The Accomplished Housekeeper, and Universal Cook.

London: Printed for J. Scatcherd. 1797.

First edition. 8vo. 175x100mm. pp. xvi, 274. Folding frontispiece and twelve plates each with a monthly "Bill of Fare". Contemporary calf, recently and expertly repaired, red morocco label to spine lettered in gilt. Closed tear to E6 with no loss, some foxing but otherwise very good. An excellent copy of a rare book, ESTC recording only six copies.
The Accomplished Housekeeper is an abridged version of Francis Collingwood's The Universal Cook and City and Country Housekeeper, itself a rare book, first published in 1792 with a second edition in 1797. Their purpose, as stated in the preface, was to issue a version that was cheaper, shorter and easier to use. "The Editors have had frequent occasions to deviate from the printed directions found in books of this kind, sometimes by altering, but more frequently by reducing the number of ingredients, and thereby rendering them more simple and less expensive, though equally salutary to the constitution and grateful to the palate". The Accomplished Housekeeper is, nevertheless, full of detail with a huge range of receipts, a "Catalogue of Various Articles in Season in the different Months of the Year" and instructions on how to carve including the somewhat alarming observation that "it is not the custom at present to send a pig up to table whole".