Why it matters

Parmentier's 1789 Traité is the culminating statement of the campaign that made the potato an accepted human food in France, issued "par ordre du Roi" on the eve of the Revolution and extending to the sweet potato and Jerusalem artichoke as famine foods. In the 1760s most of France was sure the potato caused leprosy and was fit only for pigs. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier knew better, because as an army pharmacist captured by the Prussians in the Seven Years’ War he had lived on them. After the famine of 1770 he made converting France his mission. This book, printed by the royal press, is his scientific case: a survey of the plants that could feed people when the wheat failed, with the potato at its center, covering how to grow it, store it, make bread and starch from it, and cook it. Then he turned to publicity. He persuaded Louis XVI to wear potato flowers in his buttonhole, served an all-potato dinner to Benjamin Franklin and Lavoisier, and, according to legend, had a field of potatoes conspicuously guarded by day and left unguarded at night so Parisians would steal them. The folding plate shows a mill for grating potatoes into starch. Bound with it is Parmentier’s later treatise on maize, which the seller calls the first book in Europe devoted to the crop. Every hachis Parmentier on a French menu begins here. The 1789 Barrois printing is recorded in institutional catalogues with the collation this copy matches (viii, 389 [recte 392] pp., 8vo), and it remains a cornerstone title for both agricultural science and gastronomic bibliography.

Why we're looking

No bargain, and not meant to be. This is the first edition of the book that put the potato on the French table, printed by order of the King in the year of the Revolution, in a handsome c.1830 binding from the library of Count Frédéric de Pourtalès. What lifts it above an ordinary copy is what’s bound inside: Parmentier’s own letter to the Journal de Paris of January 1789, fretting that the hard winter had damaged the potato crop and offering a recipe for bread made with potato. For comparison, his earlier and less famous Recherches (1781) has sold for as little as €350 at auction in a worn binding, and dealers ask around $1,300 for it with its companion volume. This is a fine copy, with a piece of Parmentier’s campaign tucked between pages 204 and 205.

Watch out for

The curator should expect the asking price to reflect specialist knowledge of the title. The binding is a later c.1830 half calf, not contemporary, and the seller discloses a small tear at p. 273 without loss; no leaf-by-leaf collation or statement on foxing/washing is given, so confirm completeness against the standard viii/389 (recte 392) collation and ask for condition detail. The bound-in Journal de Paris extract is an attractive but non-standard addition — worth confirming it is complete and contemporaneous rather than a later insertion.