From feigned glory & Usurped Throne
And all the Greatnesse to me falsly shown
And from the Arts of Government set free
See how Protectresse & a Drudge agree
– Inscription below frontispiece portrait (left)
This digital annotated edition, based on the copy of The Court & Kitchin of Elizabeth, Commonly called Joan Cromwel, the Wife of the Late Usurper (1664) held by the John. J. Burns Library at Boston College, features high resolution IIIF images of each page, a navigable transcription of the text, detailed annotations, and a variety of useful paratextual materials. While the text is framed satirically with a frontispiece and an introduction that characterizes Elizabeth Cromwell as cheap and vulgar, the recipes include nothing so farcical as instructions for a stew made of Royalists. In fact, even though some recipes reference the preferences of the Cromwell family, nearly all of them can be traced to other cookbooks of the period – namely Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660), William Rabisha’s The Whole Book of Cookery Dissected (1661), and Hannah Woolley’s The Gentlewomans Companion (1673), The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight (1675), and The Compleat Servant-Maid (1677). Many of the recipes can be found in more than one cookbook – and these links appear in the annotations. Slight variations and possible copying errors raise the question of genealogy and the network occupied by the printers of these texts, a topic of future planned research.