Cookbooks' genealogy can be traced back to oral instruction—for instance, a mother teaching a daughter to cook and maintain a home or an employed cook directing an apprentice in the kitchens of palaces, monasteries, or hospitals. Some recipes from ancient civilizations have survived into the modern day, but for millennia, widespread illiteracy hindered the proliferation of written instruction.
This changed after the invention of the printing press in 1440, which enabled the mass-production of books and sparked a surge in literacy among the middle classes. However, it
wasn't until the 1700s that the recipe or "cookery" book earned a spot in the Western literary canon. Early authors were women housewives or housekeepers, and their books served as broad guides for home and family management. Culinary instruction was most common, but books also frequently included medical remedies, cleaning solutions, and guidance for managing servants and raising children.
In successive years, the genre both broadened and narrowed as authors adopted increasingly niche focuses and audiences. Some appealed to wealthier readers; others touted thrift. Books might offer instruction for regional cuisines or adapt their recipes for new ingredients introduced with trade and migration.
Early recipes served as memory aids to knowledgeable cooks. They lacked titles and ran on in narrative style. As these books gained popularity, culinary terminology was systematized, formalizing a previously informal skillset. The recipe structure dominant today—a list of ingredients, with quantities, followed by a description of steps—emerged after this codification, in the mid-1800s.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the emerging "Culture of Domesticity" ideology took hold among the middle and upper classes in Europe and the United States, asserting that a woman's "sphere" was within the home. There, she had the authority to run the household and care for its inhabitants. This delineation of responsibilities gave rise to new ideas about household education, paving the way for professional subjects such as home economics and domestic science. Cookbooks reflected and encouraged this new pedagogy, gaining popularity and serving as detailed guides for a readership burdened with the moral obligation to maintain a functional and happy home.
Recipes and Home Remedies, [undated]. (Call Number: H. Frances Parmelee Papers, MS-1343 Box 2 Folder 16).
Repurposed Ledger. (Call Number: Ray Nash Papers, MS-1076 Box 58 Folder 5).
The owner of this ledger repurposed it as a makeshift home aid book, pasting several years' (1885-1887) worth of columns of "The Household" over old entries. Advice includes recipes, cleaning solutions, and guidance on temperament, religious faith, child rearing, and physical health. This scrap-book solution suggests a need for more formal, published home remedy books and reveals the vast range of responsibilities encompassed by the 19th century ideology of the Cult of Domesticity.
Mary Kettilby and others, A Collection of above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery; for the Use of All Good Wives, Tender Mothers, and Careful Nurses, 1728. (Call Number: Rare TX151 .K48 1728)
The oldest remedy book in this exhibit serves as a guide for "young and inexperienced dames." The author touts her work as far better than the "strangely odd and fantastical" recipes presented by other texts.
The Collection's combination of cookery recipes—including Britain's first printed recipe for orange marmalade—and medicinal remedies was not unusual at the time. However, Kettilby is careful to emphasize that her text does not infringe on the expertise of male physicians and surgeons. (Perhaps unsurprising, since the listed cure for "deafness and noise in the head" involves putting your own urine in a pewter-dish, covering it with another dish, heating it until clear water forms on the upper dish, brushing that water with a feather and dropping it in the ailing ear).
Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, 1808. (Call Number: Rare TX703 .S5 1808)
The first American cookbook published in the United States, American Cookery proclaims itself "adapted to this country." While it acknowledges British heritage and offers some British recipes, it also introduced indigenous American recipes with native American ingredients like cornmeal, pumpkin, and molasses. Beyond simply presenting a collection of recipes, this cookbook reflected and shaped the culinary habits of the colonists. In so doing, it helped define an important cultural facet—a gustatory identity—of this budding nation. Indeed, the U.S. Library of Congress considers this one of the 88 "Books that Shaped America."
In her preface, Amelia Simmons draws a connection between her cookbook and the strength of American project. Her book was intended for the "rising generation of FEMALES in America" to have access to a more "general and universal knowledge" so that women of all circumstances may "[do] those things which are really essential to the perfecting them as good wives, and useful members to society."
