Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view our photographs. A nice clean very rare copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. Jack founded the Midsummer House, Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam. The Midsummer House experience is imaginatively curated to delight and amaze, so our surprise set menu changes regularly and is our playground to showcase our reverence for purity of flavour and natural seasonal ingredients.

This book is an early Edition, in the Publishers’ Original Binding. Third edition. First published in 1881. Scarce in all editions, the present copy is smart in the original publisher’s cloth. Containing sweet dish recipes for jellies, custards, creams, pastry, fritters, puddings, cakes, biscuits, &c. With clear instructions on methods and techniques. Compiled from a series of articles by “Wyvern”, Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert, British soldier in the British Indian Army and author of Anglo-Indian cookery books. In the original publisher’s full cloth binding. Externally generally smart. Internally, firmly bound. Pages are very clean throughout.

Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (1840 – 5 March 1916) was a British soldier who served in the British Indian Army, and wrote on cooking. Kenney-Herbert entered Rugby School in 1855 as Arthur Robert Kenney. He served in the Indian Army from age 19. A cornet in 1859, he served in the Madras Cavalry, having arrived in India on 31 October of that year. He reached the rank of major in 1875, at this rank serving as deputy assistant quartermaster general at Madras until 1881, then as military secretary to the governor of Madras from 1881 to 1884. In 1885, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the Madras Cavalry. He retired in 1892 with the rank of colonel.

Kenney-Herbert wrote regular articles about Anglo-Indian cookery for The Madras Mail, Madras Atheneum and The Daily News, using the pen-name Wyvern. These were collected and published in 1878 as Culinary Jottings for Madras, Or, A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles, which went through six editions between 1878 and 1892. Upon retiring from the army and returning to England, he started a cookery school – the Common-sense Cookery Association – in June 1894. Its premises were at 17 Sloane Street in London.Kenney-Herbert was not a vegetarian, but he did author the cookbook Vegetarian and Simple Diet in 1904. The book espouses ovo-lacto vegetarian recipes. It was positively reviewed in The Lancet journal, which noted that “we are glad to welcome the appearance of a book which will teach householders that appetising dishes can be made from vegetables with the aid of eggs and milk products.” Kenney-Herbert was fond of kedgeree. His recipe consisted of boiled rice, chopped boiled egg, cold minced fish that is heated with herbs, pepper and salt.