The Book for All Households

Appert. The Book for All Households. (translation of 1810 ed) [Glass Container Association of America]: Chicago, 1920. 8vo (195x130mm) qtr bnd red cloth, marbled bds [1],[18],xv,[1],113pp. VG/- bookplate to fpd

APPERT, [Nicolas (1749-1841)]

The Book for all Households: or the Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances for many years. Work submitted to the Consulting Bureau of Arts and Manufactures, invested with its approval, and published upon the invitation of His Excellency, the Minister of the Interior.

Chicago : Glass Container Association of America, August 1920. First edition thus. Translated facsimile from the first French edition (published 1810), and with an introduction by, Katherine Golden Bitting.

Octavo (200x130mm) quarter bound red morocco grain cloth, gilt lettered, marbled boards and endpapers, all edges sprinkled red, 18,xv,[1],113,[1]pp; engraved portrait and six engraved figures.  Bookplate of "Katherine Golden Bitting" to the front pastedown; owner label of "Mrs Thomas H Folwell" to the front blank; edges lightly worn, corners gently bruised; final page and rear free endpaper lightly age and offset-toned; newspaper clipping "First Tin Can" by Lyn Poole celebrating the 150th anniversary of the tin can attached to rear free endpaper.

The translator, Katherine Golden Bitting (1869-1937) was a food chemist for the US Department of Agriculture and later the American Canners Association.  She published many important monographs on food preserving techniques, developed a method for producing ketchup without preservatives and amassed one of the Western world's most significant collections of materials on gastronomy to assist with her research. 


Between 1939 and 1944 the Bitting Collection containing over 4,300 items "on the sources, preparation, and consumption of foods, their chemistry, bacteriology, preservations, etc.",¹ including a first edition of the original of this text, Appert's L'Art de Conserver, pendant plusieurs années, toutes les substances animales et végétales; ouvrage soumis au Bureau consultatif des Arts et Manufactures, revêtu, de son approbation, et publié sur l'invitation de S. Exc. le Ministre de l'intérieur was donated to the US Library of Congress.  The bibliography of her collection is one of the most often cited bibliographic references on gastronomy.
Scarce in commerce.  A significant copy.


§  Bitting p.14; Axford p37.

¹.  the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1940)