After noticing the Poetical cook-book while putting together our new title round-up earlier in the week, I couldn’t resist having a flip through the pages. Perhaps I might find a guaranteed mnemonic for how to cook brown rice: a thing I never can recall when I need to.
Published in 1864 by Maria J. Moss, the volume opens with a brief disclaimer by the author. Written originally as a ‘pastime,’ she feels the pages have received a wider importance during the Civil War and now dedicates the publication to the Philadelphia 1864 Sanitary Fair.
For those of us hoping for rhyming cooking instructions, the book then continues very hopefully with a lengthy introduction in verse:
Moss describes the fate of the poor and the good cook and even manages to reference a pair of odd culinary happenings from the time of Charles I: the knighting of a loin of beef and the presentation of an eighteen-inch tall man in a pie.
Flip through the whole book below or follow this link to Maria Moss’ Poetical cook-book.