The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook: A Facsimile of an Authentic Early American Cookbook

This was an intriguing and amusing book. The recipes! Crazy! Everything seem to take a pound of sugar or salt, or brandy, and it all takes hours and hours to cook. It's amazing how many different dishes they made with the same ingredients. If you wanted to try to recreate them, you could, but the amounts are a bit off and there is no mention of how many each dish feeds - so you might end up with enough stew for a whole plantation! Some of the cakes and roasts look tasty and I might try my hand at making a version more suited to our era. Worth reading!

Fascinating cookbook that required me to use a dictionary to understand some of the archaic terms; I loved reading it. I also determined that I would not have been able to cook during those times. WOW! The amount of work just to prepare anything to be used for cooking! I grew up helping my parents tend their garden, from watering to gathering the produce and then either canning or freezing the particular item. This was especially true during the summer months. We also raised chickens and turkeys for several years, so we had those chores to perform: watering and feeding the fowls, gathering eggs, changing the straw in the nests, preparing the individual fowl for freezing - especially after my parents bought a huge freezer. Also, I was show more intrigued by the amount of wine and liquor used in many of the recipes. show less

"Th Jefferson returns his thanks to mrs Randolph for the valuable little volume she has been so kind as to send him. it is one of those which contributes most to the innocent enjoyments of mankind, and which give us the useful instructn how to employ to our greatest gratification the means we may possess, great or small, a greater degree of merit few classes of books can claim." — Thomas Jefferson to Mary Randolph, 30 March 1825

425. This edition not in bibliogs. 'Method is the soul of Management.' The publishers no doubt presented this volume to the thousands of visitors to the Centennial Celebration in their city. Preface is dated 1831, but the printers were not in business at that date. A beautiful production. Classic.
This particular printing could possibly be 1. in conjunction with the Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia 1864, or possibly, 2. The Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia 1876. Requires further research.

Very nice edition. Gilt titling to leather spine, marbled paper covered boards.

Earliest personal copy of Virg Hswf. Unusual printed title on cover. Haven't seen this before Covers detached but present. Interior text in signature blocks. All present.

My first edition title page: Washington: Printed by Davis and Force, (Franklin Head,) Pennsylvania Avenue. 1824