London, Vernor & Hood 1805. First edition. With five folding tables of bread prices. “I anticipate the period when we shall see the art of bread-making...attain its proper rank among the liberal arts” (Stock # 34657 £1,500). This and all the other highlights on this page feature in our new listing of over 70 lots of food, drink, cookery and herbals. We are pleased to offer Charles Dickens’s own pocket brandy flask among these items (Stock # 33747). Please click the button below to download:
"Showing admirable coolness, with his carriage teetering on the bank of the ravine, Dickens retrieved his top hat… and a flask of brandy"
Charles Dickens’s pocket flask (Stock # 33747)
"I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever than I was then"
Dickens, on the Staplehurst train accident
Eight "pure linen, fast colored [sic], hand fringed, hand rolled cocktail napkins. Made in France” (Contents page). The c. 1930 illustrations are listed as How’dy Nellie, Beat it, Here comes the Sergeant, Pals and Close Harmony.
Scroll down for an example.
In the bookform box in quarter pebble-grained paper over printed paper-covered boards.
With a distinctive American tone it seems likely that these napkins were designed for the expatriate US community in Paris in the thirties.
Stock # 34479 £495 the set
Left: one of the eight napkins, arranged in 2 sets of 4 different designs, the sets printed in different colours. Now loose inside the specially made book-shaped box (see above). Two of the napkins have small light stains, otherwise in very good condition.
With a distinctive American tone it seems likely that these napkins were designed for the expatriate US community in Paris in the thirties.
Stock # 34479 £495 the set
Or Receipts in Modern Cookery; with a Medical Commentary, Written by 'Ignotus'. York, 1807. Fifth edition, inscribed by the author “Hugh Kerr from Dr Hunter”. With frontispiece engraving of a Roman stewpan. Each recipe is followed by observations from Ignotus – i.e. Hunter - often including the effect on the body. Of Mock Turtle Soup he writes: “This is a most diabolical dish, and only fit for the Sunday dinner of a rustic, who is to work the six following days in a ditch bottom. It is the very essence of Pandora’s box. So, - Get thee behind me Satan!” Stock #34659 £650
New York, House of Gadgets Inc [no date]
Nine-panel linen backed game sheet with cartoon illustrations of different cocktails.
The central panel gives a clue to the game. “When ‘On Me’ appears on dial, banker takes all checks and player on number shown on dial becomes banker.” Sadly we do not have the dial for the game.
Stock # 33650 £395
"Wine makes trembling cowards brave, Women leave their coy distaining, makes a niggard slight his gold, and the foppish entertaining"
John Eccles, The Power of Wine
Paris, 1752. An early edition of Menon’s classic work, one of the most important eighteenth century French cookery books.
This the Menon family copy, signed ‘Menon’ in both volumes to the foot of the first text page.
This copy resided in the Chateau de Villiers, according to small pen inscriptions on each title and tiny stamps on the first blanks. An ink annotation of 1875 relates the remarkable provanance trail. The first owner of the book was Mrs. Menon, it passed to her daughter, who was married to Claude Dodant, then to Anne Dodant, wife of Henri de Villemenard; their son Charles de Villemenard inherited it, thence it passed to Marie de Villemenard and finally to the owner of Chateau de Villiers, E. De Selve.
Stock # 34740 £2,500
