The Cook's Oracle;
Containing receipts for plain cookery, on the most economical plan for private families: also the art of composing the most simple and most highly finished brothers, gravies, soups, sauces, store sauces, and flavouring essences: pastry, preserves, puddings, pickles, etc. Containing also a complete system of cookery for Catholic families. The quantity of each article is accurately stated by weight and measure; being the result of actual experiments instituted in the kitchen. A new edition.
London: for Cadell and Co., 1829 Stock Code: 113405
Later London edition, uncommon in the original boards, of the most famous of Kitchiner's cookery books, "an acknowledged source of inspiration for Mrs Beeton, and mined by the writers of other household guides" (ODNB). First published in London in 1817, The Cook's Oracle "was written in a down-to-earth style, and demonstrated Kitchiner's familiarity with the entire process, from shopping, through preparing and serving the dishes, to cleaning up" (idem). Kitchiner also styled himself MD, falsely claiming a medical degree from Glasgow; his friend William Jerdan once commented that "his medical and gastronomical practices were wonderfully combined, insomuch that his guests could not tell whether what was set before them was a meal or a prescription" (Jerdan, 282-7). The publisher's advertisement to an American edition published two years later remarked that "numerous notices, in commendation of the work, might be selected from respectable European journals; but the mere fact, that within twelve years, seventy thousand copies of it have been purchased by the English public, is sufficient evidence of its reception and merits".
Description
Large duodecimo (190 x 104 mm). Uncut in original paper boards, later gilt-lettered label to spine.
Illustrations
3 short sections of engraved music score for cooking songs.
Condition
With the terminal advertisement leaf. Later library stamp of H. G. Doggett to the initial blank. Extremities rubbed and bumped, joints cracking slightly at head, mild sporadic foxing, the occasional superficial spill-burn. A very good copy.
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