OP: The Plantation Cookbook

Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972. Hardcover. Very Good Plus in VG jacket. Tenth printing.

This 1972 book produced by the New Orleans Junior League is one of the more well-regarded and functionally useful cookbooks for New Orleans cuisine. Enough removed from the antebellum “golden age” and height of a distinct Creole culture, The Plantation Cookbook establishes the historical and cultural context around a cuisine that had become associated with the city but whose first practitioners had long since passed.

The first half of the book offers insight into the regionality of Louisiana foods, differences in lifestyles between country homes and city dwellings, and the histories, including line illustrations, of the most famous plantation houses in the state.

Recipes, particularly of an upper class bent, populate the latter half. Some standouts include:

• Duck gumbo, featuring okra, shrimp, oysters, and rice, along with aromatics, herbs, and spices
• Eggs sardou—poached eggs served with creamed spinach inside baked artichokes and topped with hollandaise
• Crawfish étouffée
• Red beans and rice
• Chilled chocolate soufflé, layered with ladyfingers and rum-soaked almond macaroons 

We would grade our book block Very Good Plus. The jacket shows some shelfwear at chipping about the edges, otherwise intact and protected by a mylar sleeve. A nice example of a beloved book.