Eggs. Book 1: Whence Come Our Eggs and Poultry. Book 2: The Best of Food Eggs and Poultry. by Pennington, Mary Engle, et al. Paul Mandeville (ed) - 1933

Chicago: Progress Publications for the Institute of American Poultry Industries, 1933. 2 volumes (duodecimo). Original blue and silver cloth, titles to spine in blue on silver. Illustrations from photographs and diagrams throughout the text. Mid-century ownership tickets of Miriam E. Lowenberg to each front free endpaper, with an ownership ink stamp of the same to the rear pastedown of volume I and front free endpaper of volume II. Jacket flaps bearing the blurb loosely inserted. Cloth rubbed and worn at the extremities, particularly the corners and hinges. A very good set. First edition, first printing of this charming set on the biology, economics, and preparation of chicken eggs. Uncommon as a full set. This copiously illustrated production promotes the US egg and poultry industry to the general reader, and was presumably distributed at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, as the spine carries the Fair's logo. Volume I contains chapters on egg biology, chicken husbandry, safe storage and handling of eggs, and the development and future of the egg industry. Volume II contains chapters on the egg's place in the modern diet, the different ways eggs contribute to recipes, "practical hints on buying eggs", and "egg oddities in foreign lands", concluding with a large selection of recipes for both poultry and eggs. Author Mary Engle Pennington (1872-1952) was a pioneer of modern commercial bacteriology and food handling standards. In 1898, shortly after obtaining her doctoral degree, she established her own business performing bacteriological analyses for Philadelphia physicians, and was appointed a lecturer at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She then became head of the Philadelphia Health Department's bacteriological laboratory, "where she developed methods of preserving dairy products and standards for milk inspection that came to be employed throughout the country" (Ogilvie, p. 1003). In 1908 Pennington was appointed chief of the Food Research Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, supervising its research on food handling and storage for the next eleven years. "During World War I, she devised standards for railroad refrigerator cars; her war work on perishable foods earned her the Notable Service Medal." Later she entered the private sector and "established her own consulting office in New York City, advising packing houses, shippers, and warehouses on food handling, storage, and transportation, as well as doing original research on frozen foods. Pennington's early work in devising methods of preventing spoilage of eggs, poultry, and fish, as well as her later research on the freezing of various foods, resulted in many practical techniques for the preparation, packaging, storage, and distribution of perishables. She published her conclusions in technical journals, government bulletins, and magazines" (Ogilvie, p. 1003).