Apr 12, 2018 - Sale 2473

Sale 2473 - Lot 94

Price Realized: $ 312
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(FOOD AND DRINK.) [New American Cookery, or Female Companion . . . by an American Lady.] 180 pages. 12mo, contemporary calf, worn and stained, front board coming detached; lacking title page, leaves O2-5, and free endpapers, edge tear to leaf a6 with slight loss, long closed tear to leaf B5, moderate dampstaining; signature of early owner Rhoda Holmes on rear pastedown. [New York, 1805]

Additional Details

After a rather boastful three-page preface, the first 94 pages are a word-for-word reprint (pirated and uncredited) of the first American cookbook, Amelia Simmons's 1796 American Cookery. The section on cheese-making (pages 105-110) is cribbed from the 1780 book The Farmer's Wife, and the long section on wine-making (pages 110-129) is taken verbatim from Susannah Carter's Frugal Housewife. There may be some original recipes in here; we haven't checked every one. The book was issued with two imprint variants (published by T.B. Jansen or D.D. Smith); in the absence of a title page, it is impossible to guess which variant we have here. Bitting, page 581; Cagle & Stafford 560; Lowenstein 36; Shaw & Shoemaker 8970; Simon, Bibliotheca Gastronomica, 1088--none of which note its pirated nature.