Historic Cookbooks - A Checklist

As I research culinary history, I often find myself heading to Google to track down the same 19th century cookbooks to search for a particular recipe or find how an ingredient has been used. I'll do that even for books that I have in a physical copy sitting on the shelf an arms length away, since full text searching is tremendously useful. Here are the standard ones I return to again and again.

Note: this is a work in progress, and I'll update it as I execute various research projects. (Last updated March 10, 2022)

1790s

Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (Hartford: Simeon Butler, 1798).

The first published cookbook written by an American for American cooks. (Earlier American-published cookbooks were reprints of British author’s works.) Some of Simmons' recipes use native American products—like corn, cranberries, turkey, squash and potatoes.

1810s

Harrison Hall, The Distiller (Philadelphia, 1818).

No, it’s not exactly a cookbook but a manual for distillers. But it does provide valuable insight into what Americans were making into alcohol in the early part of the 19th century.

1820s

Lydia Child, The Frugal Housewife (Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1829).

The linked edition is from 1830. Later editions were named the American Frugal Housewife to differentiate it from Susannah Carter’s well-known English cookbook by the same name.

1830s

Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife: or, Methodical Cook (Baltimore: John Plaskitt, 1836).

Sara Jospha Hale, The Good Housekeeper (Boston: Weeks. Jordan & Co., 1839).

1840s

Leslie, Eliza. Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches (Philadelphia: E.L. Carey & Hart, 1840).

Francis S. Holmes, The Southern Farmer and Market Gardener (Charleston, 1842)

Sarah Rutledge, The Carolina Housewife (1847).

1870s

Marion Cabell Tyree, Housekeeping in Old Virginia (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1878). Composed of contributions from 250 “Ladies in Virginia and Her Sister States.”

Annabella P. Hill, Mrs Hill’s New Cook-Book: Or, Housekeeping Made Easy (1870).

The full text of the New and Enlarged Edition (New York, G. W. Dillingham Co., 1898) is available at the Internet Archive.

1880s

Mrs. Peter A. White, The Kentucky Housewife. A Collection of Recipes for Cooking (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1885).

The most comprehensive collection of online American cookbooks is at Michigan State’s Feeding America site.