Skip to Main Content

Cooking By the Book: Foundation Cookery

Cookbooks offer a remarkable window into the lives and the worlds of those who created them.

Foundation Cookbooks

HISTORIC ARCHTYPES

Before the modern time, along with learning by demonstration which was a common way to learn, the following cookbooks are representative of early titles that literate cooks could rely upon.

  • Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy : excelling any thing of the kind eveyet published,  by Mrs. Glasse by Glasse, Hannah, 1708-1770. ; in facsimile, with historical notes by Karen Hess. Alexandria : Printed by Cottom and Stewart, 1812.  28 pages.  (F) TX705 .G54
  • City Tavern Cookbook : recipes from the birthplace of American cuisine, by Walter Staib with Paul Bauer ; foreword by David McCullough.  Philadelphia, Pa. : Running Press, c2009.  392 pages, color illustrations.  (F) TX715 .S77532 2009
    "Paying tribute to the early culinary history of America, a collection of more than three hundred easy-to-make recipes from Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern re-creates many of the dishes enjoyed by America’s Founding Fathers, including such traditional favorites as West Indies pepperpot soup and Thomas Jefferson’s personal recipe for sweet potato biscuits."  Catalog summary note.
  • Directions for Cookery : being a system of the art, in its various branches, by Eliza Leslie.  [New York] : New York Public Library, 2016.  Reprint. Originally published: Philadelphia : E.L. Carey & Hart, 1837.  434 pages : facsimiles.  (F)  TX715 .L474 2016. 
    Widely considered to be the first modern American cookbook, Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery is quaint in the breadth and range of ingredients, but surprisingly modern in rather exact measures and methods.  There is also practicality with a flash of humor that will be echoed by Julia Child more than a century later in advising not to begin a Souffle until the company for whom it is being made is already seated at the table, and if possible hiring a local French chef to come in and make thi dish for you.
  • Fanny Pierson Crane, Her Receipts, 1796 : Confections, Savouries, and Drams : being a collection of sixty favourites, and including a proper collation and supper menu : a guide to open hearth and bee hive oven cookery, prepared in the 18th century manner, and adapted for twentieth century use, compiled and illustrated by Amy Hatrak, et al.   Montclair, N.J.: Montclair Historical Society, c1974.  51 p.  (F) TX715 .F195 1974 
  • Gastronomic Bibliography by Katherine Golden Bitting, (1869-1937).Originally published: San Francisco, Calif., 1939.. Mansfield Centre, CT : Martino Pub., 2004  718 p. ill. (F) Z5776.G2 B6

  • Little House Cookbook : frontier foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic stories ,  by Barbara M. Walker ; illustrations by Garth Williams.  New York : Harper & Row, c1979.  240 pages, illustrated.  (F) TX715 .W1818 1979.
     Over 100 unique recipes celebrating the foods and cooking techniques of Laura Ingalls Wilder's American pioneer childhood, at the end of the 19th century, taken from dishes described in the beloved Little House books    , - Catalog record.

  • A Pinch of Salt : cook book from Colonial Newtown, compiled by Shirley V. Peterson.  Newtown, PA : Newtown Historic Society, 1967.  128 pages, illustrations.  (F)  TX715. P474 1967s.  .

  • Steinbeck House Cookbook, compiled and published by the Valley Guild of Salinas, California ; recipes edited by Kay Hillyard.  Salinas CA:: Valley Guild, 1984  223p. ill some color.  (F) TX715 .S823 1984
  • Thirteen Colonies cookbook : a collection of favourite receipts from thirteen exemplary eighteenth-century cooks with proper menus for simple fare and elegant entertainments and selected notes of historic interest, being a guide to open-hearth and bee-hive  New York : Praeger Publishers,   1975.  270 p.  ill. (F) TX715 .T39
  • Virginia House-Wife, or, Methodical cook by Mary Randolph, 1762-1828. ; with historical notes and commentaries by Karen Hess.  Baltimore : Plaskitt & Cugle, 1828.  180 p. (F) TX715 .R215 1984
  • Williamsburg Art of Cookery : or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, being a collection of upwards of five hundred of the most ancient & approv’d recipes in Virginia cookery : ... and also a table of favorite Williamsburg garden herbs by Helen Bullock. Williamsburg [Va.]; : Colonial Williamsburg VA, 1995.  276 p.  Illustrated.  (F) TX715 .B85 1995A modern complication based on favorite recipes known to have been used in Virginia households in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The simplicity of ingredients and methods are largely retained, but recast so that  these foods are accessible to modern cook