Author Description

The complete title reads American Cookery: or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Tarts, Puddings, Custards, and Preserves, and off Kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake adapted to the Country and All Grades of Life. Amelia Simmons has given the reader such a complete title that there seems to be little need of further explanation. Miss Simmons signs her name as "Amelia Simmons an orphan dated 1796". The book will capture the reader immediately with these opening lines "As this treatise is calculated for the improvement of the rising generation of Females in America, the Lady of fashion and fortune will not be displeased, if many hints are suggested for the more general and universal knowledge of those females in this country, who by the loss of their parents, or other unfortunate circumstances, are reduced to the necessity of going into families in the line of domestics, or taking refuge with their friends or relations, and doing those things which are really essential to the perfecting them as good wives, and useful members of society. The orphan, tho' left to the care of virtuous guardians, will find it essentially necessary to have an opinion and determination of her own. The world, and the fashion thereof, is so variable, that old people cannot accommodate themselves to the various changes and fashions which daily occur; they will adhere to the fashion of their day, and will not surrender their attachments to the good old way --while the young and the gay, bend and conform readily to the taste of the times, and fancy of the hour. By having an opinion and determination."