known Nottinghamshire family, and was not altogether lacking in ability to judge of what he writes. Much however of his cookery book he tells us is taken from ‘a manuscript which many years agone belonged to an Honourable Countess, one of the greatest Glories of our Kingdom.’ This means that although his book was first published in the reign of James I, the cookery he describes and the ‘receipts’ he gives belong to the great days of Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Drake and Raleigh; it was the food eaten by heroes, the men and women who made England and America, and we know they had inherited their skill from those who had lived in Britain from the earliest time. It is possible to trace the evolution of English cookery from prehistoric times to the present day.
