The Good Huswifes Jewell 1596 edition title page

Thomas Dawson (active 1585–1620) was an English author of

cookery Cooking, cookery, or culinary arts is the art, science and craft of using heat to Outline of food preparation, prepare food for consumption. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric ...

and housekeeping books.

Life

Thomas Dawson was an author of popular

and housekeeping books in the late 16th century. His best-known works include ''

The Good Huswifes Jewell ''The Good Huswifes Jewell'' is an English cookery book by the cookery and housekeeping writer Thomas Dawson, first published in 1585. It includes recipes for medicines as well as food. To the spices found in Medieval English cooking, the book ...

'' (1585), ''The Booke of Carving and Sewing'' (1597), and his ''Booke of Cookerie'' (1620).

Books

Dawson's ''Good Huswifes Jewell'' gives recipes for making fruit tarts using fruits as varied as apple, peach, cherry, damson, pear, and mulberry. For stuffing for meat and poultry, or as he says "to farse all things", he recommends using the herbs thyme,

hyssop ''Hyssopus officinalis'' or hyssop is a shrub in the Lamiaceae or mint family native to Southern Europe, the Middle East, and the region surrounding the Caspian Sea. Due to its purported properties as an antiseptic, cough reliever, and expecto ...

, and parsley, mixed with egg yolk, white bread, raisins or barberries, and spices including cloves, mace, cinnamon and ginger, all in the same dish. His recipe for a salad with a

vinaigrette Vinaigrette ( , ) is made by mixing an oil with a mild acid such as vinegar or lemon juice (citric acid). The mixture can be enhanced with salt, herbs and/or spices. It is used most commonly as a salad dressing, but can also be used as a marina ...

dressing runs as follows (from the 1596 edition): ''To make a Sallet of all kinde of hearbes.'' ''Take your hearbes and picke them very fine into faire water, and picke your flowers by themselues, and washe them al cleane, and swing them in a strainer, and when you put them into a dish, mingle them with Cowcumbers or Lemmons payred and sliced, and scrape Suger, and put in vineger and Oyle, and throwe the flowers on the toppe of the sallet, and of euery sorte of the aforesaide things, and garnish the dish about with the forsaide thinges, and harde Egges boyled and laide about the dish and vpon the sallet.'' The celebrity chef

Clarissa Dickson Wright Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson Wright (24 June 1947 – 15 March 2014) was an English celebrity cook, television personality, writer, businesswoman, and former barrister. She was bes ...

comments on Dawson's

trifle Trifle is a layered dessert of English origin. The usual ingredients are a thin layer of sponge fingers or sponge cake soaked in sherry or another fortified wine, a fruit element (fresh or jelly), custard and whipped cream layered in that ord ...

that it differs from the modern recipe, as it consists only of "a pinte of thicke Creame", seasoned with sugar, ginger and rosewater, and warmed gently for serving. She notes, also from the ''Good Huswife's Jewell'', that the Elizabethans had a strong liking for sweet things. Dickson Wright, Clarissa (2011) ''A History of English Food''. London: Random House. . Page 147 Dawson's recipes included medicines, some of which involved sympathetic magic. The ''Good Huswife's Jewell'' described "a tart to provoke courage in either man or woman", calling for the brains of male sparrows. Torn sinews are healed by taking "worms while they be nice", crushing them and laying them on to the sore "and it will knit the sinew that be broken in two".

References

External links

Gode Cookery PDFs
including ''Good Huswifes Jewell 1596'' and ''The Good Huswives Handmaide 1597'' *

' (.htm) *
Good Huswifes Jewell 1596
' (.txt) {{DEFAULTSORT:Dawson, Thomas Chefs from the Kingdom of England 16th-century births 1620 deaths