Handbook of Trinidad Cookery
[Port of Spain, Trinidad]: Muir, Marshall & Company, Circa 1910. Octavo, 8.25 x 5.75", green wrappers with titles in green, [2], 126, [8 blank] pp, local advertisements. An early edition of Trinidad & Tobago's first cookbook, first published in 1907 (the editor, L.M. Tree, states on the title page that the popularity of the book "has induced me to publish another edition"). The cookbook was written by a white woman, and features recipes largely contributed by white residents, according to one source enacting "colonialist rhetoric that binds the islands to the British Empire and that buries Afro-Indigenous and Indo-Caribbean cooks under their wing." The recipes serve to "claim and tame 'native' recipes," and also convey "the long history of interactions among Indigenous, European, African and Asian persons and traditions that form colonial culture;" to this end, there are many appropriated "recipes for dishes developed by slaves, peasants, and indentured laborers from a combination of Indigenous, African, and Indian techniques and ingredients, common slave rations, and provisions" (Velens, "Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes for National Independence"). These include calaloo, kedgeree, curry, turtle soup, several salt-fish based recipes, desserts using local ingredients such as cassava, yam, sweet potatoes, and much more. There are also several "Creole" recipes reflecting the island's French Creole population, including Creole Cocoa and Salt Fish A'la Creole. Finally, there are two recipes attributed to women from India--curry powder (by "Banny Singh) and mangoes pickled in mustard oil (by "Bhupsingh"). One in OCLC, at SMU; the book was reprinted by the government of Trinidad and Tobago in 2016. An important cookbook reflective of the colonialism and diversity of the Caribbean world. Slight toning to pages, creasing, mild staining, toning to wrappers, chipping to wrappers at corners and spine ends. Item #11550
Price: $2,500.00