From the American Institute of Wine & Food Collection.

Samuel and Narcissa Chamberlain Collection.

Carême, chef to aristocrats and creator of a comprehensive culinary system that codified both recipes and techniques, presents in this work an extensive collection of menus, both imagined and real; table settings; and observations on table service, designed to instruct the head steward of a noble household kitchen. The frontispiece shows two male chefs, “ancient and modern,” who would have served in such a kitchen. Their macho swagger reflects Carême’s own supreme confidence.

Bequest of Marietta Greenough to the Harvard College Library, 1926.

From the collection of Sophie Coe.

As a teenager Gouffé worked in his father’s Paris patisserie, making pièces montées (elaborate decorative pastry constructions) that were displayed in the shop’s window. One day the great Carême, the king of pièces montées, walked by and admired the young boy’s work, and the rest is history. After learning everything he could from Carême, Gouffé went on to considerable celebrity himself and wrote several important works, including his Livre de cuisine (1867) and this Livre de patisserie, which features magnificent color illustrations of his extravagant pastry constructions. His work places him squarely in the tradition of the male celebrity chef writing for other male restaurant/hotel/palace chefs. But his Livre de cuisine is also notable for including a separate section specifically on home cooking.

The preface to this book states, “‘Have you no National dishes?’ is a question that has been asked by foreigners travelling in this country. The Committees believe that the answer to this question may be found in their unpretending book.”

This book includes manuscript recipes in multiple hands written in throughout, some in German.

Born into slave-owning South Carolina in the 1830s, Fisher is believed to have acquired her considerable skills in cooking and preserving on a plantation there. After the Civil War she and her husband moved to San Francisco, where the prizes she won at fairs soon enabled them to start a successful pickle company. She was illiterate, but a group of friends and supporters helped her to get her recipes into print. Traditional Southern recipes like Maryland beat [sic] biscuit and Sallie Lund [sic] appear in the pages alongside others with an African past, such as oyster gumbo and “Jumberlie—a Creole Dish,” i.e., jambalaya. Schlesinger’s copy is inscribed “Mr. Stout, from Mr. and Mrs. A. [L.?] Fisher.”

Gift of Edna L. Stantial.

This book includes recipes contributed by suffragists and noted figures of the day such as Lucy Stone, Mary Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Frances Willard, and Alice Stone Blackwell, as well as many other women. It was published in aid of a festival and bazaar in 1886 and a “country store” in 1890. The recipes are followed by several pages of quotes from eminent men and women in support of female suffrage. This copy bears the autograph of Lucy Stone.

From the collection of Julia Child.

Gift of Ann Pixley.

The original version of Isabella Beeton’s celebrated work, published in 1861, was entitled Book of Household Management, comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman … (etc.) with a history of the origin, properties, and uses of all things connected with home life and comfort. Though the book was directed at women running a household and men in domestic service, much of the material it contained had its genesis in her columns for the women’s periodical edited by her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. In addition to over 1400 clear and detailed recipes, the lack of which had frustrated her greatly in her own home cooking, the book includes much advice on the management of a household, on keeping accounts, overseeing servants, and dealing with medical and legal issues. Only four years after the book’s first appearance, Mrs. Beeton died of puerperal fever, but her book and magazine writings were published and republished continuously, appearing anew even as recently as 2005.

Within the sumptuous covers of Die praktische Israelitische Köchin the reader finds recipes showing the “Koschermädchen” how to prepare a great variety of dishes while keeping a Kosher kitchen. In addition to recipes, Hertz gives sample menus and illustrates how to set tables for formal lunches and dinners and how to practice the origami-like art of napkin-folding.

Bequest of Harriet J. Bradbury to the Harvard College Library, 1930.

Given by Ann Robert in honor of Dorothy Crandall.

From the collection of Sophie Coe.

Mrs. Marshall enjoyed the status of a female culinary celebrity in late 19th century England, where she ran a cooking school, a domestic staff agency, and a cooking and household equipment sales business. She began publishing the magazine The Table in 1886, and she gave cooking demonstrations to large audiences all over Great Britain. Her book of ices is considered the finest of her four cookery books. Known as the Queen of Ices, she patented an ice cream freezer and is credited with the first mention of the ice cream cone in 1888, scooping (pun intended) the American claim to its invention in 1904.