TRAITÉ HISTORIQUE ET PRATIQUE DE LA CUISINE; OU LE CUISINIER INSTRUIT, De la connoissance des ANIMAUX, tant VOLATILES, que TERRESTRES, AQUATIQUES & AMPHIBIES; de la façon, de PRÉPARAR les divers ALIMENS, & de les SERVIR - Tome I (of II)
Paris: Chez CL. J. B. BAUCHE, 1758. First Edition. Hardcover. 468 pages. 17 x 10.5 cm. Menon, one of the most important and prolific French cookbook authors of the mid-19th century, helped bring forth a "new" or modern French cuisine by classifying and ranking the methods and procedures of dishes rather then merely listing the recipes within a cookbook. Menon was also part of a trend in reshaping 18th-century French cuisine for a broader public, especially bourgeois and female household cooks - signaling a shift away from a purely male, courtly profession.
The cookbook is divided into roughly ten thematic chapters covering service; meats (cutting, jus, ragoûts, sauces, farces); confitures and desserts; fish; pâtisserie; and eggs and vegetables. Modern readers may find some of the dishes disconcerting, as they call for swans, ortolans, blackbirds, robins, and woodpeckers - yet such use of local game and birds was entirely conventional in its 18th-century context. Text in French. Marbled endpapers. Interior clean, boards heavily rubbed at edges with some cracking to outer hinges and 1/2 cm. loss to head and tail of spine. [CAGLE 346]. Brown calf, raised bands, spine gilt decorated. Good. Item #4825
Price: $375.00