The Cook's Own Book. An American Family Cook Book ; Containing more than twenty-five hundred receipts, for cooking every kind of meat, fish, and fowl, and making of soups, gravies, pastry, preserves and essences: together with a complete system of confectionery. Miss Leslie's Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, the Art of Carving, etc., etc. By A Boston Housekeeper.
New York; Boston: James Miller, Publisher, 779 Broadway; [copyright H.M. Francis, 1864].
Octavo (21 x 13 cm.), xlviii, 300, 37 pages. Printed in two columns. Illustrated with a chromolithograph frontispiece and five tipped-in plates. Engraved line drawings throughout the text of the carving section. FIRST EDITION, thirteenth printing (after Cagle). Originally published by Munroe & Francis in 1832 under the title The Cook's Own Book; the following year the work was combined with Miss Leslie's Seventy-Five Receipts, and all subsequent editions have offered the two works together. The 1833 issue also adds a date to the Preface, "Boston, March 1832" and a credit for much of the introductory matter, "The articles that follow, on Roasting, Boiling, etc., are selected from The Cook's Oracle" (this credit was, however dropped in subsequent printings). While subsequent printings exhibit slight variations in pagination regarding illustrations or the placement section titles and short features (i.e. weights & measures), the body text has remained the same, and appears to have not been reset. We've not seen a copy of any printing which credits Mrs. N.K.M. Lee, but institutional records regularly refer to Lowenstein, who refers to LOC crediting Mrs. Lee. A wonderful source for early 19th century recipes, arranged alphabetically and in two columns, sometimes resulting in odd justapositions such as Hashed Hare, Hawthorn Liquor and Hedgehog To Make (a dessert, not a thicket dwelling rodent). A bit of very light foxing internally. In publisher's blind and gilt-stamped maroon cloth, with the striking gilt fork decoration to the spine. An exceptionally clean and bright copy. All editions of this title are fairly scarce in the trade. [OCLC locates ten copies of this 1864 printing; Bitting, page 536; Cagle 447-450 (earlier printings)].
Price: $450.00