The Cook Not Mad

Book excerpt: Published in 1830 in North America, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection stresses American cooking over European cuisine. Within a year of its publication in the United States, The Cook Not Mad was also published in Canada and thus became Canada’s first printed cookbook. In contrast to some of the larger encyclopedic cookbook collections of the day, The Cook Not Mad provides 310 recipes and household information designed to be a quick and easy reference guide to domestic organization for the contemporary housewife. The author describes the content as “Good Republican dishes” and includes typical American ingredients such as turkey, pumpkin, codfish, and cranberries. There are classic recipes for Tasty Indian Pudding, Federal Pancakes, Good Rye and Indian Bread (cornmeal), Johnnycake, Indian Slapjack, Washington Cake, and Jackson Jumbles. In spite of the author’s American “intentions,” the book does include foreign influences such as traditional English recipes, and it also contains one of the earliest known recipes for shish-kebab in American cookbooks. Reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, founded in 1812.