The cook's guide: or, Rare receipts for cookery. by Hannah Woolley
This month’s featured text is Hannah Woolley's The Cook's Guide: or Rare receipts for cookery. Hannah Woolley was born around 1622. She worked as a servant to a noblewoman for several years before marrying Jeremy Woolley, a schoolmaster, in 1646. Jeremy died in 1661, the same year Hannah published her first book, The Ladie's Directory, followed by The Cook's Guide (1664). She married Francis Challiner in 1666 who died sometime before 1669. Woolley then wrote The Quuen Like Closet (1670) and The Ladie's Delight (1672) By 1674, Hannah was living with her son, Richard and published her final work The Accomplisht Ladie's Delight, and died shortly after its publication in 1675.

The Cook's Guide is significant for many reasons. Not only does it give readers insight into early modern eating habits, but it also sheds light on English society. Cook books at the time were generally written and published by men (though the act itself was considered to be work for women). Woolley was able to establish herself as a female author (one of the very few). Additionally, the writing style of The Cooke's Guide is aimed at a lower (less literate) class. Since women would probably have been the primary audience of this book, one can assume that women would not have had the same reading ability as men. Also, this book lacks the precise instructions one would come to expect in a modern-day cookbook, showing that Woolley assumed a basic knowledge of work in the kitchen and demonstrating that precise temperature and timing measurements did not exist in her day. In all, this cookbook reveals much about both material consumption (specifically food consumption) and about the role and status of women in early modern English society.

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