The English Housewife

Markham reveals the "pretty and curious secrets" of preparing everything from simple foods to such elaborate meals as a "humble feast" - an undertaking which entails preparing "no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can stand on one table." He instructs the housewife on brewing beer and caring for wine, growing flax and hemp for thread, and spinning and dyeing. As a housewife was also responsible for the health and "soundness of body" of her family, he includes advice on the prevention of everything from the plague to baldness and bad breath. No other source from this period provides the same richness of information in such a readable style. Michael Best's introduction and his abundant notes make The English Housewife readily accessible to the contemporary reader.

Table of Contents:
Of the inward virtues which ought to be in every housewife - and first of her general knowledges both in physic and surgery, with plain approved medicines for health of the household, also the extraction of excellent oils fit for those purposes; of the outward and active knowledge of the housewife - and first of her skill in cookery, as sallats of all sorts, with flesh, fish, sauces, pastry, banqueting stuff, and ordering of great feasts; of distillations and their virtues, and of perfuming; the ordering, preserving, and helping of all sorts of wines, and first of the choice of sweet wines; of wool, hemp, flax, and cloth, and dyeing of colours, of each several substance, with all the knowledges belonging thereto; of dairies, butter, cheese, and the necessary things belonging to that office; the office of the maltster, and the several secrets and knowledges belonging to the making of malt; of the excellency of oats, and the many singular virtues and uses of them in a family; of the office of the brew-house, and the bake-house, and the necessary things belonging to the same.