Until now, access to Abbott’s complete work has been difficult. This most elegantly produced facsimile edition is supported by a complementary volume of essays on a range of Abbott-related themes that cover the production of this new edition, a biographical sketch, and his work in context. Michael Symons and Barbara Santich, who have done so much to enlarge our historical and social understanding of Australian culinary history, are key contributors, and it is Santich who best describes Abbott’s volume ‘as a compilation of recipes and culinary advice, interspersed with dining anecdotes and other ephemera’. His book draws on a range of sources, mostly English, but there are directions for preparing kangaroo, emu, wombat, mutton birds, and other Australian fauna. The notes and sources for these dishes are as fascinating as the recipes themselves. How appealing they are is another matter. The recipe for ‘Slippery Bob’– in which kangaroo brains are mixed with flour and water into a batter, seasoned, and dropped by the spoonful into emu fat – contains the warning that it requires ‘a good appetite and excellent digestion’.