THE ROYAL COOKERY BOOK
(LE LIVRE DE CUISINE) BY JULES GOUFFE CHEF DE CUISINE OF THE PARIS JOCKEY CLUB TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH AND ADAPTED FOR ENGLISH USE BY ALPHONSE GOUFFE HEAD PASTRY-COOK TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN COMPRISING DOMESTIC AND HIGH-CLASS COOKERY ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN LARGE PLATES PRINTED IN COLOUR, AND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE WOODCUTS FROM DRAWINGS FROM NATURE BY E. RONJAT. NEW EDITION LONDON SAMPSON LOW, SON, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET 1883 (All rights reserved)
245x170mm. 3feps. Half title with advertisement on verso. [1] Coloured Frontispiece. Title page in red and black text (with illustration of a beef forerib). [1] 1+vi Translators preface. 1+viii-xii Preface. 1+xvi Illustrations. 1+xvl Contents. 1p List of coloured plates. [1] 1p Part the first. [1] 1+4-573. [1] 1+576-599 Index. [1] 3feps. Beautiful modern binding in half dark calf and corners with marbled boards. Spine with raised bands with elaborate gilt and blind tooling, a red and a green label with gilt lettering. Gilt edges to the text block. Externally and internally very clean. A handsome copy.
- Jules Gouffe was born 1807 and died 1877. He felt himself to have a talent for cookery from his early youth. His father, an established pastry-cook in the Saint-Merri quarter, taught him the basic principles of cookery. It was then that Antonin Careme, the great French Chef, hearing of the talent of the young Gouffe, who at seventeen was already showing promise in the decoration and presentation of set-pieces, took him into his kitchens at the Austrian Embassy in Paris. Careme turned him into a model carftsman, and a celebrity of his day. In 1840, Jules Gouffe set up on his own in the Faubourg Saint-Honore; his restaurant became one of the best in Paris. In 1855 he retired, but went back to work in 1867, encouraged by those famous gourmets, Dumas the elder and Baron Brisse. This pair of epicures offered him the post of Head Chef at the Jockey Club. It was the time that Gouffe began to work on his 'Livre de Cuisine' (of which, 'The Royal Cookery Book' is the English translation) a magnificent book which deserves a place in every cookery book collection or library, side by side with Careme, Plumery, Urbain Dubois, Emile Bernard, Escoffier, et al. The pleasing way the book is set out, the very good professional recipes, the numerous woodcuts, the sixteen magnificent coloured chromo-lithographed plates delight lovers of good books in a way that perhaps other productions do not.
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Antiquarian category
ref number:
11027