What does the book reflect about the culinary interests and culture of this early era in American history?
Whenever I think about or see “Amelia’s cookbook,” I think less about its importance as the first true American cookbooks, as I do about how she described herself as “an American orphan” on the title page. It is a telling description of life two hundred years ago when high mortality rates, especially among women, left many children motherless, thus depriving them of the wisdom and guidance to make their way in the world. Thanks to ‘Amelia,’ motherless young girls now had a resource from which they could learn to cook, arguably the most important responsibility of young women next to bearing children. As a historian, I think this is but one example of how cookbooks are rich historical texts just waiting to be mined for unique and often telling evidence about lives lived many years ago. How has the American cookbook evolved over the years? I have been impressed with the number and the variety of cookbooks that are being published. Even in these hard economic times the cookbooks seem to k
