United Tastes

The Making of the First American Cookbook

Keith Stavely, Kathleen Fitzgerald

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781625343222
• eBook ISBN:
  9781613765586
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Winner of the 2017 Bruce Fraser Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History
The Library of Congress has designated American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons one of the eighty-eight "Books That Shaped America." Its recognition as "the first American cookbook" has attracted an enthusiastic modern audience of historians, food journalists, and general readers, yet until now American Cookery has not received the sustained scholarly attention it deserves. Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald's United Tastes fills this gap by providing a detailed examination of the social circumstances and culinary tradition that produced this American classic.

Situating American Cookery within the post-Revolutionary effort to develop a distinct national identity, Stavely and Fitzgerald demonstrate the book's significance in cultural as well as culinary terms. Ultimately the separation between these categories dissolves as the authors show that the formation of "taste," in matters of food as well as other material expressions, was essential to building a consensus on what it was to be American. United Tastes explores multiple histories—of food, cookbooks, printing, material and literary culture, and region—to illuminate the meaning and affirm the importance of America's first cookbook.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1. Cooks and Books
• Part 2. Connecticut
• Part 3. American Cookery, by an American Orphan
• Conclusion: The American Dream and Its Discontents
• Appendix 1. The Sources of American Cookery
• Appendix 2. Recipes from Plain to Fancy
• Appendix 3. Works Relating to Orphanhood Available in New England and New York, 1760-1800
• Appendix 4. Editions, Printings, and Major Plagiarisms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors
• Back Cover