How to Cook & Eat In Chinese
New York, John Day Co, 1945. Chao, Buwei Yang. How to Cook & Eat in Chinese. (An Asia Press Book) (4th Imp) John Day Co: New York, 1945. 8vo (210x140mm) printed tan cloth bds xviii,262pp. (foreword by Hu Shih; preface by Pearl S Buck) Lacks dj; eps offset toned, pp edges agetoned
Second-hand hardcover
Chao, Buwei Yang [Zhao Yang Buwei 趙楊步偉, 1889–1981)
How to Cook & Eat in Chinese 中國食譜
New York : The John Day Company, An Asia Press Book, 1945. Fourth impression. First published March 1945. Printed. Foreword by Hu Shih, preface by Pearl S Buck.
Octavo (210x140mm) black and red printed, tan linen grain cloth boards, xviii,262pp. Lacks dust jacket; spine head small discrete 2mm loss, foot gently pushed; boards and edges faintly soiled; endpapers offset toned; page edges faintly agetoned; corners faintly bruised.
Written in Chinese and translated by the author's daughter Rulan Chao, How to Eat was the first mainstream published wholly Chinese cookbook in English. It is also notable for the lengthy introduction providing detailed information on the background and cultural practices of cooking and eating Chinese food. First and foremost a practical introduction to Chinese foodways, How to Eat is much more, providing a structure and accessible lexicon for one of the world's great cuisines¹. The author's husband Chao Yuenren (Zhao
Yuanren 趙元任, 1892–1982) was a linguist and philologist teaching Mandarin at Harvard and is credited with creating for the book many phrases and terms now used commonly in English to describe Chinese cooking techniques such as 'stir-fry' and 'pot-stickers'. How to Eat is also unusual for a cookbook as it adopts the same structure as Yuenren's Mandarin Primer using a structure and classification of dishes to make a range of disparate regional and cultural dishes, techniques and traditions accessible as identifiably "Chinese" cuisine.
There are 238 recipes, presented in twenty-six chapters, divided into two parts: Part I. Cooking and eating. Introduction; Eating materials; Cooking materials; Cooking and eating utensils; Methods of readying; Methods of cooking: Part II. Recipes and menus. Red-cooked meat; Meat slices; Meat shreds; Meat balls or meat cakes; Meat specialties; Beef; Mutton and lamb; Chicken; Duck; Fish; Shrimps; Sea food; Eggs; Vegetables; Soups; Pots; Sweet things; Rice; Noodles; Pastry; and Meals and menus. The recipes are followed by a note on tea and a bilingual recipe index.
Notwithstanding the authors' academic backgrounds and the unique structured taxonomy, How to Eat is warmly written, personal, amusing and informative as well as an excellent culinary manual. Instantly a success, and critically acclaimed, there were five impressions before the publication of a second edition in 1949.
An excellent early copy of of one of the most influential books written in the West on Chinese cuisine and cooking.
§ Well held institutionally in North America; OCLC records only holdings of later editions in Australasia.
§ Newman
¹ Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: reading women's lives through the cookbooks they wrote. New York, Palgrave 2002 pp.255.
Item #10645
Price: $150.00 AUD