Titles
The title page presents the book as The Housekeeper’s Valuable Present or Lady’s Closet Companion, being a New and Complete Art of Preparping Confects, according to Modern Practice, comprised under the following Parts. The Library of Congress has recorded both The Housekeeper’s Valuable Present and Lady’s Closet Companion as variant titles.
Titles
Author
Domenico Negri’s Trade Card for the Pineapple in Berkeley Square.
Robert Abbot was an apprentice of Domenico Negri and James Gunter. Negri was an Italian pastry chef who opened a shop in Berkeley Square in 1757. He partnered with Gunter twenty years later, and in 1799, Gunter was the sole owner of the tea shop (Gregorian Index, 2003). Abbot was not the only one of Negri and Gunter’s apprentices who wrote a book of recipes – Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner was published in 1789 and features recipes for ice cream and water ices (Day, 2003).
Title Page
The title page lists both titles as well as a breakdown of the eight different sections of the text, preceded by the medieval scribal abbreviation for videlicet (namely/that is to say/as follows). It also has the author’s name and credentials as former apprentice of Negri and Gunter, well-known confectioners and proprietors of the Pineapple in Berkeley Square. Lastly, the title page states who printed and folded the book – C. Cooke of No. 17 Paternoster Row, but also that it was printed for the author and other booksellers across England, as well as what might amount to a suggested retail price for an unbound and bound copy of the text.
Title Page
The title page of the Library of Congress’s copy is signed by Anne Jones and dated December 18, 1791. This is the only date in the book, and with the practice of owners signing and dating their books, the Library of Congress’s bibliographic data states the publication date somewhere between 1790 and 1791.