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Old Cook Books: An IIlustrated History
First U.S. edition. With over 100 plates. Ex-library copy with markings. 256 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 4to..
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
Eric Quayle
15 books1 followerEric Stanley Quayle (1921–2001) was a noted British bibliophile, collector and author.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
April 10, 2018
My coworker weeded this because it hadn't checked out in an amount of time probably best measured in decades. I saw it among the discards and of course was interested.
This had a lot of formatting problems and some content issues, but it was very interesting. I didn't know when I started reading this that I would be basically inventorying sections of cookbooks, but this, along with First bite and the cookbook deluge, made for an interesting reading experience. The example recipes throughout were informative and illustrative.
There were a few problems that effected the reading. There are illustrations every few pages, but the illustration rarely corresponds closely to the text. The tenuous tie-in could be as loose as [chapter about cookbook from 1750] and [reproduced artwork showing kitchen scene from 1810]. The few times there was artwork directly related to the chapter's contents (author portrait, book cover or frontis piece, etc.), it was usually several pages away with an in-text note to see page [x]. This seemed poorly planned. There were also several text sizes and levels of indentation used to give long reproductions from historical cookbooks and recipes, but they were used very inconsistently, making it very difficult to tell at a glance the origin of any given paragraph. The author also jumped topics rather abruptly a number of times, for instance, talking at length about an important and unique cookbook and the author, then transitioning mid-sentence to a new author and cookbook. Not all cookbook authors were given space for biographical information, and it wasn't made clear as to why; certainly for some, given the length of time intervening, records may not exist, but this was not stated.
This had a lot of formatting problems and some content issues, but it was very interesting. I didn't know when I started reading this that I would be basically inventorying sections of cookbooks, but this, along with First bite and the cookbook deluge, made for an interesting reading experience. The example recipes throughout were informative and illustrative.
There were a few problems that effected the reading. There are illustrations every few pages, but the illustration rarely corresponds closely to the text. The tenuous tie-in could be as loose as [chapter about cookbook from 1750] and [reproduced artwork showing kitchen scene from 1810]. The few times there was artwork directly related to the chapter's contents (author portrait, book cover or frontis piece, etc.), it was usually several pages away with an in-text note to see page [x]. This seemed poorly planned. There were also several text sizes and levels of indentation used to give long reproductions from historical cookbooks and recipes, but they were used very inconsistently, making it very difficult to tell at a glance the origin of any given paragraph. The author also jumped topics rather abruptly a number of times, for instance, talking at length about an important and unique cookbook and the author, then transitioning mid-sentence to a new author and cookbook. Not all cookbook authors were given space for biographical information, and it wasn't made clear as to why; certainly for some, given the length of time intervening, records may not exist, but this was not stated.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review