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Newly revised and much enlarged edition, the 3rd printing to include "Foreign and Jewish Cookery." Late 19th Century Cloth Binding, 12mo; xlvii + 643 + 32 pages [714 total] + 8 leaves of plates, all present. 18 cm. Early printing following the addition in 1855, three years earlier, of a new section on "Foreign and Jewish Cookery;" That was also the first edition issued under the now-famous title, Modern Cookery for Private Families. Includes index and 32-page publisher's catalogue after text. Famously, Lady Judith Montefiore published the first English-language Kosher cookbook, The Jewish Manual, in 1846, primarily for other Jewish housewives and meal planners. Less than a decade later, however, leading British cookbook author Eliza Acton took Lady Montefiore's Jewish cooking tips one step further, celebrating and normalizing them for cooks of all backgrounds across the Commonwealth through a new expanded edition of her best-selling cookbook, Modern Cookery. Journalist Rita Ehrlich notes that between these two works, "The first Jewish recipes published in English reveal the place of accomplished Jewish women in 19th Century high society. Among the welter of cookbooks published in 19th century England, Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families stands out for its clarity, its practicality, its occasional humour, and its inclusion of Jewish food. First published in 1845,.The 1855 edition included a section on Foreign and Jewish Cookery, and among the recipes was one for Jewish Almond Pudding. It was one of the few recipes Acton had not tested herself. 'We have tasted the puddings . more than once and have received the exact directions for them from the Jewish lady at whose house they were made.' A Jewish lady - presumably the same one - provided her, and thereby the readers, with the address of a Jewish butcher in the London suburb of Aldgate, from whom one could procure smoked beef and a chorissa sausage. Acton noted that 'all meat supplied by Jew butchers is sure to be of first-rate quality, as they are forbidden by the Mosaic Law to convert into food any animal which is not perfectly free from all 'spot or blemish''. She also noted that the Jewish dietary laws which forbade the mixing of dairy and meat were 'not very rigidly observed' by most English Jews. The date of that book is striking. Jews were part of English society by 1855, with a Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, a leader in the campaign to allow Jews to sit in Parliament. Lionel de Rothschild took his seat in Parliament in 1858 [the year of this copy's publication], following the passing of the Jews Relief Act. He had been elected a number of times; the sticking point had been the need to swear the oath 'upon the true Faith of a Christian'. Even if we did not know about the number of wealthy, highly regarded and influential Jews in London at that time, the fact that an author would include specifically Jewish recipes and shopping advice in a bestselling cookbook that also recommended Jewish butchers for the quality of the meat suggests strongly that there was companionable social exchange. The almond pudding recipe appeared in an earlier book, published in 1846, called The Jewish Manual, edited by A Lady, no doubt the same lady who had entertained Eliza Acton. She was almost certainly Lady Judith Montefiore, wife of the influential philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, and the book was the first Jewish cookbook in the English language" (Rita Ehrlich, When 'A Lady' taught the English to cook kugel and Jews to be English, 2022. thejewishindependent.com.au/when-a-lady-taught-the-english-to-cook-kugel-and-jews-to-be-english). Eliza Acton (1799-1859) "was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families [this work]. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the.
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