Vegetable Cookery Explained

Vegetable Cookery: With an Introduction, Recommending Abstinence from Animal Food and Intoxicating Liquors
Author:Martha Brotherton[1]
Country:United Kingdom
Language:English
Subject:Vegetarian cuisine
Genre:Cookery books
Publisher:Effingham Wilson
Pub Date:1812, 1833
Media Type:Print
Pages:474

Vegetable Cookery: With an Introduction, Recommending Abstinence from Animal Food and Intoxicating Liquors is the first vegetarian cookbook, authored anonymously by Martha Brotherton (1783–1861) of Salford.

Content

It was the first published vegetarian cookbook.[2] Martha and Joseph Brotherton were leading members of William Cowherd's Bible Christian Church.[3]

The recipes are ovo-lacto vegetarian. Many of the recipes involve copious amounts of butter. Historians have noted that "Brotherton's book served as a guide for Americans who began to self-identify as vegetarian in the early decades of the nineteenth century."[4] Kathryn Gleadle has written that the book "was enormously important to the movement, forming the basis of most subsequent works on vegetable cookery."[5]

Publication history

It was first published as A New System of Vegetable Cookery in periodical form in 1812.[6] A second book edition appeared in 1821 and a third was published by Horatio Phillips of London in 1829 under its best known title Vegetable Cookery.

The first edition was published anonymously by a "member of the Bible Christian Church".[6] The fourth edition published in 1833 by Effingham Wilson, contained 1,261 recipes and was also published anonymously "by a lady".[6] Martha's husband Joseph Brotherton wrote the introduction for the book. Two further editions appeared in 1839 and 1852.[6] The 1852 edition contains a foreword by James Simpson, the first president of the Vegetarian Society.[7]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Cushing, William. (1888). Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. p. 180
  2. Phelps, Norm. (2007). The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA. Lantern Books. p. 149.
  3. Puskar-Pasewicz, Margaret. (2010). Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 18.
  4. Baughman, James L; Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer; Danky, James P. (2015). Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent Since 1865. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 114–115.
  5. Gleadle, Kathryn. The Age of Physiological Reformers: Rethinking Gender and Domesticity in the Age of Reform. In Arthur Burns, Joanna Innes. (2003). Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850. Cambridge University Press. p. 216.
  6. Antrobus, Derek. (1997). A Guiltless Feast: The Salford Bible Christian Church and the Rise of the Modern Vegetarian Movement. City of Salford Education and Leisure. p. 72.
  7. https://web.archive.org/web/20190714205619/http://www.oldandvintagecookbooks.co.uk/id111.html "Old and Vintage Cookbooks"