Books About Food

Vienna; Bratislava, 1891. Contemporary scrapbook (25 x 18.5 cm.), 32 leaves containing thirty-one menus, mounted rectos only. This collection of menus is mostly sourced from Vienna, in large part from the Metropole Hotel and Frohner's Hotel Imperial, but there are also four from the Palugyay Palace in Bratislava. Although the menus come from only a few hotel restaurants, there is variety of design style, with some of the menus printed, and others handwritten on a pre-printed card. A few menus contain original photographic portraits, and others exhibit a striking Orientalism. One of the menus serves as a place card, and has the name "Carl Von Oberleithner" inked on the verso. Von Oberleithner was a successful businessman in the Hemp and Flax industry, and perhaps this was his collection. The menus are ordered chronologically, covering a ten-year period starting in 1881. A bit of fading and soiling to some of the menus, but overall in very good condition. The gilt-titled and decorated binder has some… Read More

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

London: Printed for the Society of Antiquaries by John Nichols, 1790. Quarto, xxii + 476 pages. [leaf containing pages 169/170 in duplicates]. First edition of this collection of English Royal Household Manuscripts. The text discusses the duties and management of all of the staff of a royal household, including wages. The book concludes with the first printing of a collection of Fifteenth Century and earlier recipes, "From a Ms. in the Library of the Royal Society, Arundel Collection, no. 344, page 275-445." Recipes include: 'Nombules of a Deer', 'Farsure for Hares', 'Browet of Alemayne', 'Pejons Stewet', 'Goos in Hochepot' and many others. Internally very clean and fresh, with just a touch of light foxing. In full tree calf, rebacked and with a gilt-titled spine label. With a paper label indicating provenance pasted on to the rear end paper. From the library of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, English Shakespearean scholar and antiquarian. Halliwell-Phillips, son-in-law by his first wife to the… Read More

Hardcover. Very Good. Illustrated with 12 full-page hand-colored engravings illustrating 24 species of amaranthus. Folio. Modern ¼-leather-backed marbled boards. Turici (Zurich): impensis Ziegleri et fil, 1790. First Edition. The only edition of a specialist botanical work on the species of amaranthus by Carolo Willdenow, director of the Berlin Botanical Garden. The engravings are designed and engraved by R.J. Schellenberg. Willdenow is considered one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants. He was also a mentor of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the earliest and best known phytogeographers. Willdenow was interested in the adaptation of plants to climate, showing that similar climates had plants with common characteristics. His herbarium, containing more than 20,000 species, is preserved in the Botanical Garden in Berlin. Occasional foxing; title page browned; plates in very good condition.

London: Paul Jerrard, 1852. First Edition. Mid-nineteenth century opulence: two elaborate Victorian plate books with plates of fruit and flowers complimenting verse, fully printed in gilt. Two folios in original cloth with large colour card onlay on front board and gilt floral motif on rear, 24 full-page chromolithographic plates each facing a matching gilt printed poem; cloth mildly browned in book 1, binding rubbed and mild preliminary foxing in book 2, a very good set with beautiful clean plates.

Manchester: George Nicholson, 1797. First Edition of an Early Work on Vegetarianism [NICHOLSON, George]. On the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals, &c.. [Within] The Literary Miscellany. Manchester: Printed and sold at the office of G. Nicholson 1797. [Together with] [FRANKLIN, Benjamin]. Preceptive, moral and sentimental pieces. Prose. On Education, by Pratt. On Gymnastics, by Madame de Sillery. On a new Mode of Bathing; on Swimming; on Sleeping; by Dr. Franklin, &c. Printed and sold at the office of G. Nicholson; Manchester, 1797. [And] [Anonymous]. On Clothing. Printed and sold at the office of G. Nicholson; Manchester, 1797. First Edition of On the Conduct of Man. All titles bound together in one sixteenmo volume of The Literary Miscellany. (5 x 3 1/6 inches; 126 x 77 mm). [2], 8, 26; 48; 134, [1, contents], [1, blank] pp. With separate title-pages for each section. Each title-page with an engraved vignette. Contemporary quarter calf over marbled boards. Spine with red morocco spine label,… Read More

Prototype Press,, 2021.. Edition of 52. Consider the Oyster was printed on custom paper from the Saint-Armand paper mill. The book cover and clam-shell book box are covered in two additional papers from the mill. Quarterbound in white, foilstamped goat leather. A custom oyster shucking knife accompanies each book to assist with opening the book box. The typeface used for the text is 12pt Monotype Goudy Light. The blue headline typeface is handset Windsor Elongated in a variety of sizes. It is printed in an edition of 52 copies. Cast, printed and bound by the press. Mark Sarigianis: "I first discovered M. F. K. Fisher’s Consider the Oyster in 2018 while browsing the cookbook section of the Mills College library. It was a first edition, and given the reverence held for Fisher, especially in the bay area, it should have been in the special collections department. Even though it was written in 1941, I was immediately struck by the passionate “foodie” sensibilities with which she… Read More

8° (mm 183x155); pp. VIII, 48, (2). Cartoncino rigido moderno che conserva le brossure originali in carta decorata. Bella copia, intonsa.
Only edition, very rare.
In the poemetto of the Neapolitan poet and playwright Antonio Viviani, Li Maccheroni di Napoli, published in 1824, the term 'spaghetti' appears for the first time (intended as a diminutive name for the word 'string') in reference to this type of pasta. A name that will last over time, until today, and which will replace the more generic 'macaroni' (or 'maccaroni'), as well as the term 'vermicelli' (which will remain in use as a synonym for thicker spaghetti), names with which, the same food was referred to in previous literary sources. This same work also illustrates the different stages of processing this pasta shape (cf. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti).

Due parti in un volume in-8°, cc. 71, [1]. Bell'esemplare, con legatura coeva in pergamena. L'opera del Lando è legata con Symeoni, Comentario alla Tetrarchia di Vinegia, 1548.
Provenienza: al frontespizio, antiche annotazioni manoscritte e nota di possesso; Collezione Maria Paola Moroni Salvatori.
Rarissima terza edizione (la princeps, priva di dati tipografici: Venezia 1548). Paleari Hensselr, 414. B.IN.G., 1080.
Il Commentario del Lando - tra i più geniali poligrafi rinascimentali, traduttore in italiano dell'Utopia di Tommaso Moro (1548) - è inoltre assai celebre in quanto alcune sue pagine "illustrano un ideale itinerario gastronomico per le città d'Italia, con riferimento a cibi e vini di cui l'autore mostra di aver acquisito conoscenze di prima mano" (L'arte della cucina in Italia, a cura di E. Faccioli, Torino 1992, p. 275).
"Questo testo costituisce un catalogo etnico-socio-gastronomico estremamente eterogeneo, inserito in un itinerario quasi iniziatico che si snoda attraverso la… Read More

Single leaf (270 x 212 mm) with copper-engraved plate (198 x 147 mm); very lightly foxed, 2 small paper flaws (of which the larger 8 mm), but overall a very good copy.
Very rare engraved broadside advertisement for a Venetian chocolatier. An attractive print, the advertisement offers 'chioccolatta d'ogni sorte' for a variety of prices, beneath an internal view of Guado's premises in Calle Larga in San Marco. Set within an ornamental rococo frame with the shop's 'la nave' sign depicted above, the scene shows a wealthy clientele in a spacious chocolate-house, drinking hot chocolate, with beans being ground in the foreground.
OCLC shows no copies of the engraving. The original copper plate survives in the Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, in Milan.

4° (mm 192x140); ll. (6). Title with large woodcut vignette; another large woodcut vignette to title and head of de' Crescenzi section. Binding of 20th century - signed "Wheeler" - in olive green morocco, gilt. A nice, unsophisticated copy.Extremely rare edition, exquisitely popular, which combines poetic entertainment with the purpose of a peasant almanac, describing when to sow and when to transpose, and from month to month how to do the recollections. It includes a list of tasks for each month taken from Pietro de' Crescenzi (Bologna, 1233 – 1320).After the octaves of the Operetta - Incipit: "Chi si diletta nuove cose udire / sempre levato tien l'occhio e la mente" -the booklet hosts:c. A2v: Operetta piaceuole di tre panieri di frutte - with grapes "lugliola […], moscadella, pisana e la vernaccia, zibibbo, razzese e corso, greco, trebbiano e malvagìa fine, […] canaiuola, galletta e passerine, sancolombane e zappolino et martinacce e lonze e le caprine", figs, pears, apples, etc. - per… Read More

San Juan Capistrano, California:: Inkswine Press,, 2021.. Edition of 5 variants. 14.5 x 11 x 0.5 inches, (37 x 28 x 1.25 cm); 13 pages. Graphite frottages on vellum over foil titles on 140lbs rag paper. Covers with quarter Kraft-tex leather binding. Title label on front board. Signed and numbered. Dirk Hagner: "A series of 11 exquisite graphite rubbings of breads from around the world. All pieces are one-of-kind images, gathered in a hand-made book binding. This project combines the oldest cultural staple of human kind, bread, with the oldest way of printmaking, rubbings, or as printmakers call it, frottage*."  Using printmaking and rubbings, Hagner presents a lovely visual discourse of bread of the world. It is a reminder of how much bread and the partaking of it together is so much apart of the many cultures of our world. This simple act of sharing bread has a sense of friendliness and comfortable interaction whether it is a bagel, a baguette, or a bun.

8° (mm 170x108); pp. 114, 2 tavole calcografiche fuori testo ripiegate. Al frontespizio, marca tipografica (freccia con serpente. Motto: "Maturandum"). Le incisioni recano la sottoscrizione: "Ronzoni dis., A. Guelmi incise". Carta decorata antica. Bell'esemplare.Editio princeps.The 'Friday Gnoccolaro' (or 'Friday gnoccolàr', 'Friday of Gnocchi' or 'Gnoccolare') is an ancient popular festival born in Verona in the sixteenth century and handed down to the present day.The festival originates from popular uprising against the bakers, which took place in Verona in 1531 following a terrible famine, caused by a sudden flood of the Adige and aggravated by the sack of German troops who crossed the Verona area, after the Peace of Cambrai.To appease the population in revolt, some virtuous citizens were elected, including the doctor Tommaso da Vico, to feed the people with the proceeds from duties on chestnuts and olives. This episode took the name of 'gnoccolare' and took place on the last Friday of Carnival,… Read More

Oxford, printed by William Hall, for Amos Curteyne, 1665.. TITLE CONTINUED: Whereunto is annexed, observations upon SIR. FRANCIS BACONS NATURAL HISTORY as it concerns fruit-trees, fruits, and flowers. Also, directions for planting of wood for building, fuel, and other uses; whereby the value of lands may be much improved in a short time, with small cost and little labour. The third impression, revised, with additions, by Ra. Austen, practiser in the art of planting, 1665. 2 works bound together each with its own title page and pagination, as often found, dedicated to Robert Boyle. Small 8vo approximately 145 x 95 mm, 5¾ x 3¾ inches, a few woodcut headpieces and initials, pages: [48], 1-260, [10], 1-82, the vertically printed half title present, bound in full early calf, 2 gilt lettered labels and gilt decoration to spine, double gilt rules and blind decoration to edges of covers, marbled edges. Spine rubbed, hinges beginning to crack, covers still firmly attached, labels slighty… Read More

[London], Printed for Nathaniel Brook at the Angel in Cornhill, 1655.. TITLE CONTINUED: By the most experienced persons of our times, many whereof they were honoured with her own practice, when she pleased to descend to these more private recreations. Never before published. Transcribed from the true copies of her Majesties own receipt books, by W. M. one of her late servants. FIRST EDITION IN 3 PARTS, ALL 3 TITLE PAGES DATED 1655: THE QUEENS CABINET OPENED, THE PEARL of PRACTISE, A QUEENS DELIGHT and THE COMPLEAT COOK. Small book, 12mo, approximately 145 x 80 mm, 5¾ x 3 inches, engraved frontispiece portrait of Henrietta Maria signed W Faithorne and laid down on paper, pages: The Queens Cabinet Opened and Queens Delight, [12] including frontispiece, 1-192, [2] title page to Queens Delight, 195-296 followed by [4] - blank pages, [22] - index followed by advert leaf; misnumbering to a few pages of Queens Delight affecting first number of 8 pages, nothing missing; THE COMPLEAT COOK, title page, 3-123,… Read More