The Form of Cury

The Forme of Cury is an early English cookbook compiled in the 12th century. The title's word "cury" is an obsolete term for cooked food. This collection contains 196 recipes, many of which show French origins through their names, such as "Blank Manng" and "Payn Fondewe."1

Cookbooks are collections of recipes and instructions for preparing and serving food. They serve as a record of culinary arts, preserving recipes that would otherwise be lost. Early examples include Deipnosophistai from 2nd-century BCE Greece and a Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius. Medieval Europe also produced cookbooks, with Le Viander (c. 1375) being an important early French example. The invention of the printing press made cookbooks more widely available, leading to their proliferation and the standardization of recipes, as seen with Fannie Merritt Farmer's The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.12