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American Cookery

$19.00

Description

There is almost nothing known about Amelia Simmons, except for the words that she used on the cover of her book to define herself: “an American orphan”. However, there are a few things that can be deducted from the context: she was probably a domestic laborer, not educated formally and lacking family connections. Also, considering that she used several Dutch words and that the book’s origin seems to be from the Hudson River Valley, it is assumed that Simmons was from that region too, where she lived and worked most likely as a servant and a cook.

Although her social condition didn’t allow her to become fully literate, somehow she has found a way to do something completely original for her time: writing and publishing a cookbook, which proves a lot of determination.

It was surely not easy for her, especially that, back then, arranging to print a book was not exactly contract-based, but required complete faith in the printing house and the transcriber alike. And it seems that her good faith was cheated, at least partially, because the first edition starts with 13 unauthorized pages with a market guide, not to mention that some of her recipes contained various mistakes. Amelia Simmons expressed her disappointment and anger in a preface to the second edition of her book.

This first cookbook published in the US contains many pieces of information of historical importance about the food that colonists used to enjoy, their eating habits and even their language. The author provides useful tips on how to judge the quality of meat, vegetables, fish etc., as well as on how to prepare them correctly. She provides the first recipes in America using corn meal, the first recipes for various puddings and spruce beer. She was the first to suggest pearl ash for dough lightening. Simmons also introduced words like “slaw” and “cookie” and provided definitions for a variety of terms, such as “wallop”, “pannikin” and more.
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