Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book

 Published in Philadelphia in 1857, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection contains over 1,000 recipes personally tested by the author, who was one of the most successful and prolific cookbook authors of the 19th century.

 This comprehensive recipe collection of over 650 pages with 1,000 recipes contains dishes ranging from American fried chicken and southern veal stew to continental favorites like Italian pork and West Indian fried bananas. Every recipe was tested by the author, and all were original to the book, a new standard in American cookbook publishing. Leslie was a marvelous food writer whose strongly stated opinions about cooking techniques and ingredients provided sensible advice to American cooks who had long suffered from the poor directions in continental cookbooks and from the differences in European kitchens and utensils. Her publisher proclaimed this “the most complete Cook Book in the world.”

 

This edition of Miss Leslie’s New Cookery 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.

About the Author

 Known familiarly as "Miss Leslie", Eliza Leslie was the daughter of a Philadelphia watchmaker who was a personal friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. A resident of Philadelphia, her first cookbook was published in her fortieth year, and was followed by almost a dozen more, books that were reprinted over and over and made her the most popular, well-known cookbook writer of the 19th century. She also wrote books on etiquette and children's books, and for a time she edited an annual gift book The Gift, which included selections from successful writers of the day including Henry Wadworth Longfellow.

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