Miss Corson's Practical American
Cookery
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Introduction
Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery and Household Management.
New
York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1886.
Juliet Corson is another of the "great ladies" of 19th century American cooking. This volume is, perhaps, her masterpiece. It is essentially an early regional American cookbook. It was the result of an appeal by the author for information about local dishes which was sent to the U.S. Commissioner of Education and circulated by him throughout the country.
Miss Corson explains that because she had been criticized that "the cookery of Europe enters so largely into the author's scheme of teaching," she undertook to write this book "to verify her assertion that genuine American cookery is both wholesome and palatable and has lost none of the traditional excellence which characterized it in our grandmothers' days."
The resulting book is a fascinating mixture of French recipes (Foie Gras with Truffles) and regional American dishes (New England Style Rhubarb Pie, Philadelphia Ice Cream, Succotash from Dried Samp and Beans, Apple Pan Dowdy and Virginia Verder, or Bottled Milk Punch).
Miss Corson founded the New York Cooking School and worked diligently to teach rich and poor alike the proper way to prepare food. Various versions of her New York Cooking School Text were used in public and private classes throughout the country. She was particularly interested in helping the poor and to that end wrote and underwrote various pamphlets such as ,Fifteen Cent Dinners for Workingmen's Families and Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six. She authored about a dozen books and also collaborated on numerous promotional pamphlets and endorsements.
She was an active participant in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and was in charge of the New York Exhibit of cooking schools there.