The London Art of Cookery
London, James Scratcherd & Ors, 1801. Farley, John. The London Art of Cookery, & housekeeper's complete assistant. (10th ed) James Scratcherd & Ors: London, 1801. 8vo (215x135mm) rebacked, tan sheep, xxiv,[12],366,[2]pp.
Second-hand hardcover
FARLEY, John. (1755/6 - 1827)
The London Art of Cookery, and Housekeeper's Complete Assistant. On a new plan. Made plain and easy to the understanding of every housekeeper, cook, and servant, in the kingdom. Containing, proper directions for the choice of all kinds of provisions; instructions for trussing poultry; roasting and boiling all sorts of butcher's meat; poultry, game and fish; baking broiling and frying; sauces for every occasion; soups, broths, stews, and hashes; ragoos and fricasses; made dishes, both plain and elegant; all sorts of pies and puddings; pancakes and fritters; proper instructions for dressing fruits and vegetables; pickling, potting and preserving; the preparation of hams, tongues and bacon; to keep garden stuffs and fruits in perfection; the whole art of confectionary; the preparation of sugars; tarts, puffs and pasties; cakes, custards, jams and jellies; drying, candying and preserving fruits, &c.; elegant ornaments for entertainments; instructions for carving; necessary articles for sea-faring persons; made wines, cordial wines, and malt liquors. To which I added, an appendix containing considerations on culinary poisons; directions for making broths, &c., for the sick; a list of things in season in the different months of the year; marketing tables, &c., &c.. Embellished with a head of the author and a bill of fare for every month in the year.
London : James Scatcherd, No 12, Ave-Maria-Lane; T Wilkie; Messers Richardson; Longman and Rees; Lackington and Co; Cadell and Davies; Darton and Co; J Walker; and J Nunn, 1801. Tenth edition, first published 1783. Printed by C Whittingham, Dean Street, Fetter Lane. Price six shillings, bound.
Octavo (215x135mm) professionally rebacked contemporary styled smooth tan sheep spine, gilt ruled into six compartments, red, gilt lettered spine label; original smooth double ruled tan sheep boards, original endpapers, xxiv, [12],366,[2]pp : pi, [A]8, a4, B - Aa8. Engraved frontispiece, twelve out-of-text copperplate engraved bills of fare. Spine and boards edges lightly worn, corner gently bruised, some wear; all edges agetoned; damp stain to bottom edge of signatures A-M, pin-hole worming to upper margin signatures K-Aa neither affecting legibility; small signs of kitchen use, some occasional light foxing
¶ The London Art of Cookery contains approximately 800 recipes, written longhand, and well organised, in three parts, thirty-six chapters and five appendices with a detailed table of contents, but no index. It was an extremely popular late-eighteenth century cookbook, with ten editions in seventeen years. The recipes are in the most part, straightforward with little French influence. There are a number of interesting chapters with recipes for Pickling, Collaring, Potting, Preparation of Hams, Bacon, &c., Made Wines, Cordial Waters, Malt Liquors, Culinary Poisons, and Necessary Articles for Sea Faring Persons.
John Farley, according to the records of the Vintners Company in 1778, was a freeman cook working at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street, East London. In 1784 he became a member of the Vintners Company and by 1819 had risen to be Master of the Vintners Company. In all editions of The London Art of Cookery Farley is described as the "Principal Cook at the London Tavern". Whether any of the recipes in the book were served at the London Tavern is unknown. Acclaimed for many years as a significant book of late eighteeenth-century British recipes, it is now clear that the the book was ghost written by "the printer and hack Richard Johnson" ¹ for which he was paid the sum of £21 by the publisher James Scratcherd. He was also paid further sums for work on later editions.²
"Farley's claim to fame has rested solely on his cookery book, although this is now known to be the work of a hack writer, Richard Johnson. Ninety per cent of The London Art of Cookery was compiled from the two culinary best-sellers of the eighteenth century, without ever acknowledging his female sources. These were Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (first published 1747) and Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper (first published 1769). The remaining 10 per cent of Farley's book came from several other eighteenth-century cookery books. Copyright laws did not cover the field at that time and other contemporary cookery writers borrowed material. Johnson appears not only to have used two-thirds of Glasse's book and half of Raffald's to compile Farley's book, but his copying technique involved changing the first and last lines of each recipe without seemingly improving the original text to any marked degree. His selection of excellent and often workable recipes, however, may well account for the book's popularity" ³
Notwithstanding its illegitimate conception, a popular and well-regarded collection of recipes that also provides some insight into the murky process of cookery book production in Britain in the eighteenth century. An important part of any collection of British cookery.
An excellent copy of a later edition.
§ Cagle 679; Maclean, pps.50-52; Oxford, p.114 in a note; cf Bitting p152-3.
¹ Lehmann, Gilly. The British Housewife: cookery books, cooking & society in eighteenth-century Britain. Totnes : Prospect Books, 2003 p. 79.
² Targett, Peter. "Richard Johnson or John Farley?, Petit Propos Culinaires 58, London, p.31-33.
³ Lucraft, Fiona. "John Farley" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004
Item #11339
Price: $900.00 AUD