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THE COOKERY BOOK COLLECTION OF RUTH WATSON
Lot 57

MUFFETT (THOMAS)
Healths Improvement: or, Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, Method, and Manner of Preparing all Sorts of Food used in this Nation, FIRST EDITION, 1655

19 August 2020, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £1,275 inc. premium

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MUFFETT (THOMAS)

Healths Improvement: or, Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, Method, and Manner of Preparing all Sorts of Food used in this Nation... Corrected an enlarged by Christopher Bennet, FIRST EDITION, with the initial imprimatur leaf, woodcut ornaments, occasional small old stains, tear to gutter margin of Q2-3, contemporary sheep, spine tears at head and foot with slight loss, binding working loose [ESTC R202888; Oxford p.27-28], 4to (181 x 140mm.), T. Newcomb for S. Thomson, 1655

Footnotes

FIRST EDITION of this posthumously issued treatise on the food and diet of the English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was written by the entomologist Thomas Muffett (or Moffet, 1553-1604), whose stepdaughter Patience is said by some to have inspired the nursery rhyme 'Little Miss Muffett'. The work includes the important observation, made for the first time, that eating liver is beneficial to certain eye diseases. It also contains the first list of British wildfowl, and recognition of their migratory habits.

Provenance: John Borthwick of Crookstown Esquire, late eighteenth century ownership inscription on front free endpaper; some earlier annotations on blank preliminary/imprimatur leaves ("Dinner - Fried Chickens", "1. Boiled lamb 2. hard fish 3. Pancake?", "Roast Fowl Trouts Beans").

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