Item #9586 High Class & Household Cookery. Mrs H. C. Gray.
High Class & Household Cookery
High Class & Household Cookery

High Class & Household Cookery

Nottingham, UK: Derry & Sons, 1913.
Second-hand hardcover

Gray, Mrs H C. High Class & Household Cookery. [FIRST EDITION] Derry & Sons: Nottingham, 1913. 8vo (120x80mm) qtr blue cloth, red cloth bds 193,[1]pp. (Not in Driver) VG/- light shelfwear, edges lightly worn, sticker mark; rear hinge softening



GRAY, Mrs H C [Mrs Herbert Charles, née Miss Nellie Parker]

High Class and Household Cookery

Nottingham : Derry and Sons, Ltd, 1913. Printed by Derry and Sons, Nottingham.

Octavo ( 120x80mm) quarter bound navy blue cloth, red, printed black, cloth boards 193.[1]pp; seven full page advertisements.

Light shelf wear; boards edges lightly worn; residue mark from price sticker to upper board, free endpapers faintly offset toned; one or two small signs of kitchen use; bottom of rear hinge softening.

The Nottingham and District School of Cookery was opened in 1885.  Miss Dods was the principal and two students had been sent to the National Training School to gain qualifications to teach how to teach cookery.  Classes were offered in Artisan (Household) and High Class cookery.  Lectures and evening classes were also provided (a 12 lecture course cost 10/6) and a visiting program of classes, lectures and demonstrations for students and housewives in the surrounding villages and towns that made up the suburb of Nottingham was put into place.  The school was successful. 

By 1890 the gas network had been expanded to Nottingham.  The gas companies and gas stove manufacturers engaged The Nottingham Cookery School to give demonstrations of the new stoves, to the residents of the suburbs of Nottingham, highlighting their ease of use.  The school was already using the new stoves (as loudly proclaimed in newspaper advertisements of the time). At first the principal was the advertised demonstrator, but in subsequent demonstrations graduates and presumably teachers were billed as giving the demonstrations.  Miss Parker was a first class diplomée graduate of the Nottingham School of Cookery and in 1895 was advertised as giving classes and demonstrations on the new Eureka gas stove and for the gas companies in the Nottingham region on behalf of the School.  In later years she became a well known lecturer and demonstrator and gave regular demonstrations on the use of the Eureka gas stove in Wales, Northern England and Scotland.

In 1902 she wrote, as Nellie Parker, Modern Cookery: (high class and household cookery) - over 500 tested recipes based on the recipes she used in her demonstrations;  The Brotherton Library at Leeds University holds the only institutional copy. There is no copy in the British Library.

Just over a decade later, Mrs Gray (as she had become) wrote High Class and Household Cookery, which upon comparison is a significantly  reorganised and slightly abridged and updated version of Model Cookery.  Both books were published by Derry and Sons.

Notwithstanding the focus of her demonstrating career, there are no advertisements for or mentions of gas stoves.  There are a goodly number of recipes for puddings, jellies and ices.  A separate chapter for French Omelets and Soufflés gives good instruction and the baking chapters are interesting.

An excellent copy.

§  This edition unrecorded in institutional holdings.  Scarce in commerce.
§  Not in Driver, nor Bitting nor Axford.  cf Driver 801.1 for Modern Cookery

Item #9586

Price: $150.00 AUD

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