Photo courtesy of Tomwsulcer/Wikimedia Commons American Cookery, published by the “orphan” Amelia Simmons in 1796, was the first cookbook by an American to be published in the United States.

Amelia Simmons’ 1796 “American Cookery” was the first cookbook by an American to be published in the United States. Its 47 pages (in the first edition) contained fine recipes for roasts ...

American Cookery, the very first American cookbook, was written by Amelia Simmons (more on this mysterious woman later). In it, she promised local food and a kind of socioculinary equality.

Amelia Simmons invented the cupcake ... While Cooley notes that a lot of the recipes in American Cookery are directly copied from English cookbooks, some of them "copied word for word" from ...

A proper “Independence Cake,” according to Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery, should be big enough to feed quite a few Americans. The cake recipe, originally published in 1796, requires 20 pounds of ...

In Amelia’s time the American family must have been large ... for whose benefit you evolved this original method of cooking a BeefStake appreciated your genius as it deserves.

Things haven’t changed that much. Two hundred years ago, when Amelia Simmons published “American Cookery,” the first American cookbook, she instructed her readers that when choosing fish ...

And if not that -- because some would argue Amelia Simmons's American Cookery (1796) claims that title -- it's certainly the first regional cookbook. In it, you'll find recipes for Southern-style ...

The first American cookbook, “American Cookery,” was written by an American — Amelia Simmons — for Americans. It was published in 1796 in Hartford, Connecticut. Previously, those who ...