The introductory texts reproduced here were written by the original Feeding America team to contextualize the books that were selected for inclusion as part of the 2001 digitization project.
The Frugal Housewife, or, Complete woman cook; wherein the art of dressing all sorts of viands is explained in upwards of five hundred approved receipts, in gravies, sauces, roasting [etc.] . . . also the making of English wines. To which is added an appendix, containing several new receipts adapted to the American mode of cooking.
By Susannah Carter
New York: G. & R. Waite, 1803.
This book and the 1807 Rundell, A New System of Domestic Cookery, offer an excellent overview of the English contributions to what has become American cooking. Many of the traditional English recipes found in Mrs. Rundell's work also appear in this volume. But this book does have a most intriguing group of recipes in a brief appendix "Containing Several New Receipts Adapted to the American Mode of Cooking." The recipes listed make fascinating reading: Baked Indian Pudding, An Indian Pudding Boiled, Mush, Buck-Wheat Cakes, Pumpkin Pie, Dough Nuts, To Make Sausage, Blood-Pudding, Cranberry Tarts, To Pickle Peppers, To Pickle Beets, Peach Sweetmeats, Quince Sweetmeats, Green Gage Sweetmeats, A Receipt to Make Maple Sugar, Maple Molasses, Maple Beer, Receipt to Make the Famous Thieves Vinegar, Method of Destroying the Putrid Smell which Meat Acquires during Hot Weather, Spruce Beer out of the Essence, Spruce Beer out of Shed Spruce, Eel Pie, Pork Pie, Raised Pork Pie, Bath Pudding, Pot Pie, Short Gingerbread, Waffles, Crullers and Method of Rearing Turkeys, to Advantage...translated from a Swedish Book, entitled Rural Oeconomy.
Susannah Carter was almost certainly not responsible for these recipes; it would be interesting to investigate who included them, where the recipes were "borrowed" from, and whether or not they appeared in any succeeding British printings.
This book was popular on both sides of the Atlantic from its first printing in London ca 1765. It was reprinted in London and Boston in 1772 with the plates attributed to Paul Revere. Further American printings appeared in 1792, 1795, 1796, 1802, and this one, with its extra American recipes, in 1803. In 1829, the American author Lydia Maria Child published a book with the exact same title. Questions of copyright arose and so, in 1832, Child's publisher was forced to change the name of her book to The Frugal American Housewife.