This guide would have been particularly useful to Simmons herself, who identifies as an "American orphan." For women in America, particularly recent emigrants lacking strong female supports, this cookbook would serve as a useful textbook for becoming a "good [wife]" or a knowledgeable servant—roles she deemed important to the overall success of a young and fragile country.
Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper, for the Use and Ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks, &c., 1796. (Call Number: Rare TX 705. R33 1796)
Before publishing the first edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper in 1769, Elizabeth Raffald worked for fifteen years as a servant and housekeeper for Lady Elizabeth Warburton, to whom this book is dedicated. Raffald eventually married Lady Elizabeth's head gardener, and the couple moved to Manchester, where she started a business selling select dishes and confectionaries. As her business grew, she began offering cooking classes; her cookery book was born out of those lessons.
Intended for the "use and ease of ladies, housekeepers, cooks, &c." this book focuses less on thrift and accessibility than on the culinary customs of a wealthy household (Note the pullout offering "Directions for a Grand Table.") Roughly sixty blank pages at the start and end of the book allow ample room for readers to add their own recipes, remedies, and other notes.
The Experienced English Housekeeper provided an early reference to barbecuing, as well as what is likely the first published recipe for crumpets.
Susan Anna Brown, Mrs. Gilpin's Frugalities: Remnants and 200 Ways of Using Them, 1883. (Call Number: DC Hist TX715. B888)
This 1883 text explicitly advertises thrift, appealing more directly to the middle- and lower-classes. In her preface, Susan Anna Brown makes a moral, almost patriotic case for frugality, deriding the "real ignorance of that principle of economy which utilizes everything" and suggesting that "Americans are more wasteful of food than any other people."
One should not disdain thrift, she argues; rather, frugality is an essential component of care in the kitchen: "No table is so expensive as the one to which little thought and less personal oversight is given."
Maria Rundell ("A Lady"), A New System of Domestic Cookery, 1808. (Call Number: N.H. Exeter 1808)
Throughout her marriage and widowhood, Maria Rundell compiled recipes and advice to pass along to her daughters. After sharing her informal collection with a publisher friend, it was formally published and swiftly became the most popular English cookbook of its time. Hailed as "a publishing sensation," it evolved over 67 editions and sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide.
Rundell, considered the "original domestic goddess," adopted a relatively new approach in The New Domestic Cookery. Intended for the middle class, her recipes explicitly avoid "all excessive luxury." Unlike earlier English cookbooks such as the Experienced English Housekeeper (also featured in this exhibit), her text is subdivided into dish types, carving advice, guidance on utensils, managing servants, etc. Her recipe book also focuses primarily on cooking and largely omits medicinal receipts.
"A Lady," The New Domestic Cookery, 1830. (Call Number: Rare TX717 .L34 1830x)
The New Domestic Cookery was published twenty-three years after the first printing of Maria Rundell's wildly successful A New System of Domestic Cookery (also featured in this exhibit). While the two books share no apparent connection, it is likely that the publishers opted for a near-identical title and similar content to play off Rundell's fame.
Bemjamin Count of Rumford, Essays Political, Economical, and Philosophical, 1802. (Call Number: Rumford Q113 .R92a 1800.)
Benjamin Count of Rumford's essays on nutrition and culinary preparation represent some of the earliest considerations of the scientific aspects of food and food preparation. Rumford's work emerged from his observations of indigent populations in Bavaria and his experiments and technological innovations were initially aimed at alleviating poverty.
"As providing sustenance is, and ever must be, an object of the first concern in all countries, any discovery or improvement by which the procuring of good and wholesome food can be facilitated, must contribute very powerfully to increase the comforts, and promote the happiness of society."
Rumford writes that he was "struck...very forcibly" by the effect that certain ingredients and proper cooking methods had on the "apparent goodness" and "apparent nutritiousness" of prepared food. The cook's talent, he surmised, matters far more than the price or quantity of nutritious ingredients. His emphasis on taste and food quality, with careful consideration given to the "art and skill of the cook," was unusual at the time—especially for a man, especially of a member of the upper-class.
In other essays, Rumford focuses his attention on waste and inefficiencies in the process of cooking. He observes that an "enormous" amount of fuel is wasted to "[make] liquids boil unnecessarily," asserting his belief that more than half the fuel used in private and public kitchens across the world is similarly squandered. "The evil does not stop here": Cooking, he notes, is "much more laborious and troublesome" than it could be if the process weren't so "unscientific and slovenly."
Consequently, he provides a litany of recommendations to enhance cooking techniques and technology. He offers improvements for kitchen fireplaces, kitchen layouts, ovens, and kitchen boilers, among others.
His work highlights the value of domestic duties, especially cooking. He writes that his intention in publishing these essays is to "awaken the curiosity of my readers" and to fix their attention on a subject previously considered "low and vulgar" but which is, "in fact, highly interesting, and deserving of the most serious consideration." He adds his wish to "inspire cooks with a just idea of the importance of their art." He recommends a "scientific investigation" into the art of cookery to "increase the comforts of enjoyment of mankind." His elevation of domestic practices, and his urging of a scientific perspective, laid the groundwork for ideologies emphasizing the value of household management, such as Catherine Beecher's perspective on the Domestic Economy (also featured in this exhibit) in the following decades and the Home Economics movement of the early twentieth century.
Catherine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy: for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School, 1842. (Call Number: 1926 collection B39)
Could proper cooking, washing, and gardening be critical to the maintenance of a healthy democracy?
Yes, argues Catherine Beecher in her Treatise. For the sake of American society, women guardians of the "domestic economy" must be properly prepared for their essential domestic duties. She follows a careful logic. She explains that the success of democratic institutions "depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the mass of people." If the citizenry is intelligent and virtuous, democracy can thrive; but if they are ignorant and immoral, democracy is a "curse."
Who is responsible for the moral and intellectual education of the American citizenry? Women, she argues: "The mother forms the character of the future man; the sister bends the fibers that are hereafter to be the forest tree; the wife sways the heart, whose energies may turn for good or for evil the destinies of a nation. Let the women of a country made virtuous and intelligent, and the men will certainly be the same." It follows that, "as a matter of public concern," women be educated for their "most responsible of all duties." While men have access to colleges and educational institutions, women receive little formal preparation for their lifelong careers.
She adds that, while knowledge and practice in home management is important, young ladies may find it "vulgar and ungenteel." In response, Beecher retorts, "This is one of the relics of an aristocratic society, which is rapidly fading away." With remarkable foresight, she observes that the nation is moving toward the "equalization of labor." "Indolence is disreputable," asserts Beecher.
Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home: or, Principles of Domestic Science: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes, 1869. (Call Number: WVal 816 St78 O3.)
Twenty-eight years after the publication of Catherine Beecher's Treatise, she and her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, revised and republished that work to produce The American Woman's Home.
The ideas the sisters espouse in the book are both revolutionary and traditional. On the one hand, they emphasize the moral and political importance of domestic duties—responsibilities that had previously been overlooked. They argue that the chief cause of the "evils" of women's "disabilities and sufferings" is that women's work is underappreciated, women are not educated, and, as a result, "family labor is poorly done, poorly paid, and regarded as menial and disgraceful."
Indeed, they seem to view the management of the home as a kind of science, with The American Woman's Home serving as a central textbook. They offer clear instruction on human anatomy and health, nutrition, maintaining a healthy mind, and more. They argue that home decoration is essential for "moral sensibility," that good food fosters health and happiness, and that a housekeeper's balanced temper influences the entire family's mood. In fact, their design recommendations introduced one of the first ideas for optimizing work in the kitchen.
At the same time, their text clearly and proudly promotes the Cult of Domesticity—the idea that a woman's place is solely within the home. It reinforces domestic values, limiting women's influence on American society to the confines of the domestic sphere. Even though the women of America "often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding, and a manly energy," they argue that "Americans have applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy, which governs the manufactories of our age, by carefully dividing the duties of man from those of woman, in order that the great work of society may be more effectively carried on."
