What to Eat, and How to Cook It: Containing over one thousand receipts, systematically and practically arranged, to enable the housekeeper to prepare the most difficult or simpler dishes in the best manner.
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 443 & 445 Broadway, 1863.
Octavo (19 x 12.4 cm.), 259 pages. Advertisements. Illustrated with two small images of a capon (page 135). FIRST EDITION. A cookbook for home cooks, from the "late editor of Almanack Gastronomique of Paris, and other gastronomical works." Blot was a Frenchman in America on a bit of a crusade to bring some order to American kitchens, but he was unusual in that he was a chef speaking to housewives, breaking the tradition of parallel and separate tracks for professional chefs and home cooks. A tiny bit of foxing throughout. In green blind- and gold-stamped green cloth with very light wear to spine edges and corners. Very good. Previous owner's pencil inscription to front and rear paste-downs and to preliminary blank in its fullest form, "Anna F. Whiting, West Tisbury, Mass.". Anna F. Whiting, neé Anna Frances Johnson, was born in 1830 on Naushon Island to and, after marrying Henry Laurens Whiting, appears have spent the remainder of her life on Martha's Vineyard, passing in West Tisbury in 1912. [OCLC locates thirty copies; Bitting, page 45; Cagle 94].
Price: $350.00