Rare books from Rabelais - Fine Books on Food & Drink

New York: The Tea & Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935. Small stout quarto, 832 pages, with more than 800 illustrations, maps and diagrams, some in full color. Second, edition, revised. At the time of the book's original publication in 1922, The New York Times called it "without a doubt the most comprehensive and authoritative work on the subject that has been published in any language" (New York Times, December 3, 1922). A fine copy in brown cloth, in a near fine dust jacket, and scarce thus.

London: Printed by W. Sears, 11, Budge Row, Walbrook, 1830. Booklet, sewn in wrappers. Octavo (22.5 x 14.5 cm.), 16 pages. FIRST & ONLY EDITION. A response to the impending Beer Act of 1830, from a "Country Brewer". The commercial policy called the Beer Act would open brewing and cider making up to all householders who paid a modest fee, and the existing brewers, all licensed by local magistrates, were pushing back. The argument made within claims that quality will decline, adulteration will proliferate, and the economic impact will be negative. To some extent the Country Brewer must have been correct. Only two weeks after the passage of the act, Sir Sydney Smith uttered his famous line, "The Sovereign people are in a beastly state. Everybody is drunk. Those who are not singing are sprawling." Internally near fine, in contemporary, but not original, edge-worn brown wrappers with a hand-lettered label; wrappers now separated at hinge. With the ownership inscription, "H. Stokes, July 20, 1886". [OCLC… Read More

London: Samson Low, Marston & Company, 1900. Octavo (22.8 x 15 cm.), 474, [2] pages. Illustrated with photographs by the author. All edges gilt. FIRST EDITION. A handsome and profusely illustrated survey of Ceylon and its tea industry, by a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and author of several other titles on the South Asian island nation, now identified as Sri Lanka. In very attractive gilt-stamped, white buckram.

Albany: New York Department of Agriculture, 1919. Large quarto ( x cm.), 686 pages. FIRST EDITION. Includes information on nearly 2900 edible foods, by far the largest and most complete study of its kind to the date of its publication. Very good in green cloth.

St Louis. MO, 1940. One page autographed letter signed, from Irma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, and a major figure in the history of American cooking. Addressed to Louise [Diallo],The last name was supplied by the seller and is not indicated on the letter itself. In black ink on cream colored stationery printed in brown, "Mrs. Edgar Rombauer - 5712 Cabanne Avenue - St. Louis - Mo. The letter contains regrets for not staying longer at an event and, most interesting, a full recipe. The recipe, for "Bran Biscuit," appears in very close form in the 1936 edition of the Joy of Cooking and in later editions, and contains both the ingredients list and the step-by-step instructions. With one fold, otherwise fine. Rombauer manuscript material is very rare, and we have not been able to locate another record of it entering the marketplace.

Milwaukee, WI: The Settlement Cook Book Co, 1941. Octavo, xlvi, 623 pages. Twenty-First Edition, revised and enlarged. A much later edition this influential and massively successful cookbook, originally published in 1901. The emphasis is American, with a smattering of hearty Jewish Eastern European fare. In earlier editions, the Jewish/Eastern European influence was more prevalent. This copy is extraordinary, in unused condition bright and fresh, with the original white, washable boards shiny and clean, the original publisher's green dust jacket, with white bland and red printed text and decoration is equally exceptional. Fine, and rare thus. [Axford, p. 363; DuSablon, America's Collectible Cookbooks, pages 65-67].

Paris: Michel David, 1711. Octavo, [6], 536, [8] pages. Frontispiece, five leaves of folding plates. Second printing of the First Edition. Michel David issued the title originally in 1710. A compilation of two seventeenth century works by Nicolas de Bonnefons, here issued under a royal privilege granted to Louis Liger, sieur d'Auxerre (1658-1717). The work is divided into four books, the first three concerning cooking, the fourth dealing with gardening, and with an additional brief treatise on hunting and fishing. Liger's compilation of de Bonnefons' work continued to be revised and reissued after his death and well into the eighteenth century. And rightly so. De Bonnefons' work recognizes the primacy of excellent ingredients. The final section is considered to be the first work on the kitchen garden. John Evelyn, who translated the work in 1658, called it "the first and best work of that kind that introduced the use of the olitorie garden to any purpose." Contemporary full-calf, compartmented spine… Read More

Amsterdam: De Spieghel, 1927. Portfolio (29 x 21cm), [48] pages, with twenty one hand-colored plates, all on a sturdy, thick card stock . FIRST EDITION, limited & signed, Roman numeral III of seven copies in portfolio form, signed by Bodenheim. There was also a state with 100 copies, in book form, bound in a Japanese style and printed on Japon Van Gelder. Rhymes by Lizzy Ansingh, with drawings by Nelly Bodenheim of anthropomorphic fruits, nuts and vegetables, including lemons, grapes, pears, radishes, red pepper, almonds, blackberries, apricots, cherries and leeks. The vignette on the folio and many of the plates appear not printed at all but rather were entirely done by hand. The illustrations are rich in color and originality, with a naive style and an accessible, wry humor. Bodenheim was a popular book illustrator in the Netherlands in the early twentieth century and she and Ansingh teamed up on numerous projects. Plates well preserved and clean. The folio ledger has light soiling on its boards… Read More

London: Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane; Printed by Manning and Mason, 1839. Duodecimo (18 x 11 cm.), xv, 200 pages. FIRST EDITION. A guide to the buying, storing and drinking of wine by the journalist and author, Cyrus Redding, 1785-1870. 'The chief thing in the art of drinking wine is to keep within those salutary limits which mark the beneficial from the pernicious ... This is best done by studying self-respect, and the art of saying "no".' A large collection of charming aphorisms, 'wine sayings of my uncle', completes the volume: 'Your stomach is your wine-cellar - keep the stock small and cool ... Wine of the second bottle is a bad storyteller ...' In publisher's gilt-titled and decorated brown, patterned cloth. Small chip to the head of the cloth spine; some light fading to cloth at spine, otherwise near fine. Scarce. [OCLC locates twenty-one copies; Gabler G35820].

[Havana, Cuba: F. Diaz], 1940. Small stapled booklet (9.5 x 6.5 cm.), [32] pages (including price list at center). Issued without the title page, otherwise found in other issues), and without the portraits or biography of the founders. ~ A later, apparently promotional issue of the famous cocktail manual, of which at least nine annual issues are known, all titled Sloppy Joe's Cocktails Manual, and most with the cover title of Sloppy Joe's Bar. While Sloppy Joe's is renowned as a bar, it's role as an important liquor store is less known. Charles Baker, in his South American Gentleman's Companion, recommends Sloppy Joe's (as well as Canal Liquor of Panama City) for those in search of difficult to find ingredients such as Pisco Brandy. ~ The original Havana Sloppy Joe's was the destination for thirsty Americans during Prohibition and after. After nearly fifty years inactive, the bar reopened in its original location in 2013. Publisher's color illustrated wrapper depicts interior of the bar - the same… Read More

Paris, 1953. One and one half page pen and ink letter (26.5 x 21.5 cm.) on single sheet of pale blue Paul Cushing Child stationery, with ink date stamp ("May 18 1953"), addressed, "USIS. 5 Place de Rome, Marseille (B du Rh)". ~ An early letter from Julia Child, written while she was living in Paris with her husband Paul and working on her first book, the seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Child writes to a Mrs. Fairbanks: "What a nice hour we spent with you the other afternoon. I only wish it could be repeated, as I would love to hear more about Thomas Wolfe and all you know about him. It would also be fascinating for me to hear much much more about your culinary experiences. Mrs. de Santillana [Child's editor] says you are the best cooks she knows, and I can well believe it from the interest you take. It is indeed a fascinating subject and a beau métier. Had a nice talk about friture de cheval pour les frites [possibly french fries cooked in horse fat] with your chauffeur on the way home… Read More

Oppenheim: Par Iean Theodore dé Bry marchant libraire & bourgeois d'Oppenheim qui est sur le Rhin, 1619. Small quarto (19.5 x 14 cm.), [7], 8-72 pages, five plates engraved on copper, one folding. ~ FIRST FRENCH LANGUAGE EDITION and FIRST SEPARATE EDITION. The first book on individual heating using stoves. A rare work on improvements in fireplaces and stoves, featuring five plates of ornate examples. It was published by the copper engraver and publisher Jean Theodore de Bry (1561-1623), born in Strasbourg, who settled in Oppenheim in 1609. The text was published by the same publisher the previous year in German as part of a larger work by the author and titled Holzsparkunst. Franz Keslar or Kessler (circa 1580 - circa 1630) a painter from Frankfurt, describes several models of heating previously unrecorded in France. Keslar's innovation was a response to the dwindling supply of wood for heating and cooking throughout the Continent, promoting a transition from the use of hearths to the more efficient… Read More

London: Printed and sold by Andrew Sowle, in the Holloway-Lane, near Shoreditch, 1685. Octavo (14.5 x 9.5cm.), [12], 96, 91-232, [6] pages; collation: A6, B-Q8, R2 (I3 signed I2). Sheet A/R should have had R1 and R2 as A7 and A8. It was wrongly imposed so that A5r and A6v were perfected by pages of R and vice versa. The error was corrected by pasting leaves from half another copy of the sheet over the erroneous pages. Sheet I was similarly mis-imposed, but instead of using parts of a complete sheet, a half-forme was printed on one side only and pasted over I5v, 6r, 7v, 8r. Text and register are continuous despite pagination error. AAS records indicates their copy has pagination and collation the same as this one. ESTC cites this pagination and offers a variant (2d issue?) with pagination: [12], 97, 92-232, [6] pages (i.e. H1r is numbered 97 and H1v is numbered 92). Table of contents. Publisher's advertisement [6 pages] at rear, for two other titles by Tryon. Caption title (page 1) Every good… Read More

St. Louis, MO: [the author]; A.C. Clayton Printing Co, 1931. Octavo (20.5 x 14 cm.), [32], 395 pages. Illustrated with chapter silhouettes and with a dust jacket design by Marion Rombauer. FIRST EDITION, privately published by the author in an edition of 3000 copies, and illustrated by the author's daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who also designed the dust jacket depicting St. Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, who took up a mop to fend off the dragon Tarasque. Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, the daughter of Max von Starkloff, an affluent St. Louis doctor, studied art at Washington University, and enjoyed a brief romance with the writer Booth Tarkington before marrying Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer, in 1899. As she wrote in her introduction to The Joy of Cooking, "Will it encourage you to know that I was once as ignorant, helpless and awkward a bride as was ever foisted on an impecunious young lawyer? Together we placed many a burnt offering upon the altar of matrimony." After her husband… Read More

[Santa Barbara; Cambridge, 2003. A convolute of correspondence, photographs, and other materials documenting the relationship between American icon Julia Child, and Beverly Jackson, reporter, novelist, collector, and a legend of the social circles of Santa Barbara. The two were long-time friends, and neighbors in Santa Barbara's Montecito. ~ Contents: Fifteen original notecards or postcards, typed or handwritten, signed by Julia Child; one TLS; one fax, and one TLS in photocopy. Some on Child's Montecito Shores, Santa Barbara stationery, some on notecards of Julia Child Productions (SB), and some on notecards from the Irving Street, Cambridge home. Most of the correspondence is short, polite "thank yous" and quick inquiries, for visits, meals shared, etc. ~ Eight original photographs (various sizes & dates), including black and white press print by Alan Berliner (of Julia with Robert Mondavi and Robert Balzer); Julia with Reginald Faletti (1978) by Jackson; color snapshots of Julia in her kitchen,… Read More