This volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection, published in Boston in 1865, is a practical collection of recipes that any homemaker of post-Civil War American society could use for everyday cooking.

Although we have no biographical information about Mrs. S.G. Knight, we know that her intention was to compile recipes for dishes that were delicious but efficient, sensible, and inexpensive. Her collection was meant to fill an empty niche on the contemporary cookbook shelf in answer to the “universal cry” among the “less wealthy classes” that, “We can do nothing with Cook Books, the receipts are so extravagant!” Mrs. Knight spent twenty years acquiring the recipes from friends and family for meats, fish, soups, pickles and condiments, breads, puddings, pastry, cakes, preserves and jellies, and sauces that provide a marvelous perspective on culinary lifestyles of the day.

 

This edition of Tit-Bits by Mrs. S.G. Knight 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.