Earliest cookbook found

"To make ledlards of thre colours, take clene cowe mylke and put it in thre pots, and breke to every pot a quantite of egges as ye seme best, and colour one part with sanders and another parte with saffron and the thyrde parte grene with herbes..."

The earliest English cookbook is a far cry from Delia Smith –imprecise yet stylish in its concern for presentation. This recipe for the medieval equivalent of a bacon omelette appears in an untitled work from 1500 that has been rediscovered after being mislaid for years at Longleat House, Wiltshire. No author is credited but the publisher, Richard Pynson, is thought to have compiled it from dozens of written sources.

Among recipes for braun fryez (meat fritters) and leche lumbard (spicy date cakes from Lombardy), the book records Henry V's coronation feast in 1413, which included pike, lamprey, trout, swan, venyson, congre, halybut, base, eles, salmon and sole. No patent remedies for indigestion are included in the book.