Amelia simmons biography
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American Cookery
First American cookbook
American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, is the first known cookbook written by an American, published in Hartford, Connecticut, in Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. Its full title is:
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.
Historical context
[edit]Simmons' American Cookery used terms known to Americans, and ingredients that were readily available to American cooks.[1][2] It was the first cookbook to include New England specialties such as Indian pudding, johnnycake, and what is now called pumpkin pie. The cookbook was the first to suggest serving cranberry with turkey, and the first to use the Hudson River Valley Dutch word cookey (now usually spelled "").[1][2]
The cookbook also introduced the use of pearlash, a precursor of baking soda, as a chemical leavener, starting a revolution in the making of American cakes.[3]:&#;31&#;[4]
The book was quite popular and was
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Simmons, Amelia
Very little is known of Amelia Simmons, the author of the first American cookbook. She seems to have appeared for the publication of American Cookery and then disappeared back into obscurity. There may be a faint clue to her identity in the title page reference to herself as an "American Orphan," followed by a discussion of the trials of orphanhood in the preface. She may have been unmarried, had little education, and was quite possibly illiterate. She writes of "those females who have parents, or brothers, or riches," and how female orphans may be "reduced to the necessity of going into families in the line of domestics," from which one may infer that she was employed as a cook. Her lack of education evidently led to some intrigue and a loss of control over the book's content: two different versions of the first edition appeared in , the second of which is supplemented by what food historian Mary Tolford Wilson describes as "a sheet of obviously dissimilar paper" on which is printed an "Advertisement." It states:
The author of American Cookery, not having an education sufficient to prepare the work for the press, the person that was employed by her, and entrusted with the receipts, to prepare them for publication, (with a design to impose on her, and inj
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