Maria Rundell’s New system of domestic cookery (1835)

Maria Rundell (1745-1828) published her New system of domestic cookery … adapted to the use of private families in November 1805.   This volume, the fifty-eighth edition, testifies to its enormous success – an average of nearly two new editions every year for thirty years.   Rundell claimed to have written the book for her daughters and marketed it at middle-class housewives, not ‘professed cooks’.

It was the observation of a sensible and experienced woman, that she could always read the fate of her servants who married:  those who had been faithful and industrious in her service, continued their good habits in their own families, and became respectable members of the community; those who were the contrary never were successful, and not unfrequently were reduced to the parish.

In addition to recipes (including the first printed recipe for Scotch eggs), Rundell includes advice on home medicines and a section on managing household staff.   It remained the dominant cookery book of the early 19th century with new copies still be printed into the 1880s.

I’ve been rescued!