A Book of Recipes. Second and Improved edition, compiled by the Womans Guild of Christ Church Cathedral

Lexington, Kentucky: [The Church; Printed by] Press of James M. Byrnes Co, 1926. Octavo (21 x 14.75 cm.), 122 pages. Advertisements. “Index” is actually a table of contents. ~ Stated “second and improved edition.” A church cookbook from the heart of the Bluegrass interior, with three hundred fifty recipes, a few of them attributed. Among those of more than passing interest: Kentucky Spoon Bread, Currant Loaf, Gritts Muffins, Buckwheat Cakes, Black Bean Soup, Mushroom Soup, Dutch Chicken Pie, Succotash, Boiled Okra, Grapefruit and Alligator Pear (i.e., Avocado) Salad, Transparent Gooseberry Pie, Jerusalem Pudding, Hickory Nut Pudding, English Trifle, Chocolate Roulade, Frozen Apricots, Sabyon (Zabaione) Pudding, Pecan Cake, Dried Apple Cake, Cantaloupe Pickle, Onion Pickle, Peach Marmalade, Gingered Pears, Black Walnut Brittle. ~ The first members of Kentucky’s oldest Episcopal congregation met initially, in 1796, in a small frame house at the corner of Market and Church Streets, the site commanded by the renowned cathedral today. Little is known as yet about the dimensions of the brick church that followed, but it set the stage in 1808 for the formal constitution of a parish. Vestry records (reviewed in the commemorative Historical Sketch of Christ Church Cathedral [Lexington: Transylvania Printing, 1898], pages 16; 20) refer to the purchase of a bell, an organ and a salaried organist, and room for a choir in the gallery – early evidence, is any is needed, that Episcopalian ambitions had been fully awakened. Ground was broken for the spacious current church in 1847; the Gothic Revival design, with a square tower and pinnacles, was contributed by a locally famous architect, Thomas Lewinski (d. 1882), several of whose buildings in the Bluegrass Region still survive. ~ In 1895 the Diocese of Kentucky was divided, and Christ Church Episcopal became the seat of the Diocese of Lexington, with jurisdiction over the eastern half of the state, installing a Bishop there in 1897. A Book of Recipes thus identifies the church as a cathedral, and appeared as the twentieth anniversary of its elevation approached; it would also have been the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the Womans' Guild (idem, page 98). ~ Edges lightly soiled. Better than very good, in publisher’s light grey oilcloth, lettered and decorated in lavender; with a few abrasions. [OCLC locates eight copies of this 1926 edition, and three of the 1920 first edition; Cook, page 92 (referring to the 1906 edition); in neither Brown nor Cagle].