A Friend in the Kitchen: Or What to Cook and How to Cook it. Containing about 400 choice recipes carefully tested. By Mrs. Anna L. Colcord.
Oakland, Cal. Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1899.
Small octavo (18.5 x 12.5 cm.), 126, iv, [ii] pages. Advertisements. Title continues: Together with plain directions on healthful cookery; how to can fruit; a week’s menu; proper food combinations; rules for dyspeptics; food for infants; simple dishes for the sick; wholesome drinks; useful tables on nutritive values of foods, time required to digest food, weights and measures for the Kitchen, etc. Illustrated throughout with full-page plates, engraved chapter heads and illustrations in-text, and color frontispiece. Table of contents and index. ~ FIRST AMERICAN EDITION (published one year earlier in Australia) of an attractive and early vegetarian cookery book by an American Seventh-day Adventist living in Cooranbong, New South Wales. Among the four hundred recipes, apart from those emphasizing simple preparation of fresh ingredients, are chapters on “Specially Prepared Health Foods” and “How to Become a Vegetarian” as well as menus and recommendations for sabbath dinners. Apple Butter, Baked Parsnips, Stewed Turnips, and Vegetable Pie have their place, while puddings, eggs, and biscuits are not neglected. But the novelties grab attention: Prairie Fish (made with grits), Forcemeat Fritters, Granola Mush, Granose Fruit-Cake, Nut Butter Cream, Corn Coffee. ~ Anna (Langley?) Colcord (1883-1971) and her husband William Allan Colcord (1860-1936), both originally from Illinois, left for Australia in 1893 to join Ellen White on her mission to establish a Seventh-day Adventist presence and to assist in the foundation of the Avondale School for Christian Workers (later known as Australasian Missionary College, and today simply as Avondale College). They served as president and secretary of the Sabbath Day Association; Willard also directed the Echo Press, publisher of the 1898 Melbourne edition of A Friend in the Kitchen. During the 1890s the Adventists were able to acquire a vast tract of contiguous land where they built the Sanitarium Health Food Company, a concern still owned and operated by the Church. By 1902 the Colcords had returned, but in the meantime they had developed a considerable expertise in what might be termed alternative food sources. Recipes calling for protose (a tinned meat substitute) are the first culinary documentations of the product; also a first documented occurrence is the advertisement for malted nuts on the rear flyleaf (as per William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, Soybeans and Soyfoods in Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania [2010]). ~ In publisher’s white oilcloth decorated and titled in brown; slightly soiled and rubbed at the edges, otherwise very good. [OCLC locates thirteen copies of this edition; Bitting 93; not in Cagle].
Price: $250.00