Recipes of All Nations

New York: Wm. H. Wise, 1952. Later printing. Hardcover. Good/no jacket. shelf wear to tips, corners, and edges of the book; no jacket; covers soiled, hinges starting, a few hand written notes. A well regarded cookery book(even Fricassee of Iguana from Guinea for the adventurous) by the self-titled Countess Morphy, Marcelle Azra Hincks, a native of New Orleans who lived in England for much of her live starting about age 10. "Recipes of All Nations, was published by Selfridges in 1935. A massive book of 800 pages, each of 18 chapters covers a country. There are two other chapters; on ‘The Creole Cookery of New Orleans’ (with an introduction outlining the history of this her homeland) and a final one on ‘Cookery of Many Lands’. Despite her husband’s opinion that she wrote to promote peace, she is pessimistic about the role of cookery in international affairs in her preface: "Racial and climatic factors are responsible for the wide divergencies in national cookery and food, and the study of comparative cookery shows the unbridgeable gulf which exists between peoples. North, South, East, West - learn what they eat, and you will realize why they have always clashed. In Europe itself, the abyss between the palates of one nation and another explains the enmity and hostility which exist between human whose conception of feeding is completely antithetic." Morphy goes on to say her motive in writing the book ‘is to help the modern housewife who takes an intelligent interest in cooking to have excellent, varied and inexpensive food in her own home.’ She does not flatter her readers, asserting that ‘English food is apt to be monotonous, and the average woman is frightened of foreign cookery.’ She concludes by hoping to dispel the myths about foreign cookery and introduce English housewives to the ordinary cooking of foreign lands.--Wikipedia. Every effort is made to ship all books and other items within 24 hours. Clean recycled packing material will be used when possible. The Book Shed has a been a member of the Vermont Antiquarian Bookseller's Association since 1997. An online bookseller with a bookshop sensibility!