Reliable Receipts. Contributed by the Ladies of the Central Congregational Church, Newtonville, Mass

Boston: Columbia Engraving Company, 1899. Octavo (20 x 14 cm.), 184 pages. Advertisements. Index. Second Edition. An earlier edition, without mention of Newtonville in the title, was published by the Central Congregational Church in 1890. An ambitious charitable cookbook of nearly eight hundred recipes, for the most part brief and unattributed, published in the year of the Church's incorporation as an independent congregation. A work, too, of intentional comprehensiveness, with no fewer than twelve sorts of vegetable fritters, eighteen ways to serve oysters, seven versions of lemon pie, and fourteen fruit sherbets. Isolated items of note: Bisque Ice Cream (made with stale cocoanut macaroons), Quince Water Ice, Blackberry Flummery, Lemon Beer, and Tomato Wine (with a possibly sacrilegious maneuver involving "French brandy"). The imposing Central Congregational Church in the village of Newtonville (within Newton, a few miles west of downtown Boston) is known to architecture historians as the only ecclesiastical entry in the catalogue of the Boston architects Hartwell & Richardson. Its original congregation had formed in 1868 but first worshiped in its own sanctuary only in 1895, just four years before the ladies of the church compiled Reliable Receipts. They celebrated their last service 12 January 2003. Some age-toning throughout; hinges sound but showing some peeling. In publisher's black-titled, green cloth, with some light soiling, otherwise very good or better. [OCLC locates four copies; Cook page 118; not in Brown or Cagle].