cookee

English

Etymology

From cook +‎ -ee (diminutive suffix). Sense of "cook's helper" may be a blend of cook +‎ rookie, or cook +‎ trainee, etc.

Noun

cookee (plural cookees)

1. (archaic) A female cook.
   • 1836, William Cowper, Robert Southey, The Works of William Cowper, Esq - Volume 5, page 335:

     I approve altogether, my cousin beloved, of your sending your goods to the waggon on Saturday, and cookee by the coach on Tuesday. She will be here perhaps by four in the afternoon, at the latest by five, and will have quite time enough to find out all the cupboards and shelves in her department before you arrive.

   • 1845, The general reciter:

     Being heartily tired of this kind of fare, he applied to the cook : 'Cookee,' says Thomas, 'is it the standing rule of this family to keep their servants on nothing but bread and cheese?' 'What!' says the cook, 'do you grumble?' 'No, no, by no means, cookee,' replied Thomas, being fearful of forfeiting the money.

   • 1857, J.G.M. Rutherford, The Adventures and Intrigues of Charles the Second, Duck of Buckingham, and The Earl of Rochester:

     Cookee did not wish to entertain her illustrious friend in a vulgar way, though he was so hungry he could have taken his meal off kitchen stuff in a dog kennel.

2. A cook's helper, especially in a logging camp.
   • 1999, Robert E. Pike, Tall Trees, Tough Men, →ISBN, page 135:

     After about an hour and a half he broke out of the trees into a clearing, and in the clearing was a logging camp, and sitting on a block of wood in front of the cook-shack was a bald-headed cookee peeling potatoes.

   • 2013, Harva Hachten, Terese Allen, The Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State, →ISBN:

     The day for the cook and his cookee started about 3 o'clock in the morning or half past, when they would prepare the spread required to get a lumberman going: buckwheat pancakes (begun the night before with sour-dough starter and made on a girddle that covered the whole top of an eight-lid stove), oatmeal, hash, potatoes, fried salt port, beans, blackstrap molasses, fried cakes, and lots of black coffee sweetened with brown sugar.

   • 2015, John Zimm, John Nelligan: Wisconsin Lumberjack:

     The cook's assistant, who was called the cookee, made a roaring fire in the stove. As soon as the fire was going strong, the cookee woke up the teamsters.