Three volumes. 4to, (254 x 214 mm). (1), 196 ff. (1), 133 ff. (1), 87 ff. = 416 full pages of purple typescript containing 599 recipes. Original russia-backed purple cloth, spines decorated in gilt. Each volume stored individually in a custom-made purple cloth clamshell box. Title-pages typed with red ribbon, remainder in purple carbons. Bindings show some general external wear and spines rather worn, but still strong and good.

Written as if for publication, the collection ranges from daily household management to ceremonious entertaining, with menus for lavish dinners, luncheons, and breakfasts, including a “Venetian” dinner and a “Wedding Breakfast”, while the recipes themselves move widely across culinary traditions, from Germany, Norway, and India to Turkish and Syrian dishes, clam chowder, American pickled tomatoes, mulligatawny soup, and Lenten fare. The manuscript also preserves Lady Meux’s personal culinary voice. Notes such as “Introduce dishes with more spice as in the old times” reveal a compiler actively shaping taste rather than merely copying receipts, while extravagant preparations such as “Faisan des Rois”, demanding fresh truffles bought privately from named London suppliers, document the economics and ambitions of great-house dining with unusual immediacy.

Compiled at Theobalds Park, the work belongs to the milieu of one of the most flamboyant hostesses of late Victorian and Edwardian England. Lady Meux transformed the estate into a celebrated setting for aristocratic display and political hospitality, entertaining figures including the Prince of Wales and Winston Churchill, and the present set translates that world of spectacle into the language of the kitchen. More than a recipe collection, these volumes record how food functioned as performance, status, and cultural reach within a major English country house, making them a defining survival of domestic luxury at the turn of the century.

Provenance: bookplates of Richard Morland Tollemache Bethell, 4th Baron Westbury (1914-1961), co-author of a book on Italian cooking ("With Gusto and Relish," 1957). A pencilled note inside each volume states "Sotheby’s Sale Feb 1965, Lot 316," referencing a lot which included household accounts bearing the name of Hutton in the famous Westbury sale of cookery books.