Virginia Cookery-book

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The Virginia Cookery-Book (1884), compiled by Mary Stuart Smith, is a comprehensive household cookbook drawn from Virginia family kitchens of the nineteenth century. Organized into numbered chapters, it moves from breads, breakfast cakes, and beverages through eggs, oysters, fish, soups, poultry, meats, sauces, vegetables, puddings, cakes, frozen desserts, preserves, pickling and meat curing, homemade wines and dairy work, and finally a chapter devoted to foods and remedies for the sick. Many recipes are attributed to named Virginia households, friends, and regional sources, reflecting a culture of shared, tested family recipes rather than professional culinary authorship. The book opens with a preface describing its purpose as a repository of time-tested Virginia recipes and republishes Professor George Tucker's essay on household management and order. Throughout, the text reveals the domestic labor of a pre-refrigeration, wood-stove and open-hearth household: curing meats, preserving fruit for winter, brewing coffee and tea by several methods, and preparing broths and gruels for the sick. Modern readers will find both elegant entertaining dishes and everyday staples, along with a window into how a Virginia household managed food production, preservation, and care for the ill in the decades after the Civil War.

The book is arranged in numbered chapters proceeding from breads and breakfast items (yeast breads, biscuits, corn breads, griddle cakes) through beverages (coffee, tea, chocolate), eggs and oysters, fish, soups, poultry and meats, sauces and catsups, vegetables, puddings and cakes, icings and frozen desserts, custards and jellies, preserves and sweetmeats, pickles and meat curing, homemade wines and dairy products, and a final chapter devoted entirely to foods and remedies for the sick. An index of recipes appears at the close of the book. Recipes within chapters are often numbered variants (e.g., multiple Sally Lunn or Plum Pudding recipes) and frequently carry the names of contributing families or acquaintances.