Mme. Bégué and Her Recipes: Old Creole Cookery. Book by H. M. Mayo

[San Francisco; Chicago: Southern Pacific Railroad]; [Printed by] Poole Bros, 1900. Duodecimo-size booklet (14.75 x 8.5 cm.), 80 pages. Blue and brown ink on pink paper. Two photographic portraits (Monsieur and Madame Bégué). Illustrations. List of railway agents. Title from cover. In logo at head of title: Southern Pacific Sunset Route. ~ Evident FIRST EDITION. A souvenir anthology of writings, including sixty recipes from two landmark New Orleans restaurants, offered for sale to customers traveling the Sunset Route (San Francisco–New Orleans) by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. A sampling: Mutton Feet à la Créole, Liver à la Bégué, Jambalaya of Chicken, Codish with White Beans, Bisque of Crayfish, Creamed Cauliflower, Onion Salad, Eggplant with Rice and Ham, Mayonaise of Celery and Shrimps, Pineapple with White Wine. ~ The title displayed on the wrappers is misleading: the atmospheric essays and testimonials – arranged by a literary journalist who contributed to Southern Pacific's promotional magazine Sunset, Henry Monroe Mayo (1868-1950) – reveal little regarding the eponymous originator of the recipes or the history of the cuisine that brought her fame. Only pages 47-68 contain recipes by Elizabeth (née Elisabetha) Kettenring (Dutreuil) Bégué (1831-1906), the proprietary chef of the beloved restaurant in the Vieux Carré – the second oldest such establishment in New Orleans – located on the Rue de la Levée (Decatur Street, after 1870), downriver from Jackson Square and across from the French Market. An immigrant from southern Germany, she had opened a coffee shop with her husband Louis Dutreuil in 1863. After his death in 1875, she married again, and with her second husband Hippolyte Bégué (1842-1917) reopened in the same location, with the aim of serving one meal per day – a “second breakfast” beginning at 11:00 a.m. – to accommodate laborers in the meat markets and on the docks who started work at dawn. (A fuller history by David Shields is available in his The Culinarians [Chicago: University or Chicago Press, 2017], pages 270-273.) By the mid-1880s, trade fairs held in the city were bringing tourists as well, and Bégué’s became a destination on its own. Madame Bégué died in 1906. The restaurant continued under management of her daughter, but was sold in 1914 to relatives of the family Tujague, competitors since 1856 on Decatur Street, a few doors away. ~ A shorter tribute with recipes (pages 69-74) is accorded another restaurateur, presumably Victor Béro (d. 1904), an immigrant from Belgium who had presided over Victor's Restaurant since 1873. (Mayo appears to confuse the "Monsieur Victor" of his time with the founder and namesake of the establishment, Victor Martin [1812-1865]; cf. Shields, page 136, 445). ~ The Sunset Route of the Southern Pacific Company was the southernmost of the transport lines to the West Coast originally contemplated by the series of Pacific Railroad Acts between 1862 and 1866. Of the resulting publicly subsidized corporate consortia that would transform western North America – known collectively as the transcontinental railroads – Southern Pacific was already a mammoth system in 1900, including smaller subsidiaries such as the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, and extending across territories that would later become New Mexico and Arizona, as well as northwards through Nevada, Utah, and much of California. The in-house Sunset magazine appears to have been printed close to headquarters in San Francisco, but like many publications issued by the transportation industry, Mme. Bégué and Her Recipes was printed by Poole Brothers of Chicago, who advertised as "railway printers" and also produced tickets, brochures, and mileage tables. ~ A few pages dog-eared. Very good, in publisher's red wrappers decorated in black and white, with an image of Madame Chef in kitchen apron. Rare. [OCLC locates thirteen copies; Uhler 28; New Orleans Culinary History Group, page 13; not in Bitting, Brown, or Cagle].