[f. COOK v.1 + -ER1.]
1. A stove or other apparatus designed for cooking. b. A vessel in which food is cooked.
1884. Health Exhib. Catal., 68/1. Gas Cookers in Work.
1887. Manch. City News, 26 Feb., 4. The soup is prepared in a thirty-gallon ‘Cooker.’
2. A fruit, etc., that cooks well.
1887. Daily News, 25 Jan., 2/8. They are a large, juicy apple, agreeable to eat and splendid cookers. Ibid. (1888), 17 Oct., 4/5. The best cropping apple … unequalled as a cooker.
3. fig. One who ‘cooks up,’ or dresses up (literature), manipulates accounts, etc.
1869. Contemp. Rev., XII. 53. Homer is called a ‘cooker’ of early ballads.
1888. Sat. Rev., 15 Dec., 702/1. He sometimes called their composer or compiler a ‘cooker,’ who made a dish of floating poetic figments.
4. That which ‘cooks’ or ‘does for’ any one (see COOK v.1 4); a ‘finisher.’ slang.
1861. Daily Milwaukee Press & News, 15 Feb., 1/1. A sewer-on of buttons, a rocker of cradles and a happy cooker of victuals.
1869. Daily News, 12 May. Jeames [writes] ‘I expect this will be a cooker for me.’
