HOW TO COOK A WOLF by Fisher, M. F. K - 1942

New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, [1942], 1942. First Edition. Hardcover. Dust Jacket Included. First Edition. Hardcover. Fisher, M. F. K. HOW TO COOK A WOLF. Advance Review Copy. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, [1942]. Plain unprinted white wrappers in dustwrapper. First Edition. 8vo., 261pp. A fine copy in a very good or better dustwrapper that is glued by the publisher to the spine & showing some rubbing there. A rare state of the author's third book; perhaps the only example to come to market in the last 25 years. Fisher wrote "How to Cook a Wolf" in 1942, in the midst of World War II, just as food rationing programs were kicking into high gear with strict limits placed on basics like sugar, butter, meat, & coffee. War-time slogans encouraged American households to "make do, or do without." [Fisher wrote "How to Cook a Wolf." as a reminder of the pleasure - the rapture - you could still find in food, even under a tight budget or war-time rationing. "I early on thought, as long as we have to eat to live, we may as well have fun doing it. There should be some enjoyment of food, as we do with making love, or keeping warm. It's one of the three basic needs of our lives," she said. "How to Cook a Wolf" reads like an issue of Lady's Home Journal, if the editorial staff were taken over by a philosopher with an empty stomach, a slightly tipsy poet and your mischievous, foxy godmother who once kept many lovers. Best lines include: "Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg, until it is broken." On cooking during a war-time black-out: "Use as many fresh things as you can, always, and then trust to luck and your blackout cupboard and what you have decided, inside yourself, about the dignity of man." And this advice, from the chapter called "How to Lure the Wolf": "One way to look your prettiest in the kitchen, and make the wolf think that even if his hot breath whuffs through the keyhole and ruffles your very curls you are nigh adamant, is to put up a little mirror." "How to Cook a Wolf" is part cookbook, part essay collection. Fisher shares practical recipes that can be made cheaply: how to make your own toothpaste; a recipe for fried calves' brains, since that cut of meat was cheaper and more readily available under rationing programs; instructions for a good, low-cost sherry cocktail.] - Weekend America. Rare.