HOUSEKEEPING COOKING Susanna Müller - Fleissige Hausmütterchen 6 plates 8 patterns - Book

The Fist Swiss Cooker and Housekeeping Book

Müller, Susanna

Das fleißige [fleissige] Hausmütterchen. Mitgabe in das praktische Leben für erwachsene Töchter.

Herisau, Weisen. 1863

288 pages.

8 lithographed plates and 8 large folded patterns.

Embossed cloth.

Extremely rare early edition covering all aspects of household management.

Minor wear. Minor clean tear to one of the very large fold out patterns.

Susanna Müller was a writer and was born in 1829 as a child of simple peasants in the Hummelwald. She had to learn to wash and weave at an early age. The scant schooling was insufficient to give her lively mind what it wanted. She educated herself through tireless reading. After she had passed a kind of exam with a woman who knew how to do handicrafts, she was given the toddler school and lessons at the work school in the Hummelwald. In Wattwil they soon became aware of the skillful teacher and called her to the labour school in the village. But she was not satisfied and wanted to improve her handicraft skills. She had ample opportunity to do so in a parsonage in the Baselland countryside. After returning to the village school in Wattwil, she began to write down what she had learned. The result was "Das industrige Hausmütterchen", the first Swiss cookery and housekeeping book, which was a bestseller and had 25 editions, and the "Instructions for Handicraft". The revision of her book made it necessary to move to Zurich in 1866. There she ran a boarding house, with the idea of how to keep cooked food for the absent for a long time. With "Susann Müller's self-cooker" it made it possible, in addition to parboiling, to cook the food without using fire. With the cooker, there was no more cooked, soiled or burnt food. The self-cooker was patented in 1885.