A Collection of above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery; for the Use of all Good Wives, Tender Mothers, and Careful Nurses.
London: For Richard Wilkin, 1714.
Octavo (19 x 12.5 cm.), [16], 218, [13] pages. FIRST EDITION. “Mary Kettilby’s collection of cookery recipes and medicinal and home remedies, from a tasty “green-pease soop, without meat” to gooseberry wine. Households that could not afford French cooks or French cooking came to form a growing audience for books by women that contained unpretentious recipes cut to suit a less costly cloth, for pickling and collaring rather than ragouts. Where Hannah Woolley had led, plenty of female cooks with their eye on the profitable middle market followed, with books like Mary Kettilby’s collection of recipes (1714) and Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife (1734)” Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cookery (2015)). Kettilby’s book purported to be a collective effort: the preface stating that ‘a Number of very Curious and Delicate House-wives Club’d to furnish out this Collection’. Maclean however (pages 79-82) doubts this, and notes that evidence from later editions indicate Kettilby to be the main author. Apart from the Preface, there is no introduction of any sort: the recipes follow immediately after the chapter headings. The book is clearly divided into chapters of recipes for food and for remedies, but within the chapters there is no definite structure. For example, the first chapter begins with six recipes for soups, followed by recipes for collared beef, ‘French-Cutlets’, collared mutton, stewed pigeons, broiled pigeons, dressed turbot, and then patties ‘for a Dish of Fish’. The recipes are given either as goals, as ‘To make Hogs-Puddings’, or as titles, sometimes with descriptions, as ‘A very good Tansy’. Quantities are given in whichever units are convenient, as ‘a Gallon of grated Bread’, ‘three Pounds of Currants’, or ‘nine Eggs’. Often, quantities rely on the cook’s judgment, as ‘as much Sugar as will make it very sweet’. Temperatures and timings are given when necessary, as ‘a cool Oven: Half an Hour bakes it’. Later binding in 19th century style. Half-calf, gilt-decorated spine, marbled endpapers. The front paste-down contains the bookplates of two significant culinary collections: Thomas Scruggs & Margaret Cook, and Marian Hatch. The Hatch bookplate was designed and engraved by British engraver Alfred J. Downey. With the bookseller's ticket of Philip C. Duschnes to the rear pastedown. Ink ownership mark to half-title, "1718, Eliseab[?]; and inscription on final page of text, "[illeg.] near New College Oxford". [OCLC locates eighteen copies; Bitting, page 258; Cagle 789; Maclean, pages 79-82; Oxford, page 54; Wellcome II, page 389].
Price: $3,500.00