Portable Soup from MacKenzie’s Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts: Constituting a Complete Practical Library, 1829,

Portable Soup from MacKenzie’s Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts: Constituting a Complete Practical Library, 1829: 200 year old soup recipe from a 1829 encyclopedic tome.

MacKenzie’s Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts: Constituting a Complete Practical Library, 1829, Latest London Edition: Huge book published by James Kay, Jun. and Brother, Philadelphia. Compiled by “An American Physician.” Topics include “Agriculture, Bees, Bleaching, Brewing, Calico Printing, Carving at Table, Cements, Confectionary, Cookery, Crayons, Dairy, Diseases, Distillation, Dying, Enamelling, Engraving, Farriery, Food, Gilding, Glass, Health, Inks, Jewellers’ Pastes, Lithography, Medicines, Metallurgy, Oil Colours, Oils, Painting, Pastry, Perfumery, Pickling, Pottery, Preserving, Scouting, Silk, Silk worms, Silvering, Tanning, Trees of all Kinds, Varnishing, Water Colours, Wines, &c. &c. &c.”

Open to any page and you can read a Passage to a companion for entertainment and/or as a conversation starter. For example, imagine this cure for a dislocated bone: “The strength of one man, properly applied, at the moment of the accident, will often succeed in restoring the head of the bone its place, which in a few days would have required the combined efforts of men and pulleys.” Thankfully, the first step in this process was to get the patient “very drunk.” 456 pages. Cookery or Culinary Arts take up 25 pages of the book, with confectionary, pastry, pickling, preserving, and wines occupying separate sections.

A copy of this book in excellent condition is priced at about $300 or more. However, this copy is not in excellent condition. Despite someone’s attempt to mend the cover, both the front and back boards have separated from the book. All the pages are here, and the text block is intact, with the binding firm. Some pages are spotted. At this price, this is a reading copy to treasure.