The Well-kept Kitchen

Publisher synopsis: In 1615, the poet and writer Gervase Markham published an extraordinary handbook for housewives, containing advice on everything from planting herbs to brewing beer, feeding animals to distilling perfume, with recipes for a variety of dishes such as trifle, pancakes and salads (not to mention some amusingly tart words on how the ideal wife should behave). Aimed at middle-class women who would share in household tasks with their servants in the kitchen, this companionable and opinionated book offers a richly enjoyable glimpse of the way we lived, worked and ate 400 years ago.