Livre des menus - Auguste Escoffier - Bauman Rare Books

Livre des menus

Auguste ESCOFFIER | Phileas GILBERT

Item#: 83801 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Livre des menus

“HIS MENUS WERE LIKE SYMPHONIES IN THEIR GRADATION OF TASTES”: FIRST EDITION OF ESCOFFIER’S LE LIVRE DES MENUS, 1912

ESCOFFIER, A[uguste]. Le livre des menus. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, (1912). Octavo, original blue cloth.

First edition of Escoffier’s enticing collection of menues, published as a companion to his Guide Culinaire (1912), featuring menus for sumptuous meals served to world-famous celebrities, kings and queens, and at banquets at Buckingham Palace, in original gilt-stamped cloth.

Compiled by August Escoffier, considered by many to be the first celebrity chef, Le livre des menus was published as a companion volume to his classic Guide Culinaire (1912). This fascinating volume features menus for elegant evenings at the renowned Carlton Hotel, for magnificent dinners served to kings and queens, for elegant state banquets in Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and aboard H.M.S. Medina, and for sumptuous meals served to England’s Edward VII, “who was particularly attracted to hotels and restaurants associated with the Ritz-Escoffier team” (James, Escoffier, 185). “Escoffier may well rank France’s most celebrated gastronomic names… His menus were like symphonies in their gradation of tastes” (Time). Co-authored with Philéas Gilbert and Émile Fetu. With folding table at rear, preface dated “Avril 1912”; without very scarce dust jacket. Text in French. Bitting, 146. Cagle 185b.

Text fresh with slight edge-toning, soiling to original gilt-lettered cloth. An extremely good copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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