(New Jersey) "Dame Durden's" Cook Book

[2], 87 pp. Illus. with numerous ads for local businesses. Dark green cloth lettered in black. First Edition. Plainfield, NJ: Young Ladies' Missionary Society of the First Baptist Church, 1890.

Replete with recipes for favorites like baked Indian pudding, cream of clams, green turtle soup, codfish dip, roasted lobster, apple marmalade, and many baked goods and sweets. Dame Durden was the title character of a popular song played by Gabriel Oak in Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, OR a character in Dickens' Bleak House. Either way, she seems to have inspired several East Coast community cookbooks in the Victorian era. Tiny pieces of tape to pinholes on lower title page, else very good.