The House-keeper's Pocket-Book
The House-keeper's Pocket-Book, and Compleat FAMILY COOK, CONTAINING above Three Hundered curious and uncommon receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Preserving, Pickling, Candying, Collaring, etc. With plain and easy instructions for preparing and dressing everything suitable for an Elegant Entertainment, from Two Dishes to Five or Ten, etc. And directions for placing them in their proper order. CONCLUDING with many excellent prescription of the most eminent physicians, of singular efficiency in most distempers incident to the human body: And to the whole is prefix'd such a copius and useful bill of fare of all manner of provisions in season for every month of the year, that no person need be at a loss to provide an agreeable variety of dishes. By Mrs. Sarah Harrison of Devonshire. LONDON: Printed for T.Worrall, at Judge Coke's Head, over against St. Dunstans Church, Fleet Street. 1733. (price 2s 6d. bound.)
FIRST EDITION. 12mo. Pp. Title Page. (v-xii) (2-217) 20 pp of engraved Table Settings. 13 pp of Contents. Contemporary dark brown calf boards with blind tooling, nicely polished. Relaid tan calf spine with raised bands and red label with gilt lettering. Pages lightly browned throughout. A good copy.
- Atthough first published in 1733 and now extremely rare, all editions are very scarce, with only 12 copies in total of the five earlier editions recorded in the UK. Sarah Harrison, of Devonshire, provides recipes and suggested menus (bills of fare) for a year, as well as general housekeeping directions for removing stains, cleaning dishes, managing animals and livestock, as well as some instructions for distilling and brewing. For a typical October meal, she recommends a first course of haunch of doe venison with salted and boiled cabbages, cauliflowers and roots, neat's tongue and udders, or stewed carps, or fish to be garnished with spatch-cocked eels and sliced lemon and horseradish. The second course, like the first, takes advantage of the hunt, offering wild ducks to be served with gravy and claret sauce, larks, or chine of salmon. This meal concludes with seasonal fruits - apples, pears, nectarines, plums, mulberries, and grapes. MacLean states on page 66 of this first edition of 1733: "no copy located in the British Isles". The B.L. Integrated Cat. cites one incomplete copy of the 1733 edition. Considering MacLean's bibliography was printed as recently as 1981, her research leaves question marks. Nevertheless an extremely rare book.
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Antiquarian category
ref number:
10915