The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook: A Facsimile of an Authentic… (1824)

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! ( )

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

"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