Quizzing Glasse

Or Hannah Scrutinized, Part I

Abstract

The forthcoming publication by Prospect Books of a facsimile of the first edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy has prompted Jennifer Stead to make an extensive study of the sources used by Hannah Glasse. This shows that the source on which she drew most heavily was the voluminous but little known book first entitled The Whole Duty of a Woman and renamed with effect from its second edition The Lady's Companion. The study has also revealed interesting connections between that work and earlier books, and has thrown much light on the manner in which Hannah Glasse set about her task of making cookery 'plain and easy', by judicious adaption of and additions to the earlier material. (There were also some injudicious touches which produced hilarious results.) The upshot is a wide-ranging survey which for the first time evaluates Hannah Glasse's work on the basis of detailed research; and which at the same time illuminates the whole subject of English cookery books of the 18th century. Part I of the survey appears here, and Part II, including a table of those recipes of Hannah Glasse whose ancestry has been traced, will follow in PPC 14.