What Americans Ate

choi

Ruth Graham, 365 Things to Do With Mutton; What cookbooks are revealing about our past. Boston Globe, Nov 18, 2012 (title in print).
http://bostonglobe.com/ideas/201 ... aSDDmmcN/story.html

Quote:

(a) first two paragraphs:

"In 1796, a self-described orphan named Amelia Simmons published a slim cookbook 'calculated for the improvement of the rising generation of Females in America.' Now considered the first American cookbook, 'American Cookery' took British cooking methods and applied them to the ingredients of the New World, including cornmeal and squash.

"But the book is striking for another reason, too: Simmons’s pumpkin pudding baked in a crust is the ancestor of the classic Thanksgiving pie. And her recipe for roast turkey—a North American bird—suggested stuffing the bird with bread and herbs, and then serving it with cranberry sauce. It was the first time the combination, now so central to this holiday, had been suggested in print.

(b) "This fall, the Worcester-based American Antiquarian Society has teamed up with Andrews McMeel Publishing to reissue facsimile editions of 100 historic American cookbooks in print and e-book editions.

(c) "Helen Zoe Veit, a historian at Michigan State University * * * is now working on a book on children’s food and editing a forthcoming series called 'American Food in History,' which incorporates selections from historic cookbooks. The first volume, to be published next year, focuses on the Civil War era

(d) "the menu at the 'first Thanksgiving' in 1621, which looked quite different from the meal we enjoy today; according to researchers, it may have included lobster, but nothing made with wheat or sugar, unavailable at that time in the Colonies. As Veit put it, 'People weren’t having apple pies, that’s for sure.' Our modern conception of Thanksgiving as a national family feast day would not be born for two more centuries. In the 19th century, prominent magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale lobbied to make Thanksgiving an official 'Union Festival of America;' Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863.

My comment:
(a) 'American Cookery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Cookery
(Until this time, the cookbooks printed and used in what became the United States were British cookbooks; The full title of this book was: "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"/ "The only biographical information known about the author is from the cover and title pages of her cookbook that list her as 'Amelia Simmons, An American Orphan;' nothing else is known about the author/ American Cookery is the only known published work by her)
(b) cookery (n): "the art or practice of cooking"
(c) antiquarian (n): "one who collects or studies antiquities"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antiquarian
(d) Jane Austen (1775-1817; English; Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813))
(e) I wish there would be research on what people in China or Taiwan ate, in what period.