DUMAS, Alexander. Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine.

(Paris): Alphonse Lemerre, 1873.  First edition.  Hardcover.  28cm by 18cm. [vi] 1155, 24 pages.  Portraits of Dumas and Vuillemot. One volume, elephantine in ambition and appetite; 1152 pages of culinary erudition and extravagance. Text in French, naturally. Penned with the same gusto that sent Edmond Dantès leaping from the Château d’If and Athos lunging for his rapier, Dumas’ Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine is no mere cookbook—it is a feast in alphabetic form. Here, the humble garlic clove receives as much affection as a noble pheasant stuffed with truffles. Recipes jostle alongside meditations on oysters, memories of lavish banquets, and philosophical musings on the proper preparation of a stew. Begun in his later years with the intention of bestowing upon France a culinary monument, the dictionary reads as a dialogue between gourmand and gastronome, peppered with wit and unapologetically subjective declarations (“England has only three sauces, and two of them are mustard”). This is not a manual—it is a memoir in flavors, a patriotic act of seasoning, and a last course served by one of literature’s great lions.  A very good copy in original cloth with gilt lettering.  Some cracking at joints, light foxing throughtout, still a presentable copy of this literary compendium of 19th-century culinary knowledge.