"American Cookery"

Last weekend, I bought a paperback facsimile edition of a cookbook originally published in 1796 entitled, "American Cookery":  or, the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Puff-Pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and All Sorts of Cakes, From the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake.  Adopted to This Country and All Grades of Life".  The book was written by a woman named Amelia Simmons, "An American Orphan."  It  is plain, both from her grandiose title and her Preface that she meant to write a truly American cookbook, one that took British food traditions and adapted them to life in America.

I think she succeeded.  I am convinced of that point primarily because some of the recipes are oddly modern, even familiar, in content.  Consider, for example, her first recipe for pound cake (quoted here without the curious f-shaped characters used for medial "s" in period):

One pound sugar, one pound butter, one pound flour, ten eggs, rose water one gill, spices to your taste; watch it well, it will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.

Except for the rose water (a survival from the medieval period), this is  modern pound cake--which, as Wikipedia points out, got its name from the fact that its basic form required one pound each of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. Even in Ms. Simmons's time, however, there were variants with differing amounts of these basic ingredients--she provides three alternative recipes.

Ms. Simmons is also interested in the proper preparation of meats, particularly roasts, and these sound even more modern, including her recipe for stuffed turkey ("one pound soft wheat bread, 3 ounces beef suet,  3 eggs, a little sweet thyme, sweet marjoram, pepper and salt, and some add a gill of wine;  fill the bird therewith and sew up, hang down to a steady solid fire, basting frequently with butter and water, and roast until a steam emits from the breast....").

To be sure, there are modern foodstuffs that do not make an appearance in Ms. Simmons's work.  There are no french fries, no green salads, few "side dishes" in the modern sense. On the other hand, she pairs roast beef with potatoes--a common dish in America, even now, and includes cayenne pepper in a few dishes (notably her recipe for cooked turtle, and her "turtle style" calf's head).

Ms. Simmons's little cookbook, written a little over 200 years ago, is true to its word.  It really describes American cuisine, even now.  That makes it more than a historic curiosity; it provides genuine insight into the American dietary heritage.  It has given me much to ponder for its $9.95 USD cover price.

EDIT:  I forgot to mention the impressive amount of sugar in many of the recipes.  The pound cake recipe is not atypical of the ratio of sugar to starch to fat in many of the cake, pudding, and cream recipes in Ms. Simmons's book.