This facsimile of the first American-written cookbook published in the United States is not only a first in cookbook literature, but a historic document. It reveals the rich variety of food Colonial Americans enjoyed, their tastes, cooking and eating habits, even their colorful language. Author Amelia Simmons worked as a domestic in Colonial America and gathered her cookery expertise from firsthand experience. Her book points out the best ways of judging the quality of meats, poultry, fish, vegetables, etc., and presents the best methods of preparing and cooking them. In choosing fish, poultry, and other meats, the author wisely advises, "their smell denotes their goodness." Her sound suggestions for choosing the freshest and most tender onions, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, asparagus, lettuce, cabbage, beans, and other vegetables are as timely today as they were nearly 200 years ago. Here are the first uniquely American recipes using corn meal — Indian pudding, "Johnny cake," and Indian slapjacks — as well as the first recipes for pumpkin pudding, winter squash pudding, and for brewing spruce beer. The words "cookie" and "slaw" made their first published appearance in this book. You'll also find the first recommended use of pearlash (the forerunner of baking powder) to lighten dough, as well as recommendations for seasoning stuffing and roasting beef, mutton, veal, and lamb — even how to dress a turtle. Along with authentic recipes for colonial favorites, a Glossary includes definitions of antiquated cooking terms: pannikin, wallop, frumenty, emptins, and more. And Mary Tolford Wilson's informative Introductory Essay provides the culinary historical background needed to appreciate this important book fully. Anyone who uses and collects cookbooks will want to have The First American Cookbook. Cultural historians, Americana buffs, and gourmets will find this rare edition filled with interesting recipes and rich in early American flavor.

The First American Cookbook: A Facsimile of "American Cookery," 1796

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Simmons, Amelia

Baking

Dover Publications

A re-creation of the first American cookbook with added updated recipes and illustrations.

American Cookery

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Silverleaf Pr

“Patriot Eats!” is a vivid and colorful new presentation of a truly important piece of American culinary history. It’s a cookbook - the very first published in the new United States of America - that contains the food wisdom and recipes that truly fueled a revolution. Originally composed by Amelia Simmons, and published shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, the book covers everything from how to buy the best produce to elegantly simple desserts that everyday colonists loved. This is the real food that fed the new nation. It is the priceless traditional know-how, stored in “Patriot Eats!”, that makes it important. With today’s ever-growing emphasis on eating healthy, “real” food, prepared simply and nutritiously, here is a collection of recipes and practices that embody just that. Written by a cook who, by our standards, had only crude kitchen accommodations to work with, she could create multiple meals, every day, for a large, hard-working family, using local produce and meat, without refrigeration, running water, or microwave ovens. It’s pretty amazing, and amazingly, pretty simple. If the food motto of our times is, as Micheal Pollan put it, “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize.” then “Patriot Eats,” should be the basis for everyone’s diets - simple, natural, tasty food that your grandmother’s great-great-grandmother would recognize! What we did to create “Patriot Eats!” was craft a completely new book out of the old one. We wanted something that was thoroughly up-to-date in appearance, and that would make the old "receipts" easier to use. So, we originally opted to create only a special digital edition. We created a fun and simple layout that would take advantage of the interactive tools offered up by the iPad, while not getting in the way. Now, due to the many requests we've gotten for a print edition, we went back to work and and created a paper version of Patriot Eats!, for those folks who just want to work from a physical book. We worked hard to find a way to maintain the look and feel of the interactive version, which wasn't easy. But, we are thriled with the results. So, now you have a choice: digital or paper. Either way, this is information, and food that belongs in every well-prepared kitchen bookshelf. Give yourself a little license for experimentation and fun, and you will create your own dishes "historic" dishes. Have fun!

Patriot Eats!: Real food your grandmothers,great-great-grandmother would recognize.

Vayo, Perry G.

Cooking Education & Reference

InfoNouveau

American Cookery or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables

Canning & Preserving

Dodo Pr

Little is known of Amelia Simmons, the author of the first American cookbook, except that she was probably a domestic worker and lacked any formal education. Some assumed that she was a New Englander based on the location of the first editions; however, later editions published around the Hudson River Valley, and the inclusion of several Dutch words in the book, reinforce the belief that Simmons was probably from the Hudson River Valley region. The book first appeared in 1796 to popular reception, as all other cookbooks being printed and used in the United States prior to this were British. Simmons presents the best methods of picking, preparing, and cooking a variety of ingredients, and her recipes do not shy away from generous use of herbs and wine. This is the first cookbook known to use pearlash, the precursor to modern baking powder, and it contains the first known printed recipe for turkey with cranberries. A classic of early American culinary literature, “American Cookery” gives a wonderful insight into the cuisine of early America. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

American Cookery: The First American Cookbook

Digireads.com Publishing

Published in Hartford in 1796, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection is a facsimile edition of one of the most important documents in American culinary history. This is the first cookbook written by an American author specifically published for American kitchens. Named by the Library of Congress as one of the 88 "Books That Shaped America," American Cookery was the first cookbook by an American author published in the United States. Until its publication, cookbooks printed and used by American colonists were British. As indicated in Amelia Simmons’s subtitle, the recipes in her book were “adapted to this country,” reflecting the fact that American cooks had learned to make do with what was available in North America. This cookbook reveals the rich variety of food colonial Americans used, their tastes, cooking and eating habits, and even their rich, down-to-earth language. Bringing together English cooking methods with truly American products, American Cookery contains the first known printed recipes substituting American maize for English oats; and the recipe for Johnny Cake is apparently the first printed version using cornmeal. The book also contains the first known recipe for turkey. Possibly the most far-reaching innovation was Simmons’s use of pearlash—a staple in colonial households as a leavening agent in dough, which eventually led to the development of modern baking powders. “Thus, twenty years after the political upheaval of the American Revolution of 1776, a second revolution—a culinary revolution—occurred with the publication of a cookbook by an American for Americans.” (Jan Longone, curator of American Culinary History, University of Michigan) This facsimile edition of Amelia Simmons's American Cookery was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The Society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.

American Cookery (American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection)

Andrews McMeel Publishing

American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, was the first known cookbook written by an American, published in 1796. Until this time, the cookbooks printed and used in what became the United States were British cookbooks, so the importance of this book is obvious to American culinary history, and more generally, to the history of America. The full title of this book was: American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life. This book was quite popular and was printed, reprinted and pirated for 30 years after its first appearance. Only four copies of the first edition (Hartford, 1796) are known to exist. From the Historic American Cookbook Project of Michigan State University: "The importance of this work cannot be overestimated. Its initial publication (Hartford, 1796) was, in its own way, a second Declaration of American Independence..."

American Cookery: The Historic Colonial Cookbook First Published in 1796

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, was the first known cookbook written by an American, published in 1796. Until this time, the cookbooks printed and used in what became the United States were British cookbooks, so the importance of this book is obvious to American culinary history, and more generally, to the history of America. The full title of this book was: American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life. This book was quite popular and was printed, reprinted and pirated for 30 years after its first appearance. Only four copies of the first edition (Hartford, 1796) are known to exist. From the Historic American Cookbook Project of Michigan State University: "The importance of this work cannot be overestimated. Its initial publication (Hartford, 1796) was, in its own way, a second Declaration of American Independence..."

American Cookery 1796

Independently published

American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life. By Amelia SimmonsHartford: Printed for Simeon Butler, Northampton, (1798)The importance of this work cannot be overestimated. Its initial publication (Hartford, 1796) was, in its own way, a second Declaration of American Independence. It was not the first cookbook printed in America but was the first written by an American for Americans. All earlier American cookery imprints were reprints from the British repertoire. Simmons' book attempted to recognize and use American products, specifically corn, cranberries, turkey, squash and potatoes, all uniquely indigenous to the New World.Although native Americans had been using corn for many millenia and European and African Americans from earliest pilgrim days, this book offers the first printed recipes using cornmeal - three for A Nice Indian Pudding and one each for Johnny Cake or Hoe Cake and Indian Slapjacks. Simmons also suggested using corncobs to smoke bacon and the pairing of cranberry sauce with turkey.Perhaps the single most important innovation in American Cookery was the use of pearlash as a chemical leavening for dough, an American practice which has influenced worldwide baking methods. Prior to the late 1700s, the preferred lightness in baked goods was attained by beating air along with the eggs, or adding yeast or various spirits to produce a leavening. But by the first publication of American Cookery, Americans were adding pearlash (a refined form of potash, an impure potassium carbonate obtained from wood ashes, and a common household staple in the early American kitchen) to their doughs to produce carbon dioxide quickly. This was the forerunner of modern baking powders which were soon to revolutionize both home and commercial baking, here and elsewhere.This book was quite popular and was printed, reprinted and pirated for 30 years after its first appearance. There are at least three 18th-century printings including the first and this one both published in Hartford, Connecticut and a Second Edition (so labelled) in Albany in 1796. There are at least 10 editions or variants between 1804 and 1831, published in several cities in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. Some have Simmons' name; some not. See Lucy Emerson's New-England Cookery, 1808, for an example of a pirated edition. All editions are rare.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simmons, Amelia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Simmons, Amelia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simmons, Amelia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The First American Cookbook: A Facsimile of "American Cookery," 1796

American Cookery

Patriot Eats!: Real food your grandmothers,great-great-grandmother would recognize.

American Cookery or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables

American Cookery: The First American Cookbook

American Cookery (American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection)

American Cookery: The Historic Colonial Cookbook First Published in 1796

American Cookery: The Historic Colonial Cookbook First Published in 1796

American Cookery 1796

American Cookery