Noun

The art and practice of preparing food for consumption, especially by the application of heat; cooking.

Henry was not very good at cookery and most of his meals ended up burned.

* 1475 , Kenelm Digby, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened , subtitle:

together with excellent directions for cookery , as also for preserving, conserving, candying, &c.

(obsolete) A delicacy; a dainty.

* 1839 , John Espy Lovell, "Fish out of water", Rhetorical Dialogues , page 335:

I've got a bit of cookery that will astonish him — my marinated pheasants' poults a la braise imperiale.

(obsolete) Cooking tools or apparatus.

* 1800 , Charlotte Yonge, The Little Duke , page 3:

She directed the servants, inspected both the cookery and arrangements of the table, held council with an old steward...

* 1934 , Gray Owl, Pilgrims of the Wild , page 101:

...and would not be just dead weight, as on the trail it could conveniently be filled with the cookery and other odds and ends...

(figurative) Making something appear better than it is; altering or falsifying records; 'window dressing'.

* 1871 [380 BCE], Plato, Gorgias , tr. Benjamin Jowett:

Cookery , then, I maintain to be a flattery which takes the form of medicine...

* 1997 , Leon Mayhew, The New Public , page 22–3:

Yet ever since Plato claimed that rhetoric is only a knack of making the worse appear the better cause – a form of "cookery " – rhetorical theories of social order have been under attack...

Noun

(en noun)

A room or area for preparing food.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=Foreword citation , passage=Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […]  A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe.}}

An admixture of languages spoken to convey meaning between non-native speakers.

* 1885 , , (w, King Solomon's Mines) ,

Sir Henry and Umbopo sat conversing in a mixture of broken English and kitchen Zulu, in low voices, but earnestly enough.

(African American Vernacular English) The nape of a person's hairline, often referring to its uncombed or "nappy" look.

Cuisine.

(music) The percussion section of an orchestra.

* 1981 , Norman Del Mar, Anatomy of the Orchestra ,

For obvious reasons the percussion is normally arranged along the back of the platform, whether centrally or to one side, and sometimes also in two tiers, the heavy, noisier instruments behind, and the pitched, agile instruments such as vibraphone, marimba, etc. in front. An outstanding exception, however, exists in Roberto Gerhard's Epithalamion where the composer expressly desired that the all-important kitchen department be spread out in front of the strings and hence nearest the audience.

(dated) A utensil for roasting meat.

a tin kitchen