Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. by DUMAS, Alexandre, père.

Large and thick 8vo (275 × 170 mm), pp. [4], vi, [2], 1155, [1], 24 (’Annexe’ with adverts), 2 engraved portraits (Alexandre Dumas and Denis-Joseph Vuillemot, the dedicatee). Some foxing throughout, mainly marginal. Original blindstamped red cloth, upper cover lettered in gilt. Faded and lightly rubbed, some cracking at joints, still a very presentable copy.

First edition, elephantine in ambition and appetite; 1155 pages of culinary erudition and extravagance. Penned with the same gusto that sent Edmond Dantès leaping from the Château d’If and Athos lunging for his rapier, Dumas père’s Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine is a feast in alphabetic form. Here, the humble garlic clove receives as much affection as a noble pheasant stuffed with truffles. Recipes jostle alongside meditations on oysters, memories of lavish banquets, and philosophical musings on the proper preparation of a stew. Begun in his later years with the intention of bestowing upon France a culinary monument, the dictionary reads as a dialogue between gourmand and gastronome, peppered with wit and unapologetically subjective declarations (’England has only three sauces, and two of them are mustard’). This is not a manual — it is a memoir in flavours, a patriotic act of seasoning, and a final course served by one of literature’s great lions. Bitting p.135; Cagle 171; Oberle 238; Vicaire 297.