Wikipedia:Peer review/Ann Cook (cookery book writer)/archive1
Ann Cook (cookery book writer)[edit]
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Ann Cook is an interesting footnote to culinary history. A professional cook who certainly knew her stuff, she only wrote her work Professed Cookery because she was short of cash - and so that she could blacken the name Hannah Glasse, the sister of the local squire who drove Ann and her husband into bankruptcy. Despite the vitriol in her book, it also contains some fantastic writing about cookery. A trip to FAC so Cook can join at the same level as Glasse is envisaged after this. - SchroCat (talk) 12:11, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
From TR[edit]
Comments down to the end of the Life section:
- Lead
- I'm confused about the publication dates. You say she wrote the first edition in 1754 but you don't say when it was published – just changing "wrote" to "published" should fix that, but I'm baffled by "In the first two of these, Cook was stated as living in Newcastle upon Tyne; in the third she was living in lodgings in Holborn, London". Do you mean in the third edition, i.e. 1760? She wasn't living anywhere in 1936. If my guess is right you can just change "of these" to "editions" and all will be clear. (Having reached the relevant bit of main text I see I guessed right.)
- In the third para Cook has become Cooke.
- Life
- "Allgood accused Cook of being a crook and a Jacobite" – is "crook" a touch informal for our dignified English encyclopaedia? And it might be as well to make it clear whether it was Mr or Mrs Cook who was being accused.
- "causing fear and panic" – perhaps a touch tautological? Not exact synonyms, I grant you, but pretty close.
- "the Cooks had paid back £320 of the £369 bond, so they sold much of their remaining goods" – you know my fuddy-duddy views on strong-arming "so" into use as a conjunction.
- The last sentence of the third para of the section goes off the syntactical rails. "They were followed by their creditors for the balance of the bond, and who would not allow any terms of easy settlement" doesn't hang together. You need something on the lines of "Their creditors followed them for the balance of the bond, and would not allow any terms of easy settlement"
- "Cook's biographer for the Dictionary of National Biography" – mildly unexpected choice of preposition. One might expect "in" rather than "for"
- And do you really mean the DNB rather than its successor, the ODNB? The latter's site is playing up at the moment, and stops dead halfway through the first para of the page, but the author is clearly Gilly Lehmann. When the site is up and running again and the full page loads there will be a link to the old DNB article, if any.
- "it appears that in order to earn money" – you can bet your shirt that someone will moan about "in order to" and insist – foolishly in my view – that it should always be just "to" and never "in order to"
- "her House in the Groat-market ... a house on the Groat-market" – in or on? You can imagine which I prefer, but it certainly ought to be one or the other even if the first is in a quote and the second one isn't.
- "Allgood's sister, Hannah Glasse" – half-sister surely if she was illegitimate. (Ditto in the lead, now I think about it.)
More anon. Enjoying the piece greatly. Tim riley talk 10:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
- Second and concluding batch
- "The second edition of Professed Cookery included a chapter ... which covered 66 pages" – presumably it still includes and it still covers unless all copies have vanished.
- "To Make a Pellow" (pilaf)" – pellow looks more like pilau than pilaf to me. I merely mention it (and always have to remind myself which is which, so what do I know?)
- "she was also familiar with the same French sources used in Art of Cookery" – I'd omit the "same" and give the title its definite article.
- "soups (which Cook spelled "soop")" – if she spells soup as soop, how does she spell ragù?
- Flummeries could do with a link, and so perhaps could possets (perhaps to here, but probably not).
- Household management: the first sentence needs a semicolon rather than a full stop after "thirty years". (Or a capital letter for "The two")
- "Burnet considers it likely that this chapter was not written by Cook alone, but by Cook transcribing Abigail's part of the story as the two women talked" – I boggle at this: it is the first mention of Abigail and the first suggestion, after two paragraphs and a big block quote, that she was a real person rather than Cook's literary invention. More info up front needed, I think.
- "more kind and charitable than Cook, who Burnet describes as" – "whom", please.
- "In the 1936 edition edited by Regula Burnet" – a comma before "edited" would remove the implication that there were other 1936 editions not edited by Regula Burnet.
- Sources: perhaps add author links for Glasse and Anne Willan?
That's my lot. On to FAC! Tim riley talk 11:56, 12 April 2024 (UTC)