Cookery

Forms: 4 cokerie, (5 kokery), 6 cokery(e, coquerie, -rye, (kouckery), 6–7 cookerie. [f. COOK sb. or v.¹ + -ERY 2.]

  1.  The art or practice of cooking, the preparation of food by means of fire.

1393.  Gower, Conf., II. 83. Berconius of cokerie First made the delicacie.

c. 1450.  Two Cookery-bks., 69. Here Beginnethe A Boke of Kokery.

1555.  Eden, Decades, 258. Theyr maner of coquerie is in manye thynges differynge from owres.

1570.  Wills & Inv. N. C. (Surtees), 327. A booke of kouckery in prent.

1606.  Shaks., Ant. & Cl., II. vi. 64. Fine Egyptian cookerie.

1725.  De Foe, Voy. round World (1840), 265. A house, or a place at least, for our cookery.

1818.  Colebrooke, Import Colonial Corn, 94. Animal matters which have undergone cookery, [etc.].

1884.  L’pool Daily Post, 24 July, 5. A new department will be opened forthe neighbouring School of Cookery.

  b.  with pl.

1699.  Dampier, Voy. (1729), II. I. 31. The most common Sorts of Cookeries is to dress little bits of Pork.

1863.  Mrs. Marsh, Heathside F., II. 86. Wait till I get a school of my own, and see what cookeries I’ll have.

  † 2.  concr. Cooking apparatus and material. Obs.

1613.  Purchas, Pilgrimage, 588. [In Cairo] there are estemed to bee 15000 Cookes which carry their Cookerie and boile it as they goe, on their heads.

  † 3.  A product of the cook’s art. Obs. rare.

a. 1734.  North, Lives (1808), II. 205 (D.). His appetite was gone, and cookeries were provided in order to tempt his palate, but all was chip.

  † 4.  A cooking establishment; a kitchen; a cook-shop. Obs.

1598.  Stow, Surv., x. (1603), 80. A common cookerie or cookes row.

1611.  Cotgr., Rotisserie … a kitchen, cookerie, or cookes shop, wherein meat is vsually rosted.

a. 1693.  Urquhart, Rabelais, III. xxxvii. 310. The Roast-meat Cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the Cook-Shop.

1837.  Dickens, Pickw., xliv. The pie made and baked at the prison cookery hard by.

  5.  fig. The action or method of ‘cooking’ or ‘dressing up’ (e.g., a literary work); the practice of ‘cooking’ or falsifying: see COOK v.¹ 3.

1709.  Tatler, No. 11, ¶ 6. We … have no Occasion for that Art of Cookery, which our Brother Newsmongers so much excel in;… dressing up a second Time for your Tast the same Dish which they gaue you the Day before.

1869.  Contemp. Rev., XII. 62. The legends might have been ‘cooked’ over and over again, but the cookery came at last to nought.

  6.  attrib. and Comb., as cookery competition, -lesson, -school, etc.; cookery-book, a book of receipts and instructions in cookery.

1810.  Annabella Plumetre (title), Domestic Management; or, The Healthy Cookery-Book.

1873.  Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. II. 131. A recipe in the cookery-book.

1884.  Pall Mall G., 21 Feb., 2/1. A cookery competition for the women was carried on during the three days.