By Sarah Peters Kernan

While I was researching medieval and early modern cookeries for my dissertation, I came across several manuscripts that were notable in one regard or another but they did not make it into my final document. In the hope of inspiring further research, I am focusing on one of these books here. London, British Library, MS Harley 1735 is a fifteenth-century manuscript owned by a rural physician, John Crophill. This manuscript contains a cookery (fols. 16v–28v), remarkable not necessarily for its recipes, but its context and marginalia.

Harley 1735 is one of at least twelve cookeries located in manuscripts owned by medical professionals in fifteenth-century England. I have argued that these cookeries were primarily used as aspirational texts.[1] Professionals could learn about the foods they should aspire to eat as members of a rising social group. While occasional recipes may have been useful in their household kitchens or medical practices, the codicological context of these cookeries suggests that readers used the texts to familiarize themselves with what had been served to their social superiors as a way to fit in and excel in a new social environment. Recipes were a vehicle for shaping a group’s new identity.

The marginalia of Harley 1735 begs for a closer look, as it contains not textual notes, but illustrations. I cannot begin to describe my excitement when I first opened this manuscript! Expecting to see a plain text in black ink with occasional rubrication, I was delighted to see abundant marginal sketches of animals, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and cooking implements. While some other contemporary English and French manuscripts contain a sketch or two of distillation stills or fish (and one instance of a diagram for food preparation), this cookery contains tens of drawings on multiple folios. Furthermore, the sketches align with the recipes. Since all of the drawings are marginal and not integrated into the text, it is safe to assume that they were added after the cookery was copied.

While there are marginal sketches in other texts in the same manuscript, it is difficult to say with certainty that Crophill himself added the sketches. None of the images depict cooking actions or processes, but all of the drawings refer to ingredients in the recipes or an implement required to carry out the recipe. There is one exception: a sketch of a dog appears on a leaf with recipes for “Chaudon sauȝ of swannes,” “Amydoun,” and “Conyes in graue.”[2] The dog appears to be an illustrative accompaniment to sketches of a swan or rabbits in the same margin, visually chasing these necessary ingredients.

Perusing the cookery, one finds implements like pots, mortars and pestles, bellows, and a knife. Other less identifiable implements also reside in the margins. There are fruits and vegetables like figs, dates, plums, grapes, and even leeks! Almonds appear several times, as well as other grains, which might be wheat, sugar, salt, or possibly spices (some of the grains are particularly difficult to distinguish from one another and the recipes contain many possible suggestions). Ginger root also makes an appearance. The supply of animals is particularly healthy; fish, rabbits, chickens, quail, swan, stag, cow, and the rogue dog prowl about.[3]

These sketches in the margins of Harley 1735 problematize my conclusion that the cookery was primarily an aspirational text. At first glance, the number of sketches, especially manicules, might seem to indicate that the book was regularly referenced in a kitchen.[4] However, the cookery lacks the food stains and markings regularly exhibited by manuscripts used in kitchens. The artist also clearly enjoyed sketching and may have chosen to artistically render the text based on a preference for drawing certain items, rather than a correlation with preparation of foodstuffs. And perhaps most importantly, some of the recipes accompanied by sketches were almost certainly not prepared by Crophill or his household; luxury recipes like “Chaudon sauȝ of swannes” accompanied by a sketch of a swan, or “Roo in sewe” with a drawing of a stag, were simply out of reach for non-noble preparation.[5] So while this cookery is a problematic cookery, I still believe it was primarily used as an aspirational text, rather than an instructional one.

Ultimately, I am still left wondering why the illustrations were added, since it is so unusual. No contemporary cookery in England or France matches the degree of illustration. European cookbooks did not include copious illustration until the late sixteenth century with Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera (1570) and Charles Estienne’s L’agriculture et Maison rustique (1564), and the first heavily illustrated English cookery, Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660), was not published until 1660. Perhaps the sketches in Harley 1735 were a finding aid for Crophill or another reader. Perhaps the drawings were created for a more enjoyable reading experience; modern cookbook readers are certainly familiar with this concept! Another possibility is that the sketches were created out of the sheer enjoyment of drawing and the cookery margins were an available space. Crophill’s rural surroundings in Wix, Essex, could have inspired the copious and sometimes remarkably naturalistic drawings. Or perhaps the illustrations were created as a teaching aid or storytime delight for a child in the household, with the familiar animals more akin to a Beatrix Potter tale.

In any case, these remarkable drawings deserve much more attention, and could shed light on a host of topics, from available animal breeds and vegetal varietals, household objects, or illustrative practices in late medieval manuscripts.

 

NOTES

[1] Sarah Peters Kernan, “‘For al them that delight in Cookery’: The Production and Use of Cookery Books in England, 1300–1600” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2016), 64–102.

[2] fol. 18r

[3] Lois Ayoub, “John Crophill’s Books: An Edition of British Library Ms Harley 1735” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1994), 24–5. Ayoub catalogues the sketches in the manuscript.

[4] fols. 21r, 22r–v, 23v, 26v–27v

[5] fol. 18r and 19v

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