page_title: William Kitchiner
section_title: The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner
hierarchical_section_title: William Kitchiner / The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Richard Martin (1754-1834), William Kitchiner (1775-1827), and Samuel Phillips Eady Rare Books Keywords: Samuel Phillips Eady; Richard Martin; William Kitchiner; G. Cruikshank
context_page_description: William Kitchiner M.D. was an English optician, inventor of telescopes, amateur musician and exceptional cook. A celebrity chef, he was a household name during the 19th century, and his 1817 cookbook, The Cook's Oracle, was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and the United States. The origin of the crisp is attributed to Kitchiner, with The Cook's Oracle including the earliest known recipe.
  Unlike most food writers of the time he cooked the food himself, washed up afterwards, and performed all the household tasks he wrote about. He travelled around with his portable cabinet of taste, a folding cabinet containing his mustards and sauces. He was also the creator of Wow-Wow sauce.
context_section_description: Kitchiner's most well-known book The Cook's Oracle, full title Apicius Redivivus, or the Cook's Oracle, was first published in 1817. It is also known as The Cook's Oracle: Containing receipts for plain cookery on the most economical plan for private families, etc.      
  The Cook's Oracle includes eleven ketchup recipes, including two each for mushroom, walnut and tomato ketchups, one each for cucumber, oyster, cockle and mussel ketchups, and also a recipe for Wow-Wow sauce.
  The book contains what may be one of the earliest references to crisps, in a recipe for "Potatoes fried in Slices or Shavings", which instructs the reader to "peel large potatoes, slice them about a quarter of an inch thick, or cut them in shavings round and round, as you would peel a lemon; dry them well in a clean cloth, and fry them in lard or dripping".
caption: Caricature of Richard Martin, William Kitchiner, Samuel Phillips Eady: Martin's Bill in Operation (published 1924).
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