Seafood Varieties and Recipes

The New England Cook Book emphasizes a wide range of seafood, including recipes for cod, halibut, striped and sea bass, black fish, shad, salt cod, fish cakes, lobsters and crabs, “scollops,” eels, clams, and oysters. The book contains almost 300 recipes covering a broad spectrum of dishes and ingredients, from soup to nuts. It also features an entire section of seventy-five “miscellaneous receipts and observations useful to young housekeepers,” offering advice on making soap, cleaning carpets, extracting stains from cotton goods, driving away household vermin, and more. According to the author, “the mode of cooking is such as is generally practiced by good notable Yankee housekeepers... It is intended for all classes of society and embracing both the plainest and richest cooking.”

Reproduction and Collection Information

This edition of New England Cook Book was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The Society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.