Since my kitchen is littered with (most of) the ingredients for our Christmas cake, it seems appropriate to devote a short post to a significant publication from 1817 (yes, my new favourite year!) – Dr William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle. We’ve encountered Dr Kitchiner before, on account of his patriotic and sea song books. They weren’t particularly well-received.

Dr Kitchiner had other interests, though.  He lectured on optics, and was a published expert on cookery and nutrition. He hoped that his cookbook would provide good, solid nutritional guidelines. Wikipedia reports that he was an exceptional cook, and his was a household name. I haven’t gone so far as to check this out, but I’ve found you a simple suet pudding to try!

You can read the ENTIRE book online, if you’re so inclined:-

Apicius Redivivus: Or, The Cook’s Oracle

(The 2nd edition even begins with an Anacreontic Song, if you please, combining his passions for music and food.)

Whilst checking the King’s Inns guardbooks for national songbooks, I naturally looked for Kitchiner, though I didn’t really imagine there would be much appetite for English national songs. I was unsurprised to find it absent from the catalogue – but there was clearly an appetite for Apicius Redivivus! There it was, in the guardbook under Kitchiner’s name.  Perhaps struggling to decide where to shelve it, the Victorian librarians ended up putting it in the “literature” section – the same as the minstrelsy material.

But it wasn’t on the shelves. (Someone kindly checked for me!) Who borrowed the cookbook and didn’t return it? Or misshelved it? Or dropped it in the broth, or used it until it fell to bits? I have a good imagination, but maybe I should stick to hard facts. And, tempting as it is to try the recipes straight away, I should probably bake our own Christmas cake first!  My family will probably be glad to learn that Dr Kitchiner only mentions Christmas in connection with the seasons for oysters and House Lamb – which differs from Grass Lamb , and is eaten from Christmas until Lady-Day.  So their annual treat won’t be any different from previous iterations!