The Accomplisht Cook

The Accomplisht Cook, Or the Art and Mystery of Cookery

Frontispiece of 1671 edition
Author	Robert May
Country	England
Subject	Cookery
Publisher	Nathaniel Brooke
Publication date	1660
Pages	300

The Accomplisht Cook is an English cookery book published by the Restoration era professional cook Robert May in 1660, and the first to group recipes logically into sections.

The book made early use of two ingredients brought to Europe from the Americas, the potato and the turkey.

Following the English Civil War, Robert May, the celebrity chef of his time, wrote and published The Accomplisht Cook.

The work was first published in 1660 by Nathaniel Brooke. The last revision made during the author's lifetime was published in 1665. A (second) edition was published by Nathaniel Brooke in 1671. A third edition was published in 1678 by Obadiah Blagrave. The 1685 edition runs to some 300 pages.

When a 1678 edition of the book was discovered and put up for sale in 2007, the auctioneer Charles Hanson was reported as saying that no more than 200 copies were printed in the 17th century. He added that "May would have been very much the Gordon Ramsay of his day, something of a celebrity chef", asserted that "only 400" copies were printed.

May's recipes included customs from the Middle Ages, alongside European dishes such as French bisque and Italian brodo (broth), with about 20 percent of the book devoted to soups. May provides a large number of recipes for venison, as for sturgeon, but balances his more elaborate and costly recipes with some for simple dishes.

The recipes are presented entirely as instructions, without lists of ingredients. The instructions are not necessarily in order; he can write "Then have a rost Capon minced", requiring the cook to have already taken, prepared and roasted the capon, a process that takes some hours, in the middle of a recipe (for Olio Podrida). Quantities, if given, are mentioned in passing. Thus he may mention "put them a boiling in a Pipkin of a Gallon", or "the juyce of two or three Oranges", or he may simply say "and put into beaten Butter", leaving the cook to judge the quantity required.