Earliest cookbook found
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The earliest English cookbook is a far cry from Delia Smith –imprecise yet stylish in its concern for presentation. This recipe for the medieval equivalent of a bacon omelette appears in an untitled work from 1500 that has been rediscovered after being mislaid for years at Longleat House, Wiltshire. No author is credited but the publisher, Richard Pynson, is thought to have compiled it from dozens of written sources.
Among recipes for braun fryez (meat fritters) and leche lumbard (spicy date cakes from Lombardy), the book records Henry V's coronation feast in 1413, which included pike, lamprey, trout, swan, venyson, congre, halybut, base, eles, salmon and sole. No patent remedies for indigestion are included in the book.
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