THE COOK NOT MAD, OR RATIONAL COOKERY; BEING A COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL AND SELECTED RECEIPTS Embracing not only the art of curing various kinds of meat and vegetables for future use, but of Cooking, in its general acceptation, to the taste, habits, and degrees of luxury, Prevalent with the American Publick in Town and Country. To Which are Added, Directions for preparing comforts for the Sick Room; together with sundry Miscellaneous kinds of information, of importance to housekeepers in general, nearly all tested by experience by [COOKERY] - 1831

Watertown, NY: Knowlton & Rice, 1831. Second Edition. Hardcover. Foxing throughout, some leaves closely trimmed, lacking original endpapers, repairs to title and a few other pages with no loss of text, two leaves bound out of order. Well used but text complete in a handsome binding. Overall Very Good. Small octavo (3" x 5-1/2") bound in recent full brown morocco leather with title and publication date in gilt on the front cover; (i-iii), iv-v, (7-120) pages. Published one year after the First Edition, this delightful early American cookery and household management book was designed to teach the preparation of "Good republican dishes," instead of "English, French, and Italian methods of rendering things indigestible." The emphasis is on American ingredients: cranberries, corn, turkeys, pigeons, watermelon, etc. Includes recipes and instructions for general cookery and housekeeping, preserving and dyeing, pesticides, gardening, simple medicines and cleansers. Included are recipes for Tasty Indian Pudding, Federal Pancakes, Good Rye and Indian Bread (cornmeal), Johnnycake, Indian Slapjack, Washington Cake, and Jackson Jumbles. In spite of the author's American intentions, the book does include some foreign influences and contains one of the earliest known recipes for shish-kebab in American cookbooks. Cagle 180; Lowenstein 127. WorldCat locates only the Huntington Library copy of this edition. This same book was published in 1831 in Canada as well with the word "Canadian" substituted for "American" in the subtitle and is commonly referred to as Canada's first cookbook.