Food preparation has long been an expected part of the feminine, domestic sphere. Perchance the refined mistress of the eighteenth-century household only paused to accessorize with a pearl-like strand of sausages, or show off the diminutive boar seen in the emblems and title page of Novelli's Rustic Eclogues. By the end of the nineteenth century, women were keeping household logs and publishing cookbooks. In one extreme example, more than two thousand female contributors to the Columbian Exposition "Home Queen" cookbook were the celebrity chefs of their day: "World's Fair lady managers, wives of governors and other ladies of position and importance." The book included numerous recipes, sample dinner menus and directions for butchering whole animals. As Lawrence Rawstorne's Gamonia demonstrates, the sources of the food for such recipes varied, with the occasional hunting of wild game providing well-bred men with both sport and sustenance. The regularity with which the rabbits and birds evidently evaded capture suggests that keeping a backup set of elegantly rustic farm animals remained a wise practice.

1. Antonius Baratti after Pietro Antonio Novelli, Four Very Elegant Rustic Eclogues (Quattro Elegantissime Egloghe Rusticali), Venice: Paolo Columbani, 1760. (Dorothy Braude Edinburg Art LLC)
2. Antonius Baratti after Pietro Antonio Novelli, Four Very Elegant Rustic Eclogues (Quattro Elegantissime Egloghe Rusticali), Venice: Paolo Columbani, 1760. (Dorothy Braude Edinburg Art LLC)
3. J.T. Rawlins and Lawrence Rawstorne. Gamonia, or, The art of preserving game. London: Rudolph Ackermann, 1837. (Prints and Drawings)
4. J.T. Rawlins and Lawrence Rawstorne. Gamonia, or, The art of preserving game. London: Rudolph Ackermann, 1837. (Prints and Drawings)
5. The "Home queen" World's Fair souvenir cook book: two thousand valuable recipes on cookery and household economy, menus, table etiquette, etc. Chicago: J.F. Waite Publ. Co., c. 1895. (Ryerson and Burnham Libraries)