The Cook's Oracle: containing receipts for plain cookery on the most economical plan for private families: also, the art of composing the most simple, and most highly finished broths, gravies, soups, sauces, store sauces, and flavouring essences: the quantity of each article is accurately stated by weight and measure. The whole being the result of actual experiments instituted in the kitchen of a physician. The third edition, which is almost entirely re-written.

Neat archival tape repairs to a few pages without loss. Uncut in orig. boards, neatly respined. With ownership inscriptions of Mrs. Mary Greenway, East Gate, Warwick. Originally published in 1817 by S. Bagster under the title Apicius Redivivus or, The Cook's Oracle, followed by a revised second edition in 1818. This third edition was 'almost entirely re-written' with a new preface. The book is notable as it provides weights and measures for ingedients; recipes for sauces, (including Wow-Wow Sauce) and includes the first recorded recipe for potato crisps. William Kitchiner, 1775?-1827, was an optician, musician and celebrity chef who claimed to have been to Eton and Glasgow University and to be a qualified doctor, none of which claims appear to be true. He made a name for himself as a cook who undertook all the tasks of the kitchen, including the washing up, which added to his book's appeal: 'He has not printed one receipt that has not been proved in his own kitchen. and has, moreover, been eaten with unanimous applause by a Committee of Taste, composed of some of the most illustrious Gastropholists of this luxurious Metropolis.' Mary Greenway was a relation of Kelynge Greenway, senior partner in the Warwick bank of Greenway, Smith & Greenways which crashed in 1887 owing creditors £275,000 (equivalent to £22m today). …