3 volumes. 414, [22]; 362, [22]; 351, [15] pp. Volume one with two lithographic plates of place settings, one of which is folding. (Small 8vo) 15x10 cm. (6¼x4"), period full sheep, volumes one and three with spines lettered in gilt (volume two binding is not entirely uniform but nevertheless appears to belong to this set). Second Edition.
Second edition of an important Mexican cookbook. The equally rare first edition, published just three years earlier, was an immediate classic and, as culinary scholar Jeffrey Pilcher has it, "possibly the country's first printed cookbook and certainly the most influential" (¡Vivan Tamales! The Creation of a Mexican National Cuisine (Fort Worth, TX: 1993); p. 258). According to the preface, the sale of the first edition was quite successful and this new edition has been thoroughly updated by removing recipes deemed uninteresting and providing new ones to take their places. "El Cocinero Mexicano (The Mexican Chef), published in 1831, a decade after independence, set the tone for Mexican culinary literature. Possibly the country's first printed cookbook and certainly the most influential, it passed through a dozen editions and served as a model for cooking manuals throughout the nineteenth century." (Pilcher, "Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821-1911" in The Americas, Vol. 53, No. 2. (Philadelphia: 1996); pp. 193-216).