Item #68490 Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook. Susannah CARTER.
Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook.
Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook.
Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook.
Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook.

The Fourth Edition of the Second American Cookbook

COOKERY.

Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook. Wherein the art of dressing all sorts of Viands with cleanliness, decency and elegance, is explained in five hundred approved receipts in Gravies, Sauces, Roasting, Boiling, Frying, Broiling, Stews, Hashes, Soups, Fricassees, Ragouts, Pastries, Pies, Tarts, Cakes, Puddings, Syllabubs, Creams, Flummery, Jellies, Giams, and Custards. Together with the best methods of Potting, Collaring, Preserving, Drying, Candying, Pickling, and Making of English Wines; to which are added Various Bills of Fare, and a properArrangement of Dinners, Two Courses for every Month in the Year.

Philadelphia: Printed by James Carey, 1796.

Fourth American edition of the second American cookbook. (The first American cookbook is only know in one copy.) Twelvemo (6 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches; 165 x 95 mm). [1]-132 pp. With two engraved plates as frontispieces. Also with an engraved plate of table arrangements included in the pagination. Also with "Twelve bills of Fare," one for each month. There has been only one copy of the 1772 first edition and the 1792 second edition at auction in over seventy years.

Contemporary quarter calf over marbled paper boards. Paper covered boards with rubbing and wear. Some mild soiling and spotting throughout. A small closed tear to frontispiece. Overall a very good copy of a book not usually found in good condition.

"The Frugal Housewife or Complete Woman Cook by Susannah Carter was the only cookbook printed in this country between 1742 and 1796, a period that included both the late Colonial and the early years of these United States...Where history books abound with battles and political maneuvering The Frugal Housewife shows the warm earthiness of home and hearth, family and friends, food and drink in the years when or forefathers established this nation...[During this time] the vast majority of the population was rural and most of them could not read or write. There was little need for cookbooks and very few were printed. In Williamsburg in 1742 a reprint of an English cookbook was printed. It was The Compleat Housewife or Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion by E. (Elizabeth or Eliza) Smith. [Which is unobtainable, only one copy known]. During the following fifty years-from 1742 until 1792 there was only one cookbook printed in this country. This was The Frugal Housewife or Complete Woman Cook by Susannah Carter. In 1772 it was printed and sold by Eads and Gill in Queenstreet, Boston. The date of publication has been fixed by an advertisement in the Boston Gazette for Monday, March 2, 1772. It was a long-lived title, for it appeared again in 1792, Printed for Berry and Rogers, No. 35 Hanover Square, New York." (Jean McKibbin, Introduction to the 1976 reprint of The Frugal Housewife)

"In this revised and corrected edition of the Frugal Housewife, several considerable Improvements have been made, which will be obvious upon perusal. -It was also suggested by the Author, that, as the chief excellence of all Cookery consists in a perfect acquaintance with the making of Gravies and Sauces, it would be proper to place these Chapters at the Beginning of the Volume, and to prefix a Number to each; whereby, when the young Cook consults any Receipt she may want, she will not only be informed what Sauce she is to serve it up with, but will be referred to the Number and Page where that Sauce may be found. (The Frugal Housewife, To the Reader).

ESTC W12281. Evans 30168. Lowenstein 15.

HBS 68490.

$3,750.

Price: $3,750.00

Item #68490

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