Eliza Action’s masterpiece set out the fundamentals of domestic English cookery and offered a wealth of dishes for every occasion. The recipes are a model of sensible instruction for preparing food simply but well. This authoritative book was not only a guide to the best English cooking, but unusually for the time, it also contained recipes for German, Indian, and Caribbean dishes. Acton’s book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and suggested cooking times for each recipe, and it included the first print recipe for Brussels Sprouts. Original illustrations and instructions on basic techniques ranging from frying fish to roasting meat conveyed in Acton’s elegant prose make the book a quintessential tome packed full of wisdom, common sense, and culinary delights.
No wonder the doyenne of American woman’s affairs, the editor of the most influential and widely read magazine of the day, Godey’s Lady’s Book, chose to adapt the book for her American readers. In her preface, Sarah Hale gushes that the work is well adapted to the wants of this country at the present time, and that it is so complete she has little to add except regarding preparation of foods that are more strictly American such as Indian Corn, Terrapin, and others. She carefully marked her additional matter in brackets, and she did revise some articles and terms not generally known here. The result is a treasury of international cuisine written by two experts that was published and reprinted for decades.
This edition of Modern Cookery, in All Its Branches 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 lives 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 comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.
