Beeton's Book of Household Management Cookbook 1969

Additional Details

Description: One hundred and seven years after the first edition of Beeton's Book of Household Management was first published, it is to appear again, in facsimile, as a unique gift book. A classic of domestic literature, Mrs Beeton's tome is now both an entertaining curio and an important social, document, offering an unrivaled guide to the manners and economics of Victorian households. 

Mrs Beeton's advice to 'the Mistress', for example, includes a table of wages for domestics, with and without allowances for tea, sugar and beer, while her section on 'the Doctor' gives instruction on How to Bleed, and a remedy for toothache using a piece of sheet zinc and a shilling. She also supplies some remarkably enlightened advice on bringing up children. The housemaid is told how to whiten scorched linen using 'dried fowls' dung' while the lady's maid is given a 'very superior' recipe for boot polish using red French wine (ordinaire) and brandy. 

The cookery section is surprisingly relevant after a century. The timeless quality of recipes for such English stalwarts as beef- steak and kidney pudding is only belied by the cost of the ingredients. Only dishes with the gruesome economy of Boiled Calf's Udder and Fried Ox Feet, or the blatant extravagance of Turtle Soup seem amusingly inappropriate today. 

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Condition: Good condition. Jacket has small tears and clipped corners.