De volmaakte Geldersche keuken-meyd. (”The Gelderland Kitchen Maid.”)
 
Nijmegen, Isaac van Campen, 1768. 8vo. [x] + 496; + 96 pp. + engraved title (slightly cropped at head).
 
Later half vellum, spine with unidentified armorial monogram in gilt. Some very slight wear, several dog-ears.
 
Third edition of ”The Gelderland kitchen maid”, the finest and most popular Dutch cookbook to appear in the eighteenth century. The first edition of this famous cookbook appeared in 1756 (without engraved title), also in Nijmegen but at Henrik Heymans. The second and third editions appeared at Van Campen in 1761 and 1768 respectively.
 
The recipes in this cookbook originate from the well-to-do middle class, and were supplied by several Nijmegen ladies. An important difference with a Hague collection of recipies (De perfecte Hollandsche keuken-maid) is that the publisher, Hendrik Heymans, had the recipes checked and edited by a professional chef. The cookbook was also a real bestseller: up to 1857 there were at least ten reprints.
 
The recipes are refined, diverse and a French influence is unmistakably present. Both in terms of the recipe and the terminology used: words such as ragout, crapaudille, daube, braise, fricasseren and farceren are used, and the entire cookbook breathes the atmosphere of a rich, relaxed and flamboyant life 'à la française'. A striking number of the recipes, almost twenty percent of them, are vegetable recipes. There are also numerous recipes with river fish and game, which were in no short supply in eighteenth-century Gelderland. In addition to now controversial recipes for lark soup, frog legs and goose liver, this cookbook contains a great many recipes that are more than worth copying: artichokes stuffed with morels, 'white soup of stuffed veal breast', eel pastries, pears stewed with bacon, hare with mustard sauce, lobster soup and kohlrabi stuffed with bacon, pork, anchovies and eggs.