Talk:Chicken à la King

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Article improvements

Pretty amazing there isn't a talk page, much less a better main page about the dish.

I'll try to add some things in the next week or so.

Main complaint--the 1900 cited reference is bogus. It was printed in 1930, and reprinted much later by Peerless Press. Google Books, while useful, is problematic when using dates. This one was just plain wrong. Samclem (talk) 21:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article is pretty new (created 18 April). I was surprised there wasn't one. I just added the cover of the Peerless Press book that says "Copyright 1900." We usually go with the printed copyright info unless you have a conflicting source about the print and reprint dates. Jokestress (talk) 22:46, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Book of Famous Old New Orleans Recipes

As noted above, there has been discussion about one of the sources, A Book of famous old New Orleans recipes used in the South for more than 200 years. Google Scholar lists an edition by JB Herndon, dated 1900 by Peerless Print. The Peerless cover scan in the article also says 1900. Another source, Pecans: The Story in a Nutshell, gives the date as 1900 or 1901. The Tremmel version appears to be a more recent reprint, probably from 1942. Per Publishers Weekly: "The Free French Relief Committee of 435 Park Avenue, New York, has republished "A Book of Famous Old New Orleans Recipes." Originally issued in 1900, the book has lost none of its flavor and, if anything, has improved with old age." This book attests Chicken à la King in its first edition. I am thus reverting.

Comments are welcome. Jokestress (talk) 18:38, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the correction. It looks like the book cover indeed claims a 1900 copyright. In that case, the bibliographic reference appears to be incorrect. Annie Tremmel Wilcox is an author and blogger with an interest in bookbinding and cooking who I'd guess was born in 1960-70. Unless there is another Annie Tremmel Wilcox (I suppose it's always possible she was named for her great-grandmother), she is probably the editor, not the author. Interestingly, WorldCat catalogues several copies with dates given as Peerless Print, 19-- and 1929?, Rice Journal Pub, 1930, Fighting French Relief Committee, 194-?, Peerless Print, 193-, and Tony Frederick, 1999?. And... finally, a book entitled Used by good cooks for something different : over 300 Creole recipes : delicious dishes used in The Old South for many years by Annie Tremmel Wilcox which is a "modified copy" of the older book. I will remove her as the author. --Macrakis (talk) 18:59, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On a different topic, the article says "The recipe name suggests a French influence", citing the 200 Years book. That seems rather silly. "A la" is certainly a French phrase, but was quite assimilated by the 19th century in the naming of dishes. --Macrakis (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that is original research. Just removed it. Jokestress (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This book is a sort of mirage -- there are lots of reprint editions that are well-documented from the 1940s to the 1950s, but I am not confident that we've found the original edition (if there was one). It's not even clear that there was such a thing as "Peerless Press", which was the name of a 19th century printing press company -- though of course a publisher could also have had this name. How sure are we that the 1900 copyright date on the cover isn't spurious? I am beginning to suspect that this is a 1940s publication that was intended to look like an earlier book, a pseudo-facsimile. Another possibility is that the 1900 edition (if there was one) had a different title entirely.

As for Google Books, it lists: [CITATION] A Book of famous old New Orleans recipes used in the South for more than 200 years, JB Herndon - 1900 - Peerless Print. This means that they found a citation of this book somewhere which said it was by JB Herndon and published in 1900. This is presumably based on Google's algorithms' interpretation of the OCR of some other book. This sort of thing really isn't very reliable.

It turns out the copy that Google scanned is at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. Harvard has two copies: one catalog record says it's published "New Orleans : Peerless Print., [19--]" and is spiral bound (so obviously not an original from 1900), the other says "New Orleans : Printed for the Free French Movement, c1900" (also obviously not an original from 1900). The notation "c1900" means there is a 1900 copyright date, but do we believe that? Maybe I'll go over to Schlesinger one of these days and look at the book itself. Unfortunately, they're not open evenings or weekends.... --Macrakis (talk) 22:30, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "Free French" mention also dates it to the 1940s. The typography and recipes are clearly not from 1900; 1940-1960 sounds more plausible. --Macrakis (talk) 02:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]