THE COLLECTOR

Bonnie Slotnick, the downtown food-history savant.

- HANNAH GOLDFIELD

On a humid afternoon not long ago, Bonnie Slotnick, the owner of an eponymous cookbook shop in the East Village, hiked up to the carpeted top floor of an elegant town house on West Twelfth Street. Slotnick, who is seventy and slight, almost wispy, wore a sleeveless linen shirt pinned with a small enamel carrot. The house had belonged to the late food writer Mimi Sheraton—the first woman to hold the position of restaurant critic at the Times, who further distinguished herself by wearing disguises on the job—and was freshly on the market. In advance of its sale, Sheraton’s son had emptied its four stories of almost everything but his mother’s vast collection of books on food and cooking. In the house’s eaves, where Sheraton and her husband kept cozy twin offices, the books awaited Slotnick, who specializes in out-of-print and antiquarian titles, and who’d been given first dibs.

“There are about three boxes of books that are legitimately old and rare,” Slotnick said, as she began to peruse them with a practiced confidence. “There’s an eighteenth-century olive-oil treatise in Italian, with all kinds of ingredients.” The most valuable item was what Slotnick called a manuscript, an eighteenthcentury handwritten British household cookbook, authored by “a very literate servant,” she guessed. Among recipes for “a very good pudding,” for mock turtle (made from veal), and for Turkish dolmas was one for “gay powders” (meant to treat epileptic fits), which included serving sizes: “as much as will lie upon a shilling,” for an adult; “as much as will lie upon a sixpence,” for a child. “Now, there’s a measurement for you!” Slotnick said.