YouTube is awash in cooking channels, one hardly knows where to begin

 But it's nothing new:

Ev'ry one to cookery pretends.

-- William King, The Art of Cookery, 1708 

 

 

 

Happiness is a cauldron of fat beef

 

 A caldron of fat beef, and stoop of ale,

On the huzzaing mob shall more prevail,

Than if you give them, with the nicest art,

Ragousts of peacocks brains, or filbert tart.

 

-- William King, The Art of Cookery (London, 1708),  p. 107

 

Happiness is an old British confection

 Let sugar, wine, and cream together club,

To make that gentle viand, syllabub.

 

-- William King (1663-1712)

Happiness is mutton chops

 

 

 Old Cross condemns all persons to be fops,

That can't regale themselves with mutton chops.

-- William King, The Art of Cookery, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry (Humbly inscrib'd to the Honourable Beef Steak Club), 1708