40. [Jewish Food Finally Appears in the Dominant General English Cookbook] Acton, Eliza. Engravings by Henry Adlard. [Lady Judith Montefiore]

MODERN COOKERY, FOR PRIVATE FAMILIES: REDUCED TO A SYSTEM OF EASY PRACTICE, IN A SERIES OF CAREFULLY TESTED RECEIPTS, IN WHICH THE PRINCIPLES OF BARON LIEBIG AND OTHER EMINENT WRITERS HAVE BEEN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE APPLIED AND EXPLAINED ; [INCLUDING: “FOREIGN AND JEWISH COOKERY"]

London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, 1858. Item #43455

Newly revised and much enlarged edition, the 3rd printing to include "Foreign and Jewish Cookery." Late 19th Century Cloth Binding, 12mo; xlvii + 643 + 32 pages [714 total] + 8 leaves of plates, all present. 18 cm.
Early printing following the addition in 1855, three years earlier, of a new section on “Foreign and Jewish Cookery;” That was also the first edition issued under the now-famous title, Modern Cookery for Private Families.
Includes index and 32-page publisher's catalogue after text.

Famously, Lady Judith Montefiore published the first English-language Kosher cookbook, The Jewish Manual, in 1846, primarily for other Jewish housewives and meal planners.
Less than a decade later, however, leading British cookbook author Eliza Acton took Lady Montefiore’s Jewish cooking tips one step further, celebrating and normalizing them for cooks of all backgrounds across the Commonwealth through a new expanded edition of her best-selling cookbook, Modern Cookery.
Journalist Rita Ehrlich notes that between these two works, “The first Jewish recipes published in English reveal the place of accomplished Jewish women in 19th Century high society.
Among the welter of cookbooks published in 19th century England, Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families stands out for its clarity, its practicality, its occasional humour, and its inclusion of Jewish food.
First published in 1845,....The 1855 edition included a section on Foreign and Jewish Cookery, and among the recipes was one for Jewish Almond Pudding. It was one of the few recipes Acton had not tested herself. ‘We have tasted the puddings … more than once and have received the exact directions for them from the Jewish lady at whose house they were made.’
A Jewish lady – presumably the same one – provided her, and thereby the readers, with the address of a Jewish butcher in the London suburb of Aldgate, from whom one could procure smoked beef and a chorissa sausage. Acton noted that ‘all meat supplied by Jew butchers is sure to be of first-rate quality, as they are forbidden by the Mosaic Law to convert into food any animal which is not perfectly free from all ’spot or blemish’’. She also noted that the Jewish dietary laws which forbade the mixing of dairy and meat were ‘not very rigidly observed’ by most English Jews.
The date of that book is striking. Jews were part of English society by 1855, with a Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, a leader in the campaign to allow Jews to sit in Parliament. Lionel de Rothschild took his seat in Parliament in 1858 [the year of this copy’s publication], following the passing of the Jews Relief Act. He had been elected a number of times; the sticking point had been the need to swear the oath ‘upon the true Faith of a Christian’.
Even if we did not know about the number of wealthy, highly regarded and influential Jews in London at that time, the fact that an author would include specifically Jewish recipes and shopping advice in a bestselling cookbook that also recommended Jewish butchers for the quality of the meat suggests strongly that there was companionable social exchange.
The almond pudding recipe appeared in an earlier book, published in 1846, called The Jewish Manual, edited by A Lady, no doubt the same lady who had entertained Eliza Acton. She was almost certainly Lady Judith Montefiore, wife of the influential philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, and the book was the first Jewish cookbook in the English language” (Rita Ehrlich, When ‘A Lady’ taught the English to cook kugel and Jews to be English, 2022.
thejewishindependent.com.au/when-a-lady-taught-the-english-to-cook-kugel-and-jews-to-be-english).

Eliza Acton (1799-1859) “was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families [this work]. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti….Some time after Modern Cookery was published, Acton moved from Tonbridge to Hampstead, north west London. She became the cookery correspondent for the weekly magazines The Ladies' Companion and Household Words, and began writing….a new edition of Modern Cookery. This was published in 1855, and renamed as Modern Cookery for Private Families, the name by which it is best known. This version contains an additional chapter named ‘Foreign and Jewish Cookery’; the Jewish recipes are from Ashkenazi cuisine” (Wikipedia).
Indeed, Eliza Acton’s "Modern Cookery… “is considered the first practical cookbook specifically geared toward the everyday cook. The schoolteacher, poet, and cookery writer Eliza Acton (1799-1859) published a number of poems as a young woman, and ‘[i]n 1837 [...] [h]er publishers, Longmans, suggested she should write something more practical than poetry so, for the next few years, she applied herself to meticulous research for the work by which she is best known: Modern Cookery for Private Families, first published in 1845. The book was well received on its first appearance; critics thought it the best cookery book they had seen, combining as it did clarity of instructions with excellent organisation.
The book was a lasting success running into several editions, and was the standard work on the subject until the end of the century, establishing Eliza Acton as the first of the modern cookery writers. She wrote with great charm and clarity, but what marked the book as innovative was her original plan of listing, very exactly, the ingredients, the time taken, and pitfalls for the inexperienced cook. This was a completely new format, all other books on the subject being far less exact in their instructions.
This became the standard way of writing cookery books…”(Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Modern food journalists Sue Dyson and Roger McShane suggest that Acton’s Modern Cookery “is an absolutely essential part of any serious cookbook collection" (https://foodtourist.com/modern-cookery-for-private-families-by-eliza-acton).

Contents:– Introductory Chapters. Trussing; Carving -- Soups -- Fish -- Dishes of Shell-Fish -- Gravies -- Sauces -- Cold Sauces, Salads, Etc. -- Store Sauces -- Forcemeats -- Boiling, Roasting, Etc. -- Beef -- Veal -- Mutton and Lamb -- Pork -- Poultry -- Game -- Curries, Potted Meats, Etc. -- Vegetables -- Pastry -- Soufflés, Omlets, Etc. -- Boiled Puddings -- Baked Puddings -- Eggs and Milk -- Sweet Dishes, or Entremets -- Preserves -- Pickles -- Cakes -- Confectionary -- Dessert Dishes -- Syrups, Liqueurs, Etc. -- Coffee, Chocolate, Etc. -- Bread -- Foreign and Jewish Cookery.

For more on Acton and this book’s impact on modern food culture, see for example, Sheila Hardy’s The Real Mrs Beeton: The Story of Eliza Acton (The History Press, 2011); Sophie Hill's Keeping up Appearances: Economy vs. Extravagance in Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery
(https://recipes.hypotheses.org/tag/eliza-acton); and the Wikipedia page dedicated to this groundbreaking cookbook
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Cookery_for_Private_Families).

SUBJECT(S): Cooking, English. Cuisine anglaise. Cookbooks. Publishers' catalogs.
The University of West Virginia keeps their copy in their Rare Book Room.
OCLC: 2613184 (for 1859 printing).
Front inside hinge just starting, light wear to crown of spine, Good+ Condition. Important (B) (Food-1-1-'!yyox).

Price: $350.00