Culture and Cooking; Or, Art in the Kitchen.
New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1881. First edition. Uncommon. Some discolored spots to boards, as well as minor shelfwear to spine. First leaf (blank) is torn out. Paste-down endpaper stamped in blue with a previous owner’s name, A.J. Schulten. A very good copy. Rust-colored cloth boards, with title and a tree design stamped in black. Octavo. viii, 121 pp. Last three pages are index. Item #17844
Nitsch (ca. 1850s-1889) was an English-born cookbook author, novelist, and one of the earliest contributors of Good Housekeeping. Her book Ten Dollars Enough, a cookbook and advice manual written as a novel, was published serially in Good Housekeeping during the first two years of the magazine’s run. When Ten Dollars Enough was published separately in 1886, it was met with immediate popularity and went through eleven editions by 1893 (Gamber, p 120). Nitsch was also an advocate for women’s employment and often used her publications, like the present work, to encourage women to establish their own businesses and become financially independent (Cohen, p. 120).
In the preface, Nitsch declares Culture and Cooking to be “not a cookery book” but rather “an effort to fill up the gap between you and your hoursehold oracle.” Nitsch explains “the chief difficulty, I fancy, with women trying recipes is, that they fail and know not why they fail, and so become discouraged, and this is where I hope to step in” (iii). Nitsch then offers advice for women failing to cook food like bread or puff pastry. She also includes chapters on cooking with a tight budget or for a small family. Culture and Cooking was popular enough to be reissued in 1885, in an expanded version: Catherine Owen’s New Cook Book. Cohen, Kim. “True Faithful in Everything.” Culinary Aesthetics (2007), pp. 108-122. Gamber, Wendy. The Boardinghouse in Nineteenth-Century America (2007), p. 120. Good Housekeeping, vol. 10, no. 1 (November 1889), pp. 45-46.
Price: $250.00