first French work on Chinese cookery

First edition of the first French work on Chinese gastronomy. Before this publication opinions in the west of Chinese cooking were derogatory and ill-informed. Henri Lecourt, head of the French Post office at Tianjin, rectified those beliefs with this groundbreaking work, aided by his publisher Albert Nachbaur.

The book includes 243 recipes with many employing Tofu as the main savoury component, and are divided by technique. A chapter is dedicated to smoking foods using herbs and sugars, what might be understood as ageing or drying, which differs to the western smoking method of using wood fumes. There is also a lengthy introduction on the etiquette of Chinese eating and the processes of a Chinese Kitchen including the tools likely unfamiliar to French readers.

Today the work is appreciated as groundbreaking as well as a thoroughly useful and successful recipe book, not just being important because it has the distinction to be first. Modern chefs still refer to the work and its recipes today, and is recognised as the first stepping stone on the road to western appreciation of Chinese cuisine.

This is one of the five-hundred copies released as the trade issue on Chinois paper, with pagination errors corrected, which was issued alongside deluxe issues of fifty on Hanon paper and ten Coréen paper.

First edition, number 334 of 550 copies; 4to (25.5 x 19 cm); French Text, 2 full-page illustrations with further wood-engravings in text, bookplate to front pastedown, slightly foxed; publisher's wrappers, original colour printed dust-jacket, a little worn with splits to dust-jacket folds, still a handsome and well preserved copy.