The Way to a Man's Heart: A Cookery Book

Washington, DC: Judd & Detweiler, Printer, 1890. Octavo (19.5 x 13.5 cm.), 110 pages. Subtitle on cover and flyleaf: A Cook Book. "Index" (page 17) is actually a table of contents. Advertisements on pages 1-14 and 95-110. FIRST EDITION. Two hundred twenty ascribed recipes gathered in support of a beloved urban space where "The seats in the church are free at every service". The dishes bear echoes of a British and conservative culinary orientation: Clam Chowder, English Rice Pudding, Farcied (i.e., stuffed) Tomatoes, Shrove Tuesday Pancakes, Apple Roly-Poly, Pickled Lemons, Shrewsbury Cakes, Soft Gingerbread, Fig Pudding. Included is a Plum Pudding that made the rounds in post-Civil War cookbooks, attributed to Mrs. General Sherman. Seldom is the immediate fund-raising goal of a church cookbook forthrightly stated, but Mrs. Valk and Miss Newton left no doubt: "The ladies who have compiled this little volume hope that it may accomplish the double mission of helping to conserve domestic serenity and of pushing forward the good work to which its proceeds are to be devoted-the erection of St. Paul's Parish Building". The community now known as St. Paul's Parish at K Street was born of the missionary fervor that swept Washington in the aftermath of the Civil War. The first church was constructed in 1868, on 23rd Street, between Pennsylvania Avenue and I Street NW, not far from Washington Circle. No photographs of this first building appear to have survived. At once resolutely Anglo-Catholic and "free" - that is, without reserved or rented pews - St. Paul's has since that time embraced an urban mission at the heart of the District. After the federal government seized the location by eminent domain in 1944, St. Paul's congregation built the church it now occupies on the south side of K Street. A number of pages spot- or splatter-stained, a few with marks in pencil. Some soiling to edges of text block; textblock firm despite shaken covers. Bound in red publisher's cloth, stained, with black titling and blind-stamped decorative pattern; corners bumped. Good. Scarce. [OCLC locates two copies; Cook, page 49; no in Brown or Cagle].