1838 Age 21 Jan. 18/2 ‘A reformed drunkard should never be left in a cellar.’.. Nor a cookless Minister in a Royal kitchen.

1898 Cornhill Mag. Aug. 255 The good old schoolroom days when one's dear mother used sometimes to admit that she ‘had been cookless for six weeks’.

1935 Times 5 Dec. 17/4 The domestic troubles of all the cookless houses in London.

2003 J. Neuhaus Manly Meals & Mom's Home Cooking vii. 158 Drastically reduced numbers of household servants virtually ensured that middle-class homes would be left ‘cookless’.

1917 House & Garden Jan. 46/1 (caption) The breakfast corner with high-back settles is a boon to both the cookless and the cook.

1928 Sunday Express 6 May 15 In coming to the rescue of the cookless—from whatever cause—the author has collected also an attractive assortment of recipes.

1868 Chambers's Jrnl. 20 June 387/2 If our present state of cooklessness continues..there would be no great harm..in taking her ‘by the job’.

1904 ‘A. Dale’ Wanted: Cook Ded. To Jennie Shalek: housewife, who, in my hour of drab and dreary cooklessness, when my heart fainted, and tragedy impended, sent her four fair daughters to my aid.

1947 B. Fleming Lightwood Tree ii. 124 Suffering cheerfully with a violent domestic rash of cooklessness and babies and markets.

1907 Evening Independent (Massillon, Ohio) 23 Feb. (Last ed.) 6/4 Served cookless food... One of the most novel entertainments of the season was the ‘twentieth century banquet of uncooked foods’ given recently by Mrs. Frederick S. Goodwin.

1968 Grit (Williamsport, Pa.) (National ed.) 24 Nov. (Family section) 23/3 Make cookless candy. To make uncooked fruit candy, put 1 pound each of figs, nut meats, dates, and seeded raisins through the food chopper.

2003 S. P. Moore Lova' like no Otha' iv. 52 I loaded a plate with cookless munchies: some sweet cut cantaloupe, two glazed chocolate doughnuts and a piece of bologna.