(FOOD AND DRINK) The Cook Not Mad or Rational Cookery

Sale 2580 - Lot 136

Price Realized: $ 1,875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750

(FOOD AND DRINK.) The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery. 120 pages. 12mo, cloth-backed marbled boards, slight loss to paper covering, binding sound; tightly trimmed without loss of text, moderate foxing, rear hinge split, rear free endpaper coming loose; later owner's inked stamp on rear pastedown. Watertown, NY, 1831

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Additional Details

Second American edition of an oft-reprinted cookbook best known for its patriotic preface. "It is needless to burden a country Cookery Book with receipts for dishes depending entirely upon seaboard markets. . . . Still further would the impropriety be carried were we to introduce into a work intended for the American Publick such English, French and Italian methods of rendering things indigestible, which are of themselves innocent, or of distorting and disguising the most loathsome objects to render them sufferable to already vitiated tastes. These evils are attempted to be avoided. Good republican dishes and garnishing, proper to fill an every day bill of fare, from the condition of the poorest to the richest individual, have been principally aimed at."

Frontier skills are emphasized in the recipes, such as how "to pickle one hundred pounds of Beef to keep a year." Despite the opening comments, fresh and saltwater seafood are represented--cod, sturgeon, shad, and oysters. Other distinctively American dishes include Indian pudding, "pumpion pie," Johnny cake, "Federal cake," and "Thanksgiving cake." The "Jackson jumbles" on page 44 were probably a nod to the sitting American president. Numerous non-culinary household tips are also included, such as "the only sure way to stop the blaze of a female's dress when accidentally caught on fire."

This title was originally published in Watertown in 1830. Another edition was also printed in Kingston, Ontario in 1831, which is considered the first English-language cookbook bearing a Canadian imprint. Lowenstein 139.