A Country Estate Cookbook: Recipes from Winterthur compiled and edited by Mary Ellen Wilson (Winterthur, $21.95)

Among the artifacts preserved in the Winterthur collection is a well-worn notebook filled with favorite recipes copied out over three decades by Pauline Foster du Pont, wife of Colonel Henry Algernon du Pont and mother of Henry Francis du Pont. Most likely begun shortly after she became the mistress of Winterthur in the 1870s, the notebook includes recipes for everything from blackberry cordial to corn pudding, many annotated with the names of friends and relatives who shared them with her.

After his mother’s death, H. F. du Pont took over responsibility for the estate, personally planning the elaborate dinner parties for which Winterthur became famous. “From the founding of the estate in 1839 until the death of its last private owner in 1969,” writes Estate Historian Maggie Lidz in this handsome new cookbook, “food at Winterthur was remarkable for its continuity.”

A Country Estate Cookbook continues in that tradition of food and hospitality. A compilation of Pauline’s recipes and contemporary ones shared by members of today’s Winterthur community, the handsomely illustrated hard-cover spiral-bound book includes more than 185 appetizers, soups, side dishes, entrees, salads, breads, desserts, and beverages. Essays by Lidz and food historian Jennifer Lindner McGlinn offer glimpses into the foodways of Winterthur’s past. The cookbook also provides suggested menus for everything from a Point-to-Point tailgate picnic to a simple but elegant luncheon party.

 

The Winterthur Guide to Color in Your Garden: Plant Combinations and Practical Advice from the Winterthur Garden, by Ruth N. Joyce (Winterthur, $19.95)

Color in the garden, said Henry Francis du Pont, is “the thing that really counts more than any other.” Anyone who has seen the waves of blue scilla unfurled across the early-season March Bank, or walked among the drifts of pink peonies and azaleas in the Peony Garden knows that du Pont painted Winterthur’s generous canvas in broad, memorable strokes. In a handsome book that is equal parts travel guide and garden guide, author Ruth Joyce takes the reader through the gardens and across the seasons, explaining the principles that underlie the landscape’s dramatic effects. Each seasonal section includes an illustrated guide to specific plants for the home gardener with planting, care, and propagation advice.

 

Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection, by Shirley Sherwood, edited by Victoria Matthews (Weidenfeld & Nicolson in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, $29.95)

Our technical and digitized world is, paradoxically, experiencing a global renaissance in the ancient art of botanical painting. Dr. Brinsley Burbidge, director of Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, explains this irony in his introduction to this lovely book: “The fact that a skilled artist, working together with a botanist, can show all the significant features which aid accurate identification gives illustration an insurmountable advantage [to photography or digital imaging].” Drawn from the painting collection of Shirley Sherwood, herself an Oxford-trained botanist, Contemporary Botanical Artists features the work of a hundred leading botanical artists from around the world. Noted Australian painter Ann Farrer beautifully depicts a complex tangle of Clematis orientalis from Sherwood’s own garden in bloom and in seed. Mariko Kojima of Japan contributes a lovingly detailed clump of strawberries, and members of the Demonte family of botanical painters each bring a distinctive eye to the plants of their native Brazil. Each artist’s work is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch and an anecdote from Sherwood’s collecting adventures.