Amelia Simmons – författare

This eighteenth century kitchen reference is the first cookbook published in the U.S. with recipes using local ingredients for American cooks. Named by the Library of Congress as one of the eighty-eight “Books That Shaped America,” American Cookery was the first cookbook by an American author published in the United States. Until its publication, cookbooks used by American colonists were British. As author Amelia Simmons states, the recipes here were “adapted to this country,” reflecting the fact that American cooks had learned to prepare meals using ingredients found 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; the recipe for Johnny Cake is the first printed version using cornmeal; and there is also the first known recipe for turkey. Another 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. A culinary classic, American Cookery is a landmark in the history of American cooking. “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 MichiganThis 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.

This eighteenth century kitchen reference is the first cookbook published in the U.S. with recipes using local ingredients for American cooks. Named by the Library of Congress as one of the eighty-eight "e;Books That Shaped America,"e; American Cookery was the first cookbook by an American author published in the United States. Until its publication, cookbooks used by American colonists were British. As author Amelia Simmons states, the recipes here were "e;adapted to this country,"e; reflecting the fact that American cooks had learned to prepare meals using ingredients found 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; the recipe for Johnny Cake is the first printed version using cornmeal; and there is also the first known recipe for turkey. Another 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. A culinary classic, American Cookery is a landmark in the history of American cooking. "e;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."e; Jan Longone, curator of American Culinary History, University of MichiganThis 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.

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 PLUMB TO PLAIN CAKE. ADAPTED TO THIS COUNTRY, AND ALL GRADES OF LIFE. "As this treatise is calculated for the improvement of the rising generation of _Females_ in America, the Lady of fashion and fortune will not be displeased, if many hints are suggested for the more general and universal knowledge of those females in this country, who by the loss of their parents, or other unfortunate circumstances, are reduced to the necessity of going into families in the line of domestics, or taking refuge with their friends or relations, and doing those things which are really essential to the perfecting them as good wives..."