THE COOK AND HOUSEWIFE'S MANUAL: A Practical System of Modern Domestic Cookery and Family Management (Sixth edition)

According to Oxford, this classic British cookbook first appeared in 1826. This the sixth edition which incorporates an appendix containing A Treatise on Domestic Brewing. Mistress Margaret Dods is the landlady in Scott's St. Ronan's Well; it is rumoured that Scott wrote the original preface. Christina Johnstone was a Scottish novelist; De Quincy cites her along with Joanna Baillie, as an example of a woman "cultivating the profession of authorship with absolutely no sacrifice or loss of feminine dignity". This cookbook is a delight to read: after a page and a half of careful instruction on how to boil a turbot, the author relates this story: " ...a Bishop descending to his kitchen to superintend the dressing of a turbot, and finding that his cook had stupidly cut away the fins, set about sewing them on again with his own Episcopal fingers. This dignitary knew the values of turbot."