(American) Miss Eliza Leslie. Miss Leslie's Lady's New Receipt-Book; a Useful Guide for Large or Small Families

462 pp. Period calf, leather spine label. Fifth Edition, Enlarged. Philadelhia: A. Hart, 1850.

Miss Leslie's cookbooks were written with an opinionated, witty style, and found a ready audience in a burgeoning American middle class wanting to acquire both some food sophistication, and some manners to go along with it. She may also have published the first chocolate cake recipe in the United States. Her Lady's New Receipt-Book, first published in 1846, provided a guide for more refined living. 

Biographer Anne-Marie Rachman at Michigan State writes that her intended readers, ”would not be found squeezing the cheese curds through the cheesecloth, but selecting menus and caring for the many fine things in a middle class home. Half the book is dedicated to such care, ie., cleaning silver, laundering white satin ribbon, preserving white fur and oil-paintings, as well as tips for traveling by sea and writing a proper letter.” Rubbing to spine label and some to extremities, else very good.

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