First Catch Your Hare...: The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy - Softcover

Glasse, Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903018374 ISBN 13: 9781903018378

Publisher: Prospect Books, 2004

Synopsis

This book is, quite simply, the most important English cookery book of the eighteenth century, defining for many the food and dining customs of the Georgian era. This is a facsimile edition, for the first time in paperback. The facsimile is of the first (1747) edition and preserves its large format.
This edition also contains considerable information about Hannah Glasse in a biographical introduction, as well as two essays on the degree to which Glasse was indebted to other authors for her recipes. These essays (by Jennifer Stead and Priscilla Bain) were important milestones in our understanding of the techniques of early cookbook compilation. There is also a detailed and informative glossary, with illustrations where necessary, which help the reader interpret the recipes and the ingredients referred to.
Hannah Glasse was a remarkable woman. She was not a professional cook; rather her expertise was in dressmaking and mercery. Even if her recipes are often filched from other people's books, she certainly puts her own gloss on many of them, and there is a definite authorial voice to the text as a whole. The book is particularly significant both in its attitudes to the influence of French cookery on the English middle classes, and in its reflection of the roles of mistress and servant in the running of an urban household. Its recipes are often successful and still capable of reproduction. The first curry recipe printed in England appears here.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prospect Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1903018374
• ISBN 13: 9781903018378
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218