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.

New York: Tea & Coffee Journal, 1935. Two volumes, quartos, xvi, 559 pages, & viii, 568 pages, thoroughly illustrated. FIRST EDITION. The definitive study of tea. The finest copy we have seen of this monumental work on the history, agriculture, and trade of tea. Slight spotting to top edge of text block on both volumes, as is usually seen (tea stains?), otherwise fine and bright in publisher's green buckram bindings with gilt lettering. In near fine cream and green dust jackets, and very scarce thus.

Paris: Sautelet et Cie, 1826. Two volumes, octavo, xiv, 390 & 449 pages. FIRST EDITION of the most famous treatise on gastronomy. The Physiology of Taste was published in an edition of 500 copies, appearing only two months after the author's death. A comprehensive philosophy of the palate, the table, and far beyond, the book is presented in a series of thirty meditations on subjects including the senses, taste, appetite, gastronomy, restaurateurs, cooking, fasting, obesity, death, sleep, rest and dreams. Brillat-Savarin was an attorney and magistrate who fled France during the Terror, living in Switzerland and New York until his return after the fall of Robespierre in 1796. The present work secured his eternal fame among gastronomes. M.F.K. Fisher - whose translation of Brillat-Savarin's work still stands as the best - commends this book for its straightforward and unornamented prose in an era of florid writing, but the intellectual range and invention of the work is anything but simple. At the very… Read More

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].

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

Paris: Flammarion, 1969. Quarto (28 x 21.5 cm.), 177 pages. Illustrated. Text in French. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING of this monumental work of 20th Century gastronomy, from the father modern French cuisine. The posthumous work (Point died in 1955) is part memoir, part culinary guide, and part cookbook. Assembled by Point's widow and published in 1969, the book was reissued in English in 2008 with a new introduction by Chef Thomas Keller. Keller writes, "Through Chef Point's words I finally understood and discovered a higher sense of purpose. . . .," High praise indeed from Thomas Keller. In our experience, this was always the book being sought when a young cook, grease spattered and tired-eyed, would enter our shop, saying "chef told me I have to read this book..." This book can create a reader out of a non-reader, and perhaps a chef - perhaps - out of a fry cook. In publisher's mustard colored cloth printed in brown, and with a color medallion pasted-down to the front panel. Slight abrasion to… 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

London: Putnam, 42 Great Russell Street, 1948. Small octavo (19 x 13 cm.), xi, 264 pages. Frontispiece and ten plates, all color. Index. Second edition, issued thirteen years after the original. The intervening years had included the war, and so the recipes are offered this second time with a willingness to embrace substitutions. Lady Sysonby has also included a recipe, "Queen Victoria's Soup - by especial favour by the Esquire of Windsor Kitchen, 1842", from her mother's recipe book. Some small pencil 'x-s' to a few recipes, and some light foxing. In publisher's yellow cloth, decorated with an image by Messel; very good or better. In publisher's dust jacket, with some soil and stains, and with an illustration by Messel. Scarce.

London: Printed by T. Newcomb for S. Thomson, 1655. Quarto (17 x 11 cm.), 8, 296 pages; signatures: A-Pp4 (incorrectly numbered - skipping J & V - yet complete). Woodcut initials, and section ornaments. "Imprimatur" leaf from the Royal College of Surgeons facing title. ~ FIRST EDITION. A classic work on diet and nutrition, discussing the quality, use, and preparation of fish, fruit, dairy products, bread, meat, and the preparation of drinks. Health's Improvement was written in the last decade of the 16th century but remained as manuscript notes until publication in 1655 "by T. Newcomb for S. Thomson". "Mouffet, a successful Elizabethan physician with paracelsian leanings, left a number of unfinished manuscripts at his death in 1604, among them one entitled Health's Improvement... which was edited in 1655 by his younger colleague Christopher Bennet" (Robb-Smith, "Doctors at Table" cited in Maclean). Bennet died in 1655, and it is unclear if he lived to see this finished book, though he clearly thought… Read More

Louisville, Ky: J.P. Morton and Company, 1879. Thick octavo (19.5 x 13.5 cm.), [7], vi, [1], viii-xviii, [1], 20-528, [2] pages. Index; list of contributors. ~ Third printing, following the issues of 1877 (New York: G.W. Carleton) and 1878 (Richmond, Va.: J.W. Randolph), all with like pagination. Bitting indicates an issue of 1876, but none are located, and we note the preface by the author is dated "January, 1877". We have handled two states of this Morton 1879 printing: state "A" contains an additional 24 pages of advertisements, and plain salmon-colored endpapers; state "B" lacks the advertisements, and the endpapers contain printed testimonials (front) and notices of the press (rear). Both issues lack the frontispiece illustration that appeared in the 1877 and 1878 issues, depicting a smiling African-American woman at work in the kitchen. And finally, both 1879 states contain a small but important shift in the subtitle, replacing "Ladies in Virginia" with "of Virginia's Noted Housewives". The… Read More

Boston: B.B. Inc.; [Ben-Burk Distillers], 1934. Small folded pamphlet (11 x 6.5 cm.), 16 pages when folded. Printed in red, black and blue. FIRST EDITION. One of the very rare precursors to the famous Old Mr. Boston Bartender's Guide (1935). Following Repeal, Ben-Burk Distillers published the Guide, which was to become one of the iconic cocktail recipe books. Originally published as a promotional item for the Ben-Burk line of spirits distilled in Boston, the Guide became a staple of professional and home bars around the country. But prior to the first work titled Old Mr. Boston Guide, Ben-Burk published One Hundred Cocktails, Some Old -- Some New (1932) and One Hundred and Twenty Cocktails, Fizzes, Punches, Highballs, Toddies and Long Drinks (1934), both of which are very rare. We can add this small work - previously unrecorded - to this short list of precursors. A bit of soiling to edges, and one corner dog-eared; otherwise very good. All early printings of the Mr. Boston Guide are scarce.… 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

[Minneapolis, Minn: New Hotel Dyckman, 1909. Duodecimo-sized booklet, single-stapled in wrappers (11 x 6.5 cm.), [44] pages. FIRST EDITION. A promotional drink manual, promoting Minneapolis' very fine Dyckman Hotel. One hundred-one recipes for cocktails are listed, including some lesser-known gems: American Beauty, Careless Love, Bijou, Charlie Horse, Opalescent, and the Electric Eel. Pages a bit age-toned, and staples somewhat oxidized; a few small dog ears. In publisher's black wrappers, titled in silver. Very good. Unrecorded. [OCLC locates no copies; not in Noling].

[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, 'thanks you's' 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… Read More

London: George Routledge & Sons; [printed by] Wyman & Sons, 1863. Small octavo (17 x 10.5 cm.), [3], 114, [12] pages. Illustrated with frontispiece, "The Aviary", and black & white illustrations in the text. Publisher's advertisements at rear. Both Harding and Richardson indicate that several issues of this "new edition" follows the stated second edition, and thus our date range. Later printings have various different paginations. "Rev. John Wood was a popular lecturer on many subjects and wrote many books on natural history" (Harding). Some wear to edges of a few leaves; foxing to endpapers and preliminaries. In black-titled and -decorated orange cloth, with publisher's advertisement on the rear board; cloth somewhat soiled and mottled but still legible. Good only. [OCLC locates eighteen copies of various early printings; Harding, British Bee Books 278; Walker, Catalogue of Bee Books, page78].