OP: New Receipts for Cooking

Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854. Hardcover. Very Good. Rebacked. A prominent figure in the development of the American kitchen, Eliza Leslie (1787–1858) preserved for us a breed of cookery that helped the country depart from its heavily English roots and begin to achieve a character of its own. In this book (1854), one of her last, she draws on regional ingredients and flavors, particularly Southern, and incorporates some of the sophistication of French cooking technique, offering ideas intended to satisfy not only the need for simple home meals but also the more elegant offerings associated with entertaining. “Miss Leslie,” as she styled herself, had published numerous cookery and household titles going as far back as 1828. She is quite insistent in her preface to this book that it contains all fresh material and includes a testimonial from Ladies’ National Magazine on the title page that emphatically states, “All the receipts in this book are new, and have been fully tried and tes