Historical cookbooks in broadcaster Ruth Watson’s archive, spanning centuries, are up for auction at Bonham’s in London, revealing some radically different tastes – and some startlingly similar ones.

The perennial British argument over the best way to make a cup of tea dates back to the 17th century, when a cookbook warned that “the water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely”.

In a rare edition of an early US cookbook, from 1830, the author advocates the use of American ingredients such as cranberries, corn, turkeys and watermelon, rather than the “European methods of rendering things difficult to digest”.

Some dishes are less tempting, with a gammon of roasted badger and a viper soup featuring in one 18th-century book, while a 1653 collection of medical recipes recommends that convulsions are to be treated with the dung of a peacock, and jaundice with powdered earthworms.

Watson’s books show that even hundreds of years ago, diets were the rage. One 18th-century collection of handwritten recipes includes a “powder for the teeth to fasten them and make them white”, and a concoction of herbs and spices, mithridate, treacle and aqua vitae, billed as “good against the common plague, but also against the sweating sickness, the small pox, measles and surfeits”.

Bonhams senior book specialist Simon Roberts said: “Time and again while I was cataloguing this wonderful historic collection, I was struck by the number of references to economy, frugality and health and the parallels with our own times. The role of food, not only in keeping well but in warding off disease and aiding recovery, is a constant theme. Some of the suggestions may strike us as outlandish, but others are a good deal more sensible than the fad diets of today.”

Watson said she had never cooked directly from the books but that she had “always been very interested in how they link with food we eat today, and where they don’t”.