Oddest cookbook?

What's the most unusual cookbook you have in your collection?

Mine is probably, "Russian Jew Cooks in Peru."

What's the most unusual cookbook you have in your collection?

Larry, that'd be a tough call (and you might not even want to know!). Handy are maybe 1800 books (more elsewhere), many of them deal with food and a number might fit the request. An offhand candidate is The Monarch Dines (1953, English Tr. London, 1954), posthumous memoir of chef (lived 1868-1953) to the last King of Bavaria (Ludwig II, from what little I've read a popular figure in the nation but suffered serious mental illness, and drowned somewhat mysteriously 1886 amid heavy inter-German power politics). It is only partly cookbook, which is true of many unusual or significant food books.

Another, internationally notorious candidate is the rich, fascinating, often perverse Russian 19th-c. national cookbook, Elena Molokhovets’ A Gift to Young Housewives, reprinted 15 years ago in partial English tr. by Joyce Toomre, I've mentioned it here before. The book's style surfaces in a matchingly unusual review by Tatiana Tolstaya, sample below, the second pph especially memorable:

Where is the creature [nowadays] who, rising at dawn, spends two and a half hours roasting chamois in time for breakfast? Or who tosses back a jigger of vodka in the morning and sits down to consume beer soup with sour cream (Rhine wines are served in the middle of breakfast, punch at the end; or the other way around), and with barely time to recover, again drinks vodka or wine for midday dinner (with hors d’oeuvres: marinated fish, smoked hare, stuffed goose or pears in honey, ninety versions to choose from), and applies himself to soup with champagne and savory pies (the champagne is poured in the soup!), upon which there follows yet another bountiful meat dish, and then a heavy dessert, drenched in sugar and fat.

After that, it’s not long until evening tea with five types of bread, veal, ham, beef, hazel grouse, turkey, tongue, hare, four sorts of cheese. This is not counting rolls, different sorts of cookies, babas, jam, oranges, apples, pears, mandarins, dates, plums, and grapes; as if that were not enough, for "tea" one must offer rum, cognac, red wine, cherry syrup, sherbet (a kind of sugary fruit halvah or sweet drink), cream, sugar, and lemon. Plain butter and lemon butter, parmesan butter, butter from hazel grouse, with fried liver, with almonds, walnuts, pistachios. With green cheese. And shredded corned beef. (Molokhovets notes that this "may replace dinner." What? Meaning, it might not replace dinner? Here, by the way, one remembers that the subtitle of the book is "means of reducing expenses in the domestic household.") ...

I sent the URL of this topic to my neighbor who has the most diverse collection of cookbooks imaginable. She has Afghan cookbooks printed in Afghanistan (from when she lived there) and Persian cookbooks printed in Iran (some in Farsi).

She wrote back and told me that she works with the =nephew= of the woman who wrote "A Russian Jew Cooks in Peru."

Amazing...

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[size=9]Where is the creature [nowadays] who, rising at dawn, spends two and a half hours roasting chamois in time for breakfast? Or who tosses back a jigger of vodka in the morning and sits down to consume beer soup with sour cream (Rhine wines are served in the middle of breakfast, punch at the end; or the other way around), and with barely time to recover, again drinks vodka or wine for midday dinner (with hors d’oeuvres: marinated fish, smoked hare, stuffed goose or pears in honey, ninety versions to choose from), and applies himself to soup with champagne and savory pies (the champagne is poured in the soup!), upon which there follows yet another bountiful meat dish, and then a heavy dessert, drenched in sugar and fat.

Max, of late you have begun to use a small font in parts of your posts. Someone commented on this practice, and of course I do not know what problem that someone had, but in MY case it is very hard to read. This is just a report for your information.

Has to be this one.

Max, of late you have begun to use a small font in parts of your posts. Someone commented on this practice, and of course I do not know what problem that someone had, but in MY case it is very hard to read. This is just a report for your information.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. Dale mentioned it in passing in another case with I think 9-point type also, one step down in standard options (this forum offers even considerably smaller -- and larger -- fonts).

I (and others, though not necessarily on this site) do that as a very deliberate typesetting tool (just as with print material), not chosen lightly, to save space on these HTML fora when posting supplemental or optional information. There's a necessary compromise among alternatives, eachof which some people will dislike, as a rule: omit the secondary material, compact it as I did, or let the posts be awkwardly long. Barring input, I'd tentatively guessed that people here would prefer the choice I took (it's common elsewhere) and that those who wanted to might use the various browser options or cut-paste as a "magnifying glass" when needed, but that doesn't seem to be an accurate guess in this case. I'm happy to use any of the options, but wish I could hear from more people about the three alternatives, each with its drawbacks. You're welcome to email or PM me on this. If this meta-topic becomes longer, it may need a separate thread.

(The issue is important to me, specifically because I have access to a lot of material that's very relevant but not online, therefore can't be cited by link, and sometimes is even hard to find in print. Some of what I summarize or quote on this site has never previously been online anywhere.)

Max, I think you style is fine -- it is consistent with the scholarly character of your posts, and you invariably use the small text for secondary or subsidiary information. I consider that you are using the text size to communicate your meaning effectively.

As a reader, I appreciate that thoughtfulness. If I have trouble reading the text, it's a simple matter to increase the text size temporarily -- in FireFox, for example, go to View, bump up the size, read the material, then go back to View, and bump it back down again.

I vote that you continue your present practice.

Regards, Bob

[Robin Garr]

I (and others, though not necessarily on this site) do that as a very deliberate typesetting tool (just as with print material), not chosen lightly, to save space on these HTML fora when posting supplemental or optional information.

Let's just cut to the chase, Max: You're welcome to use miniature type for the reasons you enumerate, but this simply is not and never has been an issue here. Post on in standard type, and don't worry about length. It'll be fine that way.

What's the most unusual cookbook you have in your collection?

"To Serve Man"

I also found Max's use of small font perfectly logical and I like that style!

My oddest cook book is probably Kitáb al-Tábíkh of Ibn Sayyár al-Warráq. I have the edition edited by my Arabic teacher, Kaj Öhrnberg - Helsinki University has one manuscript of it. It's a 10th C. compilation of recipes from the time of Hárún al-Rashíd (of 1001 Nights fame). The recipes seem to be for show only - the eatability of the foods is not important ... in fact, eating some of the foods could be lethal!

-Otto

Does anybody remember the 1960 ditty by by Peg Braken, "The I Hate to Cook Book"?

Does anybody remember the 1960 ditty by by Peg Braken, "The I Hate to Cook Book"?

I just had a look on Amazon, and you can still find Peg Bracken's books, although all are out of print and selling, used, at a premium ($85).

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I bought a copy of "The I Hate to Cook Book" for my mother...

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