Author : Ude, Louis Eustache Year of publication: 1829 Format: Hardback Signature: No First edition :No Condition: Fair Category: Cookery / domestic Cost of book: £975.00 Price negotiable: Yes
Specifics:
The French Cook. Ude, Louis Eustache.
A system of fashionable and economical
cookery, for the use of English families. "True taste is an excellent
economist." - Rogers. Louis Eustache Ude, Ci-devant cook to Louis xvi. And
the Earl of Sefton, and late steward to His Royal Highness The Duke of York.
Tenth Edition 1829, John Ebers and Co. 27 Old Bond Street London. Printed by
William Clowes, Stamford Street, London. 210x130 mm. (1)Frontispiece portrait of Ude.
(drawn from life by Albert Hoffay). Title page. [1] (1)4 Reviews of Ude's book.
(1)vi-xxiv Preface. xxv-xxxviii Advice to Cooks. Eight plates. Original
slightly soiled blue cardboard boards and spine with printed label covered by a
dark green cloth cover. Original untrimmed wide margined pages. Feps and frontis
very lightly browned, But internally quite clean and bright. The spine is split
but still holding. The back board is almost loose but holding. Overall a very
nice copy in its original state. “Louis Eustache Ude had already
received significant notoriety as a great chef in France before he moved to
England in the early 1800s. This book is his attempt to popularize French
cooking among the British. The first chapter alone contains 99 recipes for
various sauces”. First
published in London in 1813, Ude's The French Cook was undoubtedly a great
success, going through numerous editions. Although it was not, as Favre argued,
the first culinary work to appear in London, there is some truth in the claim
that Ude was ‘one of the first to popularize haute cuisine in London’ (Favre,
vol. 4, p. 1803). The saying, ‘Coquus nascitur non fit’—‘cooks are born, not
made’—is attributed to him. He also insists that cookery is the most difficult
and demanding of the sciences; that there are few good cooks, though many who
claim to be; and that a properly qualified cook can be ‘placed in the rank of
artists’.
