[BROADSIDE] THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT

Sant Barbara: Mudborn Press, 1982. Brown heavy paper. Fine. 55 x 39 cm. Oversized. Limited edition, #28 of 100 - signed by the author. Designed and printed from handset type on Rives BFK, Gutenberg Laid, and Mohawk Superfine by Judy Mudfoot at Mudborn Press. Calligraphy by Pamela Gardella. Part of text from The Cordiall Water.

M.F.K. Fisher's A Cordiall Water is a short, idiosyncratic collection of folk cures and household remedies, framed by her characteristic wit and reflective prose. The book gathers traditional "receipts" - nostrums, cordials, poultices, and tonics - meant to assuage ailments in both humans and animals, from minor discomforts to more serious complaints. Fisher combines these recipes with anecdote, history, and skepticism, so the volume reads as much like an essayistic meditation on belief, superstition, and care as it does a manual of cures. Fisher later remarked that A Cordiall Water was among her favorite of her own works, in part because she wrote it while living in Aix-en-Provence and felt the prose had a special clarity born of thinking in two languages. Pristine.