page_title: The Housekeeper's Instructor
section_title: Illustrations
hierarchical_section_title: The Housekeeper's Instructor / Book / Illustrations
caption_attribution_description: English: Frontispiece of an early edition of William Augustus Henderson's The Housekeeper's Instructor, first published 1790. The image recursively shows the book itself on the table, being used to instruct in the art of carving; people co-operate on kitchen tasks in the background.
context_page_description: The Housekeeper's Instructor was a bestselling English cookery book written by William Augustus Henderson, 1791. It ran through seventeen editions by 1823. Later editions were revised by Jacob Christopher Schnebbelie.
  The full title was "The housekeeper's instructor; or, universal family cook. Being a full and clear display of the art of cookery in all its various branches." Later editions had longer subtitles.
context_section_description: The book has a frontispiece, which in later editions consists of a large medallion of J.C. Schnebbelie above a representation of The Albany hotel, London, where according to the title page he was principal cook of Martelli's restaurant. The early editions instead showed something much closer to the title: a busy kitchen, with an array of pots and implements, and a man reading from the book itself, shown open on a table, instructing with his pointing finger the man next to him, who is carving some meat on an oval dish. Just in case this recursive allusion were not clear, the "Explanation" caption below the image states that it shows "a Lady presenting her Servant with The Universal Family Cook who diffident of her own knowledge has recourse to that Work for Information."
  There are no woodcuts integrated with the text, nor any illustrations of utensils or made dishes.
  Illustrations are provided only towards the end of the book: firstly for the Carving chapter, which has seven whole-page copperplate engravings showing somewhat diagrammatically with labels and dotted lines how fowls, game, meat and fish are to be carved; and secondly in the "Suppers" appendix, which has two whole-page and two fold-out engravings illustrating the layout of dishes for first and second courses. Some table layouts are printed in ordinary text, the images of "frames" for table centres fashioned of letters and symbols in ASCII art style.
caption: Frontispiece of an early edition, showing the book itself on the table, being used to instruct in the art of carving
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