Fancy Ices

Marshall, Mrs A B. Fancy Ices. [FIRST EDITION] Marshall's School of Cookery: London, 1894. 8vo (210x145mm) blue morocco grain cloth, gilt title to spine, vi,[2],238,30 (adverts)pp. Professionally recased 1985; faintly foxed & soiled

MARSHALL, Mrs A. B. [Agnes Bertha née Smith (ca.1855 -1905)]

Fancy Ices

London : Marshall's School of Cookery and Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1894. First edition.  Printed by Spottiswoode & Co, New-Street Square, London.

Octavo (210x145mm) blue morocco grain cloth, gilt title to spine, vi,[2],238,30 (advertisments)pp : [A]⁴, B-S⁸, T². Eighty-six woodblock engraved illustrations of ices, kitchen equipment and technique to the text and more in the accompanying advertisements.  Binder's ticket "D & H Heathcote" to rear pastedown; professionally recased in 1985, thus lacks the striking silver polar bear illustration to the original boards; faintly foxed & soiled, small signs of kitchen use.


Issued at 10/-, Fancy Ices was Mrs Marshall's follow-up to her well-received, but slim volume The Book of Ices which had been issued contemporaneously with her patented freezer in 1885.    Fancy Ices was written to provide a more complete treatment of the subject including more elaborate styles of service..  Chapter I deals with large moulded custard, cream and water ices,  Chapter II, individual moulded servings of the same, Chapter III souffles and mousses which were to be set in an ice-cave only, Chapter IV Sorbets and Chapter V, sundries such as pastes, preserves, meringues and other accompaniments for ices.   Only one recipe is repeated, but many recipes cross refer to a recipe or process in The Book of Ices.  Many recipes call for fancy ice moulds in pewter or an ice-cave (which Marshall's School of Cookery also supplied, and which are beautifully illustrated in the advertisements to the rear). 

Although Mrs Marshall quickly faded from the public consciousness after her death in 1905, her achievements in late Victorian London society, business and hospitality were quite extraordinary.   An extremely successful businesswoman in her own right, running one of only two cookery schools in London, and a highly successful kitchenware and providore business, she also pioneered the cornet or ice-cream cone, investigated the use of liquid gas to freeze ices and designed rapid freezing ice machines such as the Ice Cave referred to above.  She authored two more books, published a weekly magazine, The Table and lectured and demonstrated both in her school and around the country. 

Fancy Ices was well received upon publication "a book to possess" Queen Magazine; "Clear and concise directions for making many delicacies" The Morning Post; "for the first time we have a work on Ices, which classifies them on a sound and rational basis" British and Foreign Confectioner; "admirably complete and comprehensive" Lady's Pictorial; "a prize work" Cheltenham Examiner.
 
A complete first edition of a most serious and commercial work on ices; not a book for the standard domestic servant.  Scarce in any format.


§  OCLC records only two holdings (Australia) outside Europe and North America.
§  Driver 686.1-3; neither in Cagle & Stafford, Axford nor Bitting.