#354 Who Wrote the First American Cookbook?

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of America's most important books was published 225 years ago this year. You won't find it on a shelf of great American literature. It was not written by a great man of letters, but somebody who described herself simply as 'an American orphan.' In 1796 a mysterious woman named Amelia Simmons published American Cookery, the first compilation of recipes (or receipts) using such previously unknown items as corn, pumpkins and "pearl ash" (similar to baking powder). This book changed the direction of fine eating in the newly established United States of America. But Amelia herself remains an elusive creator. Who was this person who would have so much influence over the American diet? Join Greg through a tour of 70 years of early American eating, identifying the true melting pot of delicious flavors — Dutch, Native American, Spanish, Caribbean and African — that transformed early English colonial cooking into something uniquely American. FEATURING early American recipes for johnnycakes, slapjacks and gazpacho! boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, this is Greg Young with a special story today of magic, of a spell book
0:06.2	able to conjure miracles from just a few common items found in nature, elevating its conjurer into a
0:13.8	wizard of the kitchen. This is the story of the first American cookbook and the mysterious woman
0:21.6	who created this incredible document 225 years ago this year. Now this episode was originally
0:29.4	released as part of the Barry Boy spin-off the first and I hope it inspires you to try out
0:34.8	something a little different in the kitchen tonight. Hello, I'm Julia Child. We're going to make
0:42.1	the fburgin-yaw beef stew and red wine and it's a wonderful show to begin our series on because it
0:49.2	showed you so many useful things about French cooking, how to brown meat, how to raise onions,
0:56.4	how to saute mushrooms, how to make a wonderful sauce and you make a buffburg in your just the way
1:02.1	you make any other kind of a stew like chicken, cocoa, and now here's our beef. Let's get the title
1:10.5	of this book out of the way, shall we? It was called American Cookery or the art of dressing
1:18.4	vines, fish, poultry and vegetables and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts,
1:25.7	puddings, custards, and preserves and all kinds of cakes from the imperial plum to plain cake,
1:32.4	adapted to this country and all grades of life by Amelia Simmons, an American orphan.
1:39.8	That was the name of the first cookbook by an American author ever published in the United States,
1:45.4	printed in 1796 in Hartford, Connecticut. It is not just a book of recipes, it is a historical
1:52.8	document filled with strange little mysteries hidden within its pages are a couple core ingredients
2:00.0	before unseen that would change the modern world. In the 21st century, cooking is not merely
2:07.7	a way of preparing sustenance. Today we consider it art, sport, entertainment, science, and magic.
2:16.8	We have a world of ingredients at our fingertips and an extraordinary range of devices,
2:21.9	surfaces, and tools on which to prepare them. America has always been a literal melting pot of
2:29.2	flavors. Fine dining in the United States was primarily category by foreign cultures until
	...

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