Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook 1965 Nell B. Nichols Doubleday Hardcover

Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook is the 1965 Doubleday collection edited by Nell B. Nichols, holding 700 dessert and main dish pies between its covers.

The front and back jacket panels are both still with the book, the jacket paper is rubbed through to white along the bottom edge and corners, and there is a small chip at the top of the spine, all of it in the photos. Inside, the pages are clean and easy to read, with no writing found anywhere in them. 

The back panel promises perfect crusts, unusual edgings, tarts, turnovers, party pickups, and meat, fish and vegetable pies, and the inside pages deliver on it, with chapter headings for Fruit Pies, Deep-Dish and Cake Pies, Cobblers and Dumplings, and recipes for Egg Yolk Pastry, Apple Molasses Pie, North Pole Cherry Pie, Golden Peach Pie, Spiced Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie, Rhubarb-Orange Pie, Peach-Plum Pie, and a Black Bottom Lemon Pie, with color plates of the finished pies facing pages 55 and 182.

 It suits a baker who wants a mid century farm kitchen way with a crust on the shelf next to the mixing bowls.

Details

• Item: Cookbook
• Title: Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook
• Author: Nell B. Nichols, editor, with the food staff of Farm Journal
• Illustrator: Not confirmed from photos
• Publisher: Doubleday and Company, Garden City, New York
• Publication Year: 1965
• Edition and Printing: Not confirmed from photos
• Format and Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket
• Dust Jacket: Yes, present
• Pages: 308
• Genre: Cookbook
• Language: English
• ISBN: None printed, Library of Congress catalog card 65-16174
• Dimensions: 8.5 in. by 6 in. by 1.3 in.

Condition Grade: Good

Positives

• Graded Good: a complete, readable cookbook with its full jacket and clean pages, with the jacket wear named below.
• The dust jacket keeps both its front and back panels, with the strawberry rhubarb pie photograph on the front and the lattice pie on the back both bright and unfaded.
• The red hardcover underneath carries the title in gold on the front board, still crisp and unfaded.
• The front jacket flap still carries its original printed price, F.J.C.P.C. $4.95, at the top right, above the flap blurb that opens Proud country cooks know a good pie begins with a good crust.
• The title page reads Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook, 700 Best Dessert and Main-Dish Pies in the Country, edited by Nell B. Nichols, Field Food Editor, with photography supervised by Al J. Reagan, art director of The Farmer's Wife.
• The copyright page prints Copyright 1965 by Farm Journal, Inc., All Rights Reserved, and Printed in the United States of America, with Library of Congress catalog card 65-16174.
• The color plates are intact and hold their color, including the cherry and peach pies facing page 55 and the lemon pies facing page 182.
• The recipe pages are complete and legible, from the Egg Yolk Pastry and Apple Molasses Pie on page 55 to the rhubarb pies on page 98 and the peach and plum pies on page 182.
• The page block is tight and square, and the book stands and opens the way it should.
• The pages are clean throughout, with no writing and no turned corners.

Issues / Wear

• The jacket is rubbed along the bottom edge and at the corners, with the glossy paper worn through to white in places.
• A small chip and tear sit at the top of the spine, where the jacket has lifted.
• The jacket surface carries light scuffing and a few small marks, mostly along the edges and on the back panel.
• The page edges are tanned and yellowed from age, and the fore edge is darker than the margins.
• The gutter shows some strain where the book is opened wide at the color plates, though the pages stay attached.
• Several pages at the fore edge carry small nicks, chips and short jagged tears, most of them near the front of the book.
• A few of the front pages show vertical creases near the gutter, and the bottom edge of the page block is slightly uneven.

This copy still has both jacket panels, the gold title on the red board, and the full set of color plates, and it belongs within reach of a baker who works from a farm kitchen book. If it's the right copy for you, it's ready to come home.