The Star Crystal Cook Book
Milwaukee: J.G. Flint, 1890. [4],146pp., plus color frontispiece. Original brown faux-alligator wrappers. Front cover detached, covers heavily worn; older tape on spine and front cover, lightly soiled. Contemporary pencil ownership notations on end leaves. Lightly toned, several small edge tears, heavier to last few leaves. About good. Item #1724
One of the earliest cook books published in Wisconsin. This promotional cook book was issued by the Star Crystal Baking Powder Company of Milwaukee, edited by the principal of the Milwaukee Cooking School and featuring a handsome color frontispiece advertising their product. The work includes an index, a table of proportions and equivalents, and has blank leaves provided for notes and extra recipes. Opening with bread, it includes recipes for cakes, puddings, sauces, soups, salads, fish, a section on roasting and brazing, and a pastry section which begins, "Don't make it! But if it must be made, this is the way to do it...." A second edition was published in 1895, and is also quite rare. We locate four copies in OCLC: the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Michigan State University, and the Milwaukee County Library.
Bitting, p.91. Brown, Culinary Americana 4356.
Price: $500.00