This edition of Delightes is bound with another slim household recipe book, A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, which is anonymous but may also be one of Plat’s works--the two certainly were commonly bound together after this 1611 edition. Delightes was probably first published in 1600 and A Closet in 1602, and the two were repeatedly republished through the first three quarters of the seventeenth century. Both are now rare, with the earliest surviving edition of A Closet being that published in 1608.
This small book, a duodecimo, is bound in contemporary vellum, with an early ownership inscription, `Mary Tyrwhitts Bo[ke]’, indicating it may have been owned by one of the `courteous gentlewomen’ for whom Plat wrote. The main text is printed within ornamental woodcut borders, formed from light curving lines and arabesques for A Closet, with similar head and tailpieces in Delightes. The borders in Delightes are composed of different designs, five of which interweave symbols of monarchy--tudor roses, fleurs de lys, portcullises--and the letters ‘ER’, a graphic loyalty to the crown from an author who had been knighted six years before the book’s publication. The book makes an attractive whole and is in good condition; especially since, as Bent Juel-Jensen noted, `most of the surviving copies are pretty grubby and often incomplete’.
The book is of great value to the museum, which collects recipe books and household manuals, for what it tells us about the domestic life and prescribed practices of early modern Londoners, suggestive as it is of the concerns of the householders for whom Plat wrote: preserving food and flowers for winter, entertaining children and friends with playful sweetmeats, and keeping their bodies and laundry sweet-smelling.
This grant was awarded from FNL's B. H. Breslauer Fund, thanks to the generosity of the President and Officers of the B. H. Breslauer Foundation.
