Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery

Transcribed by Karen Hess. ISBN 0-231-04931-5. Copyright 1981, 1995. Softcover with 518 pages.  

Martha Washington’s recipes: More than five hundred classics dating from the Elizabethan and Jacobean times, are gathered in this family cookbook that captures the essence of early American folk culture.

Handed down as a manuscript cookbook for generations, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery has been annotated by Karen Hess, a noted culinary historian and cook. “Amerian cookery is a tapestry of extraordinary complex design, reflecting out rich and varied ethnic origins, our New World produce, and our frontier history,” writes Hess in her introduction. For the historian, she documents early American cookery with prose and photographs of Washington’s original manuscript and an appendix detailing extensive primary-source research. For the cook, she explains terms and techniques unfamiliar to the modern kitchen, showing how to make old fashioned recipes the traditional way, such as rose petal vinegar, Oxford Kate’s sausages, roast capon with oysters, mince pie, fried pudding, almond butter ginger bread, and apple cider. In paperback for the first time, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery is both a significant primary resource for historians and the perfect gift for enthusiastic cooks and fans of the culinary arts.