The Compleat Cook Expertly Prescribing the Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian,Spanish or French, for Dressing of Flesh and Fish, OrderingOf Sauces or Making of Pastry [Kindle Edition]

W. M. (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 122 KB
• Print Length: 81 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Public Domain Books (December 1, 2003)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000JMKYIM
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,791 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, November 10, 2009

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Shala Kerrigan (Anchorage) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Compleat Cook Expertly Prescribing the Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian,Spanish or French, for Dressing of Flesh and Fish, OrderingOf Sauces or Making of Pastry (Kindle Edition)

Yes, the first reviewer is right, this IS a cookbook from 1658. But I don't see that as being a bad thing at all. A lot of the recipes in it are doable now and adaptable. If you are interested in renaissance era cooking at all, it's an invaluable guide and being in Kindle format makes it easy to bookmark things you want to try out later.
It is NOT a step by step cookbook as we are used to now, so it will take a little bit of research to understand what some of the terms are, as well as a decent knowledge of how to cook to be able to do the recipes in it. It will call for "enough flower to make a past" which means enough flour to make a paste/dough, or for cooking in a "quick" oven which means hot. You don't get exact temperatures or times or even exact measurements for a lot of the recipes.
That said, I read some of the recipes to my husband yesterday and he's looking forward to me trying them.
It also has a couple bread recipes in it, and a lot of bread recipes weren't recorded in the middle ages and during the renaissance because it was generally assumed that people knew how to make bread. Which leads to another thing that people miss in older recipes. We are very used to having instant dry yeast available to us, so when we look at older beer or bread recipes that call for a cup of yeast, it's a bit confusing. Yeast at that point was the sourdough yeast culture, a liquid mix of flour and water that had live yeast growing and active in it.
It's free and it's a nice bit of history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Cookbook!, December 19, 2010

By 

Heather M. Jones - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Compleat Cook Expertly Prescribing the Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian,Spanish or French, for Dressing of Flesh and Fish, OrderingOf Sauces or Making of Pastry (Kindle Edition)

This book was written by William Montague, Queen Henrietta Maria's cook way back in the 1650s. If you are looking for a modern cookbook, this is not the book for you. However, this book is a fantastic resource for any student of Renaissance England or culinary history, or just want some interesting new recipes to try. It contains recipes for puddings, jellies, many varieties of meat, breads, pastries, cookies, and many dishes made with milk, cream, or cheese. Not so many recipes with vegetables--I've found one so far for 'hartichoakes'.

The book's age does present some difficulties to the modern cook (or reader). Many of the ingredients (such as suet) are not commonly available anymore, and many of the terms are unfamiliar ("sack", for example, is a kind of white wine,) making it tricky to figure out exactly what is being called for in some of the recipes. The author also assumes you already know how to cook, and does not walk you through each individual step in the process--the instructions are often general, as in "Then add enough flour to make a past, roul it out, and put it in an indifferent quick oven until it's done." This was the 1600s, after all. He doesn't know exactly how hot your oven is burning.

Some of the recipes (sheep's feet, antler jelly,) probably will not be gracing your table any time soon. But many of the recipes, such as the various breads, cheeses, and puddings are entirely doable with a little research (how big is a porringer?) and substitution (maybe butter or regular beef fat instead of suet.) Obviously this is not how the average person ate back in 1650--many of the ingredients such as nutmeg and sugar would have been prohibitively expensive to all but the nobility--but it doesn't take much imagination to speculate about how the common people would have prepared such dishes, or the ways these new ingredients spread through the cuisine as they became cheaper over the next century. Montague seems a bit obsessed with these newfangled ingredients, recommending the addition of liberal quantities of sugar, nutmeg, and rosewater to almost every non-meat recipe (and suet for all of the meat,) more sugar than even I would put in my food, often almost as an afterthought, like 'oh, just toss in a handful of sugar at the end, whatever, the Queen doesn't really care so long as I stick some sugar in it somewhere.'

Anyway, it's a great cookbook. Read and enjoy!

1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 1658, March 26, 2009

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PLD (Buffalo NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Compleat Cook Expertly Prescribing the Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian,Spanish or French, for Dressing of Flesh and Fish, OrderingOf Sauces or Making of Pastry (Kindle Edition)

Cookbook from 1658, so don't expect to use the recipes. Covers how to Dresse a Pig in the French Manner, and how to make a Portugall Dish and Posset.