What to Eat and How to Cook It: Containing Over One Thousand Receipts, Systematically and Practically Arranged, to Enable the Housekeeper to Prepare the Most Difficult or Simpler Dishes in the Best Manner.

First edition, uncommon in commerce, of the author's first recipe book. An early example of the "celebrity chef", Pierre Blot (1818-1874), came to New York from France after the 1848 revolution. The toast of the town in the 1860s, he opened America's first school of French cookery and enjoyed the patronage of the Vanderbilt family. Copies are found in a primary binding of black cloth with gilt lettering on the spine. This copy's secondary binding is consistent with that used for later editions. Octavo. Original brown bead-grain cloth, spine lettered in brown and ruled at ends, covers blocked in blind, yellow surface-paper endpapers. Recipe written on first blank in contemporary hand. Spine ends and tips worn, a few pages creased at corners: very good.