[South Congregational Church (Granby, Conn.). Ladies' Aid Society]

Granby Cook Book. Published by The Ladies' Aid Society [of the] South Congregational Church.

Granby, Conn. The Society, 1929.

Small octavo (20 x 13 cm.), 55, [xiii] pages. Cover title: The Granby Cook Book. Advertisements appended. ~ Evident FIRST EDITION. A cogent church cookbook with just over two hundred attributed recipes, intended in part to show off the fare (and bounty) of church suppers at South Congregational. For those preparing to cook in volume: a Baked Beans supper for one hundred requires eight quarts of beans and four pounds of salt pork baked in four milk pans; an Escalloped Oyster supper for the same number calls for five gallons of oysters; and a Chicken Pie supper for three hundred fifty will need twenty pies with four chickens per pie. The side dishes are accounted for too, among them potatoes and turnips measured by the bushel, not to forget the need for squash and mince pies in quantity rounded up to fifty. ~ Congregationalists were firmly established in southern and western Connecticut by the late 1600s, with parishes early on in Branford and followed by Stamford, Norwalk, New Canaan, and elsewhere. The now populous counties to the north, on the other hand, such as Hartford, enter the picture later, and the Granby community known locally as South Church opened its doors, centered between six white pillars, at 242 Salmon Brook Street only in the post-Civil-War era–in 1872. It is not always possible to note a continuity in the surroundings, but in this case the well-tended building on a rolling green looks very much today as it did then. ~ Several pages with short annotations in pencil, one opening darkened, otherwise clean. One leaf (pages 23-24) wanting. In tan wrappers, titled in dark brown, with an image of South Church's front façade; some foxing to the front; wrapper starting to split at wrapper. Owner's signature on front cover (“Martha C. Shaw”). Rare. [OCLC locates one copy (at the Schlesinger Library); in neither Brown nor Cagle].

Price: $60.00