Four Historical American Cookbooks

Looking for Something Special For a Home Cook This Year?

I recently received four historical cookbooks from Dover Publications to review and discuss. Dover Publications is a publishing company founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanch. It is known for publishing books that are no longer published by the original publishing company.

Also known as Dover Books, the company’s collection includes many republications from the public domain, including classic works of literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. One of Dover’s best sellers was Albert Einstein's The Principle of Relativity. Courier Corporation purchased the company in 2000, the year Hayward Cirker died at the age of 82.

It's not surprising that the books sent to me are all related to cooking. Three of them are reprints, and the fourth, The First American Cookbook, is a “facsimile” of “American Cookery,” originally published in 1796.

A facsimile is an exact copy of the original book. Rather than transcribe the text and reproduce it in a new style, as many reproductions on the market today do, a facsimile takes photographs of the individual pages, including the cover and illustrations, and makes them into a new book that looks just like the original.

Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cookbook

These books are reprints of some very popular works from their day. One of them, Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, is a reprint of the original 1896 version. It offers the reader some innovations that may be considered commonplace today but were noteworthy in their day. For example, it was the first time a cookbook used terms like "a level cupful, teaspoonful and tablespoonful."

It's a big book with step-by-step instructions for novice and "practiced" cooks. It is "a delightful repository of information for nostalgia buffs and a useful aid for today's homemaker."

There have been many editions, the last one being Marion Cunningham's 13th edition. Over the years, each edition has been revised to meet the culinary needs of current home cooks. Still, this original reprint of the original 1896 version is a wealth of information about how people were eating in this country in the late 19th century.

The First American Cookbook

The First American Cookbook facsimile is a very short book by Amelia Simmons. Still, it includes truly American recipes like Indian pudding, slapjacks, and Johnny Cakes, plus a recipe for brewing spruce beer. This is the first time the words “cookie” and “slaw” appear in any publication in this book. You’ll even learn how to dress a turtle if you’ve ever been inclined to do that—and I don’t mean with a little coat and slippers.

It took me a minute or two to figure out the symbol that looks like an “”f throughout the book is really an “s” so when you see a word that looks like feafood, it is really seafood. An informative introduction essay by Mary Tolford Wilson describes some historical culinary background to help you better understand where Amelia Simmons came from.

Native Harvests - American Indian Wild Foods and Recipes

Native Harvests by E. Barrie Kavasch was first published in 1977, and Dover republished it in 2005. It is way more than a cookbook filled with recipes; it is a guide to “foraging” and living off the land. As Craig Claiborne said, “It is the most intelligent and brilliantly researched book on the food of the American Indian.”

Yes, it has recipes for clam chowder and sautéed mushrooms but also includes recipes for clover soup, acorn coffee, purslane salad. And who doesn’t want to know how to make Gruel, a combination of water, white cornmeal and maple syrup.

At the end of the book, there is a chapter called Wild Medicines and Cosmetics, where you’ll learn about wild plants like American White Hellebore and Bloodroot and how these plants can be used in medicine.

There is also a chapter on Wild Smoking Mixture describing some of the plants used by the American Indians for smoking. Did you know it was the American Indians who first introduced smoking to the early settlers? The Indians used smoking for medicinal and ceremonial purposes and appeared to smoke just about anything they could get into their pipes.

This is an interesting book for anyone who is interested in early Indian culture and the foods our American Indians ate.

The Picayune’s Creole Cookbook

If you are interested in New Orleans Creole cooking, this unabridged reproduction of the 1901 2nd edition by The Picayune newspaper is a must-have. It is filled with hundreds of recipes, including gumbos, French breads, soups, rice dishes, and jambalaya, which were influenced by Spain, France, Africa, and native Choctaw Indians.

Suppose you like reading about or cooking various foods not normally found in modern-day cookbooks, like eel, frogs, turtles, lamb's brains, partridge, and much more. In that case, this cookbook will be a gold mine of recipes. For the less adventurous, there are plenty of wonderful recipes for shrimp, crab, chicken, and beef, and they all have one thing in common: Creole-style cuisine.

A collection of recipes “collected directly from the cooks and housekeepers who were the finest practitioners of Creole cuisine, this volume is the bible of many of Louisiana cooks and a delight to gourmets everywhere.

Great Gift Ideas

If you are looking for something different for a friend or family member who loves to cook and enjoys the history of various cuisines from this country and the countries that influenced them, any one of these books is worth looking at.