The Southampton Cook Book. Published by the Ladies' Aid Society of the Congregational Church, Southampton, Mass.
Westfield, Mass. Press of The Valley Echo, 1900.
Octavo (20 x 13.25 cm), 92 pages. Advertisements. Illustrated. FIRST EDITION. An unreported church cookbook with three hundred recipes, the majority attributed. Fully of its era, emphasizing baked goods, sweets, and puddings – with five separate approaches to Walnut Cake, and five renditions also of Lemon Pie. Settlers from Northampton, in what is now the central western county of Hampshire, moved to Newtown-on-the Manhan – today called Southampton – in 1730, holding a lot of land open for a future Congregational minister. Their first meetinghouse was completed in 1752, and the permanent structure that took its place in 1788 still stands. The ladies of the Church developed a local reputation for activism; the Women’s Missionary Society of First Congregational, founded in 1803, claims to be the oldest continuously operating organization of its kind in the country. In 1900 a bolt of lightning struck the steeple and set the Church ablaze. It was saved by a fire brigade, but little imagination is required to speculate why a fundraiser such as The Southampton Cook Book might have been useful. Internally somewhat discolored and with a few pages chipped at the edges (not affecting text); one small mark in pencil. In stapled, black lettered, cloth-backed, blue wrappers; soiled, creased, and worn. one newspaper clipping glued to inside of rear wrapper panel. Four handwritten recipes in pencil. Good. Unrecorded. [OCLC reports no copies; not in Brown, Cagle, or Cook].
Price: $250.00