The present paper deals with an analysis of medieval culinary and medical recipes. A major feature which will be of interest is the use of measure terms. The research has been based on material from 14th and 15th century recipe collections. First, the major weight and measure systems which were used in the Middle English period will be presented. Then, the measure terms used in the analysed texts are collected and categorised into three groups: specific, non-specific, and container-related terms. The study, apart from showing the variety of measure terms used at the time, also compares two types of recipes, i.e., medical and culinary.

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The proposed article aims to examine the strategies used by American women cookbook writers to attract the intended audience to their collections. The study is based on 19th-century cookbooks published in the United States; earlier collections, although available in the US were published in and brought from Britain. Written for and, in many cases, by housewives, the analysed cookbooks show, on the one hand, how the authors tried to convince the prospective reader of their expertise and knowledge. On the other hand, a certain degree of intimacy with the reader was to draw the reader’s attention to the collection. The discussion will be based on (i) the cookbooks’ titles, as they are “the first point of contact between the writer and the potential reader” (Haggan, 2004, p. 193) and an important determinant of a book’s success; and (ii) the authors’ signatures (as not all of the publications were signed with the author’s name).