A New Exhibit Highlights Rare Cookbooks and Bartender Guides at Bauman Rare Books

Have $15,000 to drop on a rare cookbook? Head over to Bauman Rare Books at the Grand Canal Shoppes, where a new exhibit showcases “Fine Food & Drink, a Collection of Rare and Unusual Cookbooks, Wine and Cocktail First Editions and Bartender Guides.”

Find items such as the first Jewish cookbook published in America, Prohibition-era bartender guides and works on wine appreciation and grape cultivation.

Among the finds, a 1698  first illustrated edition of Le Cuisinier Roïal et Bourgeois, a gastronomic classic from the age of Louis XIV, for $8,500; a rare first edition of Jewish Cookery Book, the first Jewish cookbook published in America, with extensive instructions on keeping a kosher household in addition to recipes for $15,000; and a first edition of Cooking with Master Chefs, Julia Child’s recipes from 16 famous contemporary chefs, signed by Child for $1,200.

For wine lovers, finds include an 1865 Louis Pasteur autograph letter requesting a key ingredient for his experiments in the fermentation of wine that would save the French wine industry for $9,800 and a first edition of the 1883 Wine Press and the Cellar, the earliest California imprint devoted solely to wine-making, by E. H. Rixford for $4,200.

Cocktails also find representation in the first drink manual published in the United States, an 1862 first edition of The Bar-Tender’s Guide, a Complete Cyclopaedia of Plain and Fancy Drinks authored by New York’s Metropolitan Hotel bartender Jerry Thomas for $9,000; and Charles Of Delmonico’s 1934 Punches and Cocktails, the first expanded and revised edition for “gentleman of good taste,” featuring such classics such as the Rob Roy for bankrupts, business depressions and husbands caught cheating for $950.

The free exhibit, open to the public, runs through April 12.